Rock En Seine #1

Arriving at the festival a couple of hours after the acts began on Friday, I raced to the Scène de la Cascade where, despite a relatively early set, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs received a superb reception from a massive audience. Karen O is a schizophrenic performer: one moment, she’s a hellcat with a mic, growling and wailing and strutting; the next, she’s crooning gentle love-songs with heart-stopping tenderness (with a semi-acoustic rendition of “Maps” proving to be one of the set’s most captivating performances).

Meanwhile, on the slightly backwoods Scène de l’Industrie, Passion Pit’s blend of ethereal synths and thudding basslines was proving the perfect soundtrack to an August afternoon. Vocalist Michael Angelakos’ quivering falsetto and amiable stage presence drew a passionate response from the audience: popular favourite “Sleepyhead” turned the crowd into a shifting field of raised hands and dancing bodies.

As one of the most-hyped bands of 2008, it’s not unreasonable to expect Vampire Weekend to draw a crowd. Their quirky indie-pop is a perfect summer sound, but their Main Stage set didn’t feel particularly spirited. They offered few surprises, playing the usual selection of hits from first album Vampire Weekend, alongside two or three new tracks (which, disappointingly, sounded almost indistinguishable from their current material). Ezra Koenig deserves kudos for making a brave effort to chat with the crowd in French, and the show was enjoyable enough, but I couldn’t help but feel like something was lacking.

Back at Scène de la Cascade, a crowd of thousands was gathering for one of the biggest names on the bill. London’s Bloc Party need no introduction, and asked for none, breezing through a dazzling set almost effortlessly. Frontman Kele Okereke occupies a hinterland somewhere between mysterious androgyne (in his trademark guitar-hugging pose) and rabble-rousing orator, blithely informing his audience – and they were his audience – that “I’m not having any fucker say Bloc Party weren’t better than Oasis!” Indeed, he later returned to this point, apologising with a laugh for “my anti-Oasis comment earlier… I just really fuckin’ hate them.”

Interestingly, the balance of the set-list was weighted in favour of debut album Silent Alarm (though the obvious crowd-pleasers from A Weekend In The City and new album Intimacy were also given an airing). “Like Eating Glass” and “Flux” received particularly zealous approval, while an all-guns-blazing encore performance of “Helicopter” drove the crowd into an almost apoplectic state of joy.

By this stage, rumours of an Oasis no-show were spreading fast, and the crowd knew perfectly well what was coming when Bloc Party brought their tour manager onstage to announce that they had cancelled (a source backstage informed us that the Gallagher brothers had a fight, and one broke the other’s vintage guitar – though this was hard to verify). Okereke seemed only a little smug in announcing that “I guess, by default, that makes us the headliners”, and dedicating a song to “anyone who really wanted to see those… inbred twins.”

While it’s generally considered bad form to slag off another band from the stage (or at all), I couldn’t bring myself to care. Bloc Party are an unstoppable force: a constantly-moving whirlwind of flashing lights and frantic guitar melodies. When they’re playing, it’s impossible not to get caught up in the moment.

Day one of Rock En Seine closed out with a disappointment: following the Oasis drop-out there was a distinct backlash from the fans (many of whom had travelled to France solely to see them), and I couldn’t help but feel that, after fifteen years of tantrums and cancellations, the Gallaghers should have learned that there’s only so far you can test the loyalty of your fans.

The reviews from days two and three will be up soon, along with photographs taken at the festival. Stay tuned!