Review of the year: Big names, great crowds and local heroes made 2013 a musical year to remember

While attention nationally focused on pinched budgets, straitened times and the country’s rocky road to economic recovery, the news from the Oxfordshire music scene could not have been more different.

Instead of cutbacks and savings, the year featured an exuberant display of bravado — with existing local bands going from strength to strength, new artists making international waves, and blasts from the past returning triumphantly. Combine that with full houses, new venues and a resurgent festival scene, and Oxford music lovers could be forgiven for asking “recession, what recession?”

One of the most interesting gigs of the year was also one of its first. Having been previously hyped as one of Oxfordshire’s best new bands, Fixers have a reputation for creative, and unpredictable, performances. But frontman Jack Goldstein’s decision to turn his back on psychedelic rock for a night of music by avant-garde composer John Cage may well have had people wondering whether he had lost the plot. His intimate concert at the diminutive Port Mahon, however, was startling in its nerve, verve and originality. Cage, a pioneer of indeterminacy, chance-controlled music, and of using instruments in unusual ways, would have been proud.

Jack revived the performance for a set at the Ashmolean Museum which, with its monthly series of Live Friday open events, provided certainly the most engaging performance venue in the city. Live Friday highlights included a barnstorming performance by jazz-swing renegades The Original Rabbit Foot Spasm Band, in February and Chad Valley in July.

In September, The Oxford Times was invited to co-curate its own Live Friday, showcasing the work of our Weekend supplement.

Along with displays on printing technology and photography, and a lively debate on the future of theatre chaired by this newspaper’s Katherine MacAlister, the event brought together some of the city’s most inspiring young musicians – among them Flights of Helios, Grudle Bay, Huck and the Xander Band, Salvation Bill, The August List, Reichenbach Falls, Megan Henwood, artists from the city’s Catweazle open-mic night, Tamara Parsons Baker and Candy Says — who played an engaging set of dreamy art-pop among the Roman statues.

Candy Says

Candy Says, fronted by former Little Fish star Julia ‘JuJu’ Sophie Heslop, were among the year’s breakthrough acts, performing a moving set at the year’s Oxford Punt and an eye-popping headline show at St Barnabas Church, in Jericho, playing while an artist created a work of art on an oversized canvas.

2013 also saw another Oxford church come into its own as a music venue. St John the Evangelist, in Iffley Road, is now one of the city’s best venues, hosting shows this year by everyone from Queen’s Roger Taylor to multi-instrumentalist Patrick Wolf and Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson. The trend for unusual venues continues, with even little St Alban’s Church, in Charles Street, being enlisted as a venue for lovely country-rock, courtesy of producer and singer-songwriter Ethan Johns.

Venues don’t come much grander, though, than Oxford Town Hall, which hosted two consecutive shows by folk-poppers Stornoway. April’s sold-out gigs saw them playing songs from new album Tales From Terra Firma, the long-awaited follow-up to Beachcombers Windowsill. Being on a roll, they end the year with the release of a new EP, You Don’t Know Anything. As for other local heroes, they don’t come much bigger than Gaz Coombes.

Gaz Coombes

The former Supergrass frontman continued to pick up rave reviews for his adventurous solo debut Here Come The Bombs, partly recorded at his home in Wheatley. He gave local fans a taste of its dreamy synths, grooves and distorted guitar at a hometown show at the O2 Academy, headlining the May instalment of the venue’s excellent Upstairs series of largely local showcase gigs.

The city’s biggest band, Radiohead aside, are Foals, and the lads had another storming year with acclaimed main stage appearances at Glastonbury and Reading & Leeds Festivals, and a show at the Royal Albert Hall. The five-piece also again found themselves nominated for a Mercury Prize with their latest album, the wonderful Holy Fire.

The award for comeback of the year, must surely go to Oxford three-piece Young Knives, who returned after two years, with a thrilling self-produced album Sick Octave. The band, consisting of brothers Henry and Tom ‘The House of Lords’ Dartnell and Oliver Askew, celebrated the release with a national tour, starting with a sweaty spectacle at The Cellar, off Cornmarket, at which they performed the album, ending with a clutch of old favourites.

For many, the focal point of the music year is festival season, and this year saw a bumper crop, with some weird and wonderful surprises: Fairport Convention enlisted the help of veteran shock-rocker Alice Cooper, and Alex James brought Rizzle Kicks and Basement Jaxx to his farm for The Big Feastival.

Alice Cooper

Truck, at Hill Farm Steventon, and Cornbury, at Great Tew, both showed they had overcome their previous financial wobbles by staging spectacular events, Truck attracting Spiritualized, Ash, The Horrors and Gaz Coombes, again. Cornbury, which celebrated its 10th anniversary, proved its reputation as ‘Poshstock’ continues, with David and Samantha Cameron among those schmoozing in the VIP bar. Headliners Keane, Squeeze and Van Morrison were upstaged only by the amazing weather.

The best though was Wilderness, which saw sets by Rodriguez, Empire of the Sun, Noah and The Whale and Ralfe Band.

Rodriguez

But the real stars of the event, and of Oxford’s music year as a whole, were the punters — those who sang, danced, and, yes, drank, their way to happy oblivion in front of the artists. For without them there would be music scene at all. Here’s to an even better 2014.