On the road aginn...we've been travlinn on dat road aginn... And it was good. Scratched and bruised, happy and tired, I'm back home.

Last year X and I went to the first version of the Way Out West music festival in Gothenburg, which was great; loads of bands we wanted to see were playing, and we got to see everything we wanted. This time around, Okkervil River was one of the first bands to sign up which of course meant we had to get tickets. Never mind that Girl Talk and A-Trak cancelled, we still had mighty artists such as Holy Fuck, Lil' Kim, Buzzcocks, The Sonics, The National and Silverbullit to see.

We went down by train which took five hours, in the dead of morning. We ended up in Gothenburg central with three hours to kill before we were allowed to check into our hotel, so we first picked up our festival wrist-bands and then went to Eva's Paley; that's a café where the best cupcakes I've ever tasted are made! Lunch followed by a chaser chocolate cupcake filled with raspberry jam? I don't mind if I do. Grand start to the Gothenburg experience. After this we checked into the hotel and had a nice, soothing time until the first band was about to play.

Last year the festival sold out with 18000 people in attendance. This year it sold out again, with a slightly bigger venue yet with 6345 more people! The sheer number dawned on me as X and I went to see the first band, Buzzcocks. As the taxi-driver (who must have been drunk or on drugs, I swear it) pulled up to Henriksberg, the smallish venue, I saw how the queue just went on and on and on. Rain drizzled and we had no umba-rella, ella. The first band (i.e. not Buzzcocks) hadn't even played yet, and guards shouted that even though a little part of the queue might be lucky enough to get into the entrance floor, there was no way those would let up to the second floor, where the bands were to play. Having queued for a while we realised we wouldn't be able to see Buzzcocks, and left for another venue, Storan, where Petter was set to celebrate his being around for 10 years.

Safe to say, that venue was jam-packed and the queue outside was even worse than at Henriksberg. X and I admitted defeat, bought crisps and went back to the hotel. Mmm.

The day after I looked forward to the hotel breakfast; we stayed at the same hotel (First Hotel G) that we'd hit the past year ((And ended up in a room two doors from the one we ended up in the year before.)) and their breakfast buffet is ace. I really longed for the fruits, the breads and cereals we'd find. As X and I slept notverygood, we headed for the buffet early in the morning and could hence find a table without problem.

We went through the inner core of Gothenburg, passing people everywhere. In Stockholm, we've got right-hand traffic when pedestrianism is concerned, but in Gothenburg people refuse that idea and hence you've got to be on your toes when walking. We tip-toed through the city into lush, green, wonderful parks. The weather was supposed to be shit, so I carried a couple of rain-deterring plastic ponchos while the sun washed us down; no rain. I was really pleased with that, walking with my arm around X, sunbathing. Mmm. Things couldn't have been better. And we were heading to see Okkervil, thank you very much. I was getting nervous, but didn't tell X about it; I think we'd just rail each other just like before the Voxtrot-gig at last year's WOW. Anyway, we entered the festival area, and just as we made our way through the entrance we heard Kenge Kenge Orutu Systems playing, sounded like great rhythmic music. As we passed the stage the band pulled up people from the audience and everybody danced, displayed through two massive side-stage screens.

We made our way to the Linné tent, where The Sonics were about to play. We entered just as Iron & Wine had left the stage, and snagged our places in the front where we'd remain for the next...hours. Yeah. Waiting among garage-lovin' fans of The Sonics time passed slowly, but as they hit the stage their energy was somewhat intact from their days of yore - they're a 48-year-old band! Their drummer reminded me a lot of Travis, although being closer to 100 years old than Travis is pushing towards 40... No offense! When I'm that old I hope I'll stay just as cool. The man was wearing a blue bandana wrapped around his neck and made those sticks fly. Here's a typical track by the band if you want to taste their style from way back when.

As they played on I suddenly saw Patrick hovering in the background, checking out the band. Next of him was Alex Kapranos from Franz Ferdinand. That felt weird, as I knew we were gonna miss them due to their playing the same time as Okkervil. By the way, the band were recorded for Norwegian TV the day before their gig at Way Out West, where Will, Scott and their temporary lead guitarist-cum-mandolin player perform the following acoustic rendition of "Lost Coastlines":

As soon as The Sonics walked off-stage after having invaded OR's stage time, loads of mid-teens swarmed the front to snatch the best place on offer. I know I'll sound pathetic, but I easily recognised myself in these little pilgrims, wanting to lavish affection and get recognition from their peers and the band. X was standing to my left, and a small emo pushed herself to my right side; she was immediately followed by a big late-teen who seemed used to getting things his way. He pushed the girl my way and she tried to push him back, but when that didn't work she pushed me instead. Neither he or I would budge, which lead her to start arguing with him, saying she was there first and that he shouldn't push her. Either way, their arguments were laughable and horrid, displaying the worst of humanity; she actually said "I'm small!" as reason to why she should be let alone. He replied with saying he was blind in one eye and any way didn't care about her as he would do anything to see Okkervil; that sounded like sarcasm, but I think he was just being stupid. They both were. When their reasoning seemingly ended at a stand-still, she started kicking and pinching him. He told her to stop and threatened her. She started crying and tried to push me aside like a child would. She called security, who merely asked her to leave her place if she was getting hurt; she refused, so it couldn't have hurt that much. Throughout the following concert these two couldn't get along and I've got fucked-up muscles in my right hip to prove it.

I'm reminded of the lyrics to LCD Soundsystem's song "Sound Of Silver":

Sound of silver talk to me makes you want to feel like a teenager until you remember the feelings of a real life emotion of teenager then you think again

Okkervil hit the stage. With little panache Will took over the stage with his subtle and honest persona, being himself all the way. Patrick gleamed, looking like a little boy gently smiling, his big heart showing through his playing; he's so tall and a little like the gentle giant, playing hiss bass. Travis took over the drums and let his facial physique play throughout the show. Justin played well even though his guitar decided to bust two strings and leave him to the keys. The band played with another guitarist this time, the first female artist I've seen play with the band; can anybody name her? The horridly technically unkempt Okkervil River board at jound names Lauren, but no surname. Scott switched between keys, trumpet, tambourine and maracas.

The band was solid, even though I must say I miss Charlie Bissell playing lead guitar, with all that entailed. Just check out his ((I'm assuming the arrangement is his, as Will referred to his "box of tricks" at ATP 2008.)) magnificent arranging and playing "It Ends With A Fall" in this video that I shot at ATP in May, earlier this year. I think Lauren's playing was interesting; her solo during "For Real" sounded a bit thin with no distortion, but then again, who am I to talk? As Johnny Marr once recalled: how many guitarists do you need to screw a light-bulb? One to do it, and the rest to stand around saying how they would have done it better.

Will's heartfelt smile filled my heart as I know he felt the emotional call-and-response that rang back from the crowd. Songs like "The Latest Toughs" and "A Girl In Port" flowed through as one of the songs ended, people clapped and Will suddenly started playing a G chord on his semi-acoustic guitar, exclaimed the band would now be playing "Lost Coastlines", which is off their coming album, which is a "part two" of "The Stage Names". X shrieked. We swayed. Bliss. The track is wonderful, truly wonderful. Here's a video I shot of it:

After the short gig (45 minutes) the band walked off-stage and X and I waltzed away. It was a nice gig, but to be completely honest, it's the least good gig by OR that I've seen so far, and I've only seen four of them. Still, the gig contained a lot of highlights and was the second best gig of the entire festival, which says a lot for me.

We called Travis who was busy packing gear backstage. We waited and walked away towards Sonic Youth who were playing one of my favourites, "Drunken Butterfly", occupying the biggest stage. Noise annoys? Hell no. I love them. We also heard a little of Grinderman on another stage and let me tell you, they're a lot better on record than live. Uuh.

Suddenly X saw a thin figure moving gangly across the lawn. "Patrick!" she exclaimed. We rushed to him and his smile just burst. He was out looking for us! What a gentleman. He figured he'd run across us. Not bad thinking there were more than 25000 people running about. So we walked, talked and had a very nice time with our Texan gentleman friend until he had to make a quick exit and travel towards Germany with his friends.

Following his departure X and I heard a bit of The National's gig in the same venue where Okkervil was previously playing; I love their live sound. I've got to listen to them some more. The dark voice of Matt Berninger makes me recall Ian Curtis in a good way. We ate something titelled vegetarian wok which meant mixed vegetables with soy sauce, doused in noodles. Quite agreeable, actually. To the tunes of Sigur Rà³s playing live we then left the festival for the night, walking home through pleasant weather and quite warm air. The sky had darkened. Gothenburg is beautiful.

The day after meant breakfast again. Again! The hotel yet again (just like last year) managed not to service our rooms; no cleaner had entered it, and two light-bulbs I'd reported as broken hadn't been mended despite promises of the contrary. Still, we'd expected it, and I reported this to reception and we got fresh towels soon afterwards. Hrmph.

We left the hotel earlier today and saw The Bug, which means a bone-hard version of dancehall mixed with minimalist beats and a couple of MC's who worked the crowd slowly. The beats and the literally earth-quaking bass was cool as hell, but became repetitive; I'm not one for dancehall, but it was very nice to see this lot play.

After this we reckoned it'd be a few hours until the next lot would play, so we started walking towards a restaurant on site where they'd serve veggie hamburgers, and en route saw Kelis performing on the biggest stage. As we made our way, won't you believe it, she played her best track:

"Milkshake", hell yes! Enthralled and hungry as hell, we queued for food. Hunger. Waiting. Two people ahead of us. Suddenly, I overheard a cook saying "No vegetarian food left" to the person in the counter. ARGH! We left the festival area and have sandwiches. We then walked back to the hotel, fell asleep and woke up later. We made a very conscious decision to say fuck all to Silverbullit, Håkan Hellström, Lil' Kim ((Whose gig was later described as atrocious by everybody. So it seems.)), The Flaming Lips, Booka Shade and Neil Young. Why? I'll tell you why.

Holy Fuck. That's the name of the band. We went to Storan, where they were set to play, four hours in advance. That's dedication, people, not stupidity! So while we sat drinking white wine from crystal glasses and the hour came when the club opened, none were queuing. We entered. I felt stupid, but that feeling quickly dissipated as we explored what little there was to explore of the club. A crystal chandelier, ooh! Very nice. The venue was small, and the stage spacious. Instrumental Americana was playing and we got more wine. Time went on, people started trickling in. A telephone company employee went from table to table, distributing swag such as key holders and condoms. Upbeat, commercial soft-drink ad-music started to play. More people.

The music died down and was replaced by an extremely boring house-DJ who started playing the most boring stuff ever. Loud and boring, yuck. Emos and mid-teens started flocking to the dance-floor. We counted the hours. I won't bore you with more info, but eventually, Park Hotell, a Swedish band, went onstage. They droned and played without the slightest of timbre, just full-on chorus-and-echo-infused guitar-based pap. The vocalist/rhythm guitarist uttered no words distinguishable from murmurs and the two girls singing backing vocals just shouted and screamed through the set, unable to know what they were doing. The next song sounded like the last one, and the next one, sounded just like... You know. I waited for them to get off the stage. The teens were restless and getting drunk. A good thing about the DJ I mentioned: he started playing his pap just as Park Hotell wanted to play more. "Can we play one more song?" the lead singer asked. No reply. Thank you, atrocious DJ.

As they finally had the good grace to get off the stage, there 45 more minutes left and I had high expectations, to say the least. It was definitely not the case where one's heard a band so bad that anything after that would sound good. Oh, oh.

They came onstage and started setting up their gear. Teens came up to Brian Borcherdt, band member, and wanted to shake his hand because he was on stage. He set up a weird-looking tape-eating little device from which he pulled and inserted a few meters of big-canister film. When Graham Walsh was onstage he set up his synth and quickly glanced at the DJ a few times. Suddenly, I heard him syncing a Roland TB-303 sound with the DJ's beats, upping the ante a lot, squelching the acid all over the room. Sadly he stopped suddenly and left, preparing to enter the stage with the band.

To say I was stoked and psyched would be a massive understatement. I waited with the anticipation of a 7-year-old wanting to open his first christmas present at midnight ((Which I actually did when I was a young boy; talk about not having any kind of patience. I'm not sure that's changed, by the way.)). And they entered. The guys I mentioned took places opposite eachother with a live drummer to their side, facing the audience. A bassist set up behind Walsh, and they started playing synth arpeggi to infectious beats and sweeping filters. I was amazed, and couldn't stop dancing.

Which is why the camera-action in the next film looks like absolute shit, but never mind that, this is like LCD Soundsystem elevated:

What bass! Larry Graham, is that your son? Holy Fuck killed me. Death by funk. I wouldn't leave. X was just smiling and I could she was smitten, too. What a glorious connection. Which is why I find the following the epitome of poetic justice: a stupid girl who stood to X's right said that one of the monitors was "too loud" for her. Of course, just like the idiot to my left at the Okkervil gig, she couldn't consider moving. Instead, she tried to unplug the cables connected to the monitor in question, and got zapped. That's right. I almost started believing in divine intervention right there and then. The moron creamed her hurt to all her friends and nagged. What a fucking brat.

We danced our knees to the ground as Holy Fuck knob-twiddled, grooved and made me miss Kraftwerk even less. This was no doubt the gig of the festival, despite the drunken idiots who tried crowd-surfing and the most obvious idiot who screamed after "Lovely Allen" throughout the entire gig. I left the gig filled with excitement and love, despite there not being any merchandise present.

Hotel. Sleep.

The next day we visited Linda, Mattias, Tyra and Alvin, i.e. X's family in Gothenburg. It was lovely. We then left for home. Another five-hour-ride by train, then directly home, crashing.

Lots of massage is needed to make up for all of the physical memories, and I've got a whole bag of wonderful emotional memories with me. Back next year? Just keep providing the great artists and keep the festival from growing too much, I say, and I'm there.