Life's a breeze
Californian six piece Army of Freshmen are no strangers to these shores being co-founders of the Get Happy tour along with Bowling for Soup. They play the smallest of the three stages here today but they manage to fill the tent and a good crowd is just what AoF feed on.
They are like a breath of fresh air in what’s been a hard and heavy day musically, their lighter sounding pop punk is something of a tonic. You feel that there’s not a great deal of substance behind it but taken at face value it does the job and it is kind of uplifting and optimistic.
They work the crowd very well today, singer Chris Jay says all the right things (paying homage to Maiden for instance) and just has fun with the crowd. They easily get everyone bouncing and waving along and it’s smiles all round. The keyboards work well with the lighter guitars and whilst the tunes aren’t the greatest they’re not bad and they’re just what’s needed for anyone flagging mid-afternoon. If that wasn’t enough they get burlesque girls on stilts to come on stage and sing happy birthday to guitarist Aaron. Most memorable song of the set is 2006’s ‘Juliet’, which not surprisingly gets pretty much the whole tent bouncing.
Whether you’re a fan of the music or not you can’t fault the performance, Army of Freshmen prove to be one of the highlights of the day.