Two albums, one more impressive set for the collection
Having appeared here last year with Reuben, it was a welcome return to Guilfest for Frank Turner on Sunday night. It’s a busy summer of festival shows, with a diverse schedule including the Lock Up Stage at Leeds and Reading as well as a visit to the Cambridge Folk Festival. His style is likely to see him stand out from the pack at the former, although he’s certain to be extremely well-received, and he seemed mindful of being sandwiched in between the much heavier Johnny Truant and The Blackout here in the Rock Sound Cave.
This was Frank Turner plus band, delivering a set that focused on the rockier end of his material, and a fifty/fifty split between his two albums. Opening the set as ‘Love, Ire and Song’ does with ‘I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous’, he continued with ‘Sleep…’ track ‘Father's Day’ and current single ‘Reasons Not to be an Idiot’.
We then got the bluegrass inspired ‘Back in the Day’ and ‘Once We Were Anarchists’ from his debut album, followed by the title offering from LP number 2.
The closing quartet was as good as you’ll get. ‘The Real Damage’, which didn’t generate quite the crowd sing-along as has been known in the past, gave way to ‘Photosynthesis’ and a triumphant, and heavier than usual ‘Vital Signs’.
The band then left the stage, leaving Frank, his guitar and the anthem ‘The Ballad of Me and My Friends’ to round things off.
A sign of the times that this is the first of the many Frank Turner gigs I’ve seen not to feature anything from ‘Camp Fire Punk Rock’, but given the strength of his two albums and the fact he only had fourty minutes to fill this wasn’t exactly a loss.
On the down side the crowd wasn’t nearly as partisan as we’ve become used to, that's not to suggest a lack of enthusiasm, just a far cry from the incredible reaction we saw him get at the Leeds Festival last year. Turner though was as fired up as ever, maybe the free day after not playing what has been reported to have turned out to be a rather shambolic ZooThousand Festival in Kent gave him that little bit extra, or simply putting all his energy into not letting the metal and punk bands on this stage out gun him.
Frank Turner plays 2000 Trees next up, with August bank holiday taken up with Reading and Leeds duties again. With him playing Glastonbury this summer, and a recently announced UK tour featuring slightly larger venues than he’s previously played, the journey continues…