Friday at Summer Sundae 10

It’s midday on Friday 13^th August, and the site for De Montfort Hall’s tenth Summer Sundae festival is starting to come alive. A number of the festival hardcore camped here last night to avoid the chaos of finding a pitch on the first day, and are now trundling around perusing stalls full of bizarre hats, summer dresses and assorted unidentifiable sparkly things. Wandering through the main village takes you through waves of enticing food scents and snatches of music – one enterprising stallholder has rigged up a hammock inside the tent and is swinging gently to Bob Marley. Elsewhere a team or artists are building a huge sand sculpture of a banjo player as brightly coloured cycle rickshaws thread through the crowds.

Welcome to Summer Sundae 2010.

The lineup is huge this year, with over a hundred musical acts plus a brace of comedians, performance artists, films and attractions. Seeing everything will be impossible so I decide to pick a few artists and then wander around taking random samples for the rest of the time, safe in the knowledge that our other report Rosanna is doing the same but in a different direction.

As I walk past the Musician tent I catch sight of a band covering Gogol Bordello with a singer who seems to resemble one of the thugs from Clockwork Orange. They sound good, but I just can’t process that at this time of the day, so carry on wandering over to Last FM’s Rising stage in time to catch Erland & the Carnival’s bizarre mix of trad folk and psychedelia injected with a touch of glam. They’re not a hugely lively band on stage but the complexity and unpredictability of their sound makes up for it, with spacey overtones one minute and touches of spaghetti western the next.

The news filters out that Fanfarlo have been involved in an accident on the motorway – hope they’re ok – and so Fionn Regan has been shifted from his indoor spot to the main stage. Regan has a wide repertoire to suit all occasions so that’s no problem, and does a cracking job of warming up the crowd as he flits between country-rock anthems and more mellow acoustic moments. He closes his set with a mellow solo rendition of ‘Be Good or Be Gone’ and makes a lot of friends in the process.

Next up are Sunshine Underground, who are new to me but come across like a high-octane mix of Hard-Fi and Killing Joke, electro rock and new wave in equal measures. They’re pretty good actually, and even though the crowd are generally fairly static at this time of the day, heads are nodding across the field. The band then blast into the rhythm heavy dance-punk of ‘Commercial Breakdown’ and seal the deal on a decent set. Worth seeing in a smaller venue where they can let rip a bit more, I reckon.

One of my ‘must see’ acts is about to start on the indoor stage in the form of Lou Rhodes, who plays a wonderful relaxed acoustic set and brings a much needed chance to chill out before the main headliner. Lou is here with former Lamb bandmate Jon Thorne on bass, and treats us to a selection of tracks from all three of her solo albums, from a free-flowing reworking of 'Tremble', through 'The Rain' and Each Moment New', to 'Circles' and 'Baby' from the latest release 'One Good Thing'. It's a delicate, almost pastoral sound, which means that the 'loud conversation' brigade are starting to get on everyone's nerves. At one point Lou has to ask them (in quite a classy way, I have to admit) to keep quiet so the rest of us can enjoy the show. Of special note is Jon's contribution on bass - as a huge Lamb fan I knew he was a great player, but tonight he absolutely shines; subtle, powerful and nothing short of virtuosic, whilst still giving Lou's simple and heartfelt guitar parts room to breathe. It's just a shame the set can't be longer.

In the meantime indie heroes Teenage Fanclub have taken to the main outdoor stage and are doing well, even though they’re probably lost on the majority of the crowd having been out of the live scene for so long. They’re still just as mellow and blissful as they were back in the early 90s, and even though they don’t play ‘God Knows It’s True’ we still get my favourite ‘Everything Flows’ so I’m happy.

We’re gearing up for the main attraction now in the form of Seasick Steve and the field is filling up as the light fades and the rain starts to fall again. You’re going to have to look here for a full writeup because I can’t do the man justice in a paragraph! Steve brings Friday to a storming end, and raises expectations for the next two days.