Day two begins with another couple of instores - first of all The Duke Special, who remind heavily of Liam Frost's passable but derivative folk-pop, only with a Belfast accent.
Then Tunng, who also offer folk but of a decidedly more twisted bent. Their acoustic instore is good, but they promise 'more beats and some dodgy rave music' for their Usva performance later. The latter claim is rather an exaggeration but electronic edges do improve their set and the closing cover of Bloc Party's "The Pioneers" is just as wonderful as hoped.
Massive queues prevent us taking in Osark Henry, bar his closing song, which has enough of a feel of Coldplay's "Clocks" about it to make his popularity unsurprising.
Dead Combo, upstairs at the Grand Theatre, are a Portugese duo who play intricate instrumentals somewhere between fado and spaghetti western in style. Between song explanations that broken English frequently renders funnier than intended (and this is as good a place as any to note that every act we saw spoke English, usually not even attempting Dutch venue names) they show off some fantastically proficient guitar and bass playing. It's not music that I'm particulary familiar with, but their enjoyable set is always approachable, culminating in a kazoo driven Tom Waits cover.
Datarock are a bunch of overenergetic red tracksuited Norwegian mentalists, and as such are great fun to watch. Unfortunately what we see of their set proves a little lacking in hooks or direction, to the point where actually remembering what they sounded like afterwards proves a bit of a challenge.So it's upstairs again early in plenty of time for Hello Saferide.
Seeing Annika Norlin (Hello Saferide is her, plus her friend Maia for tonight) play her songs further emphasises some of the contradictions of her recorded work. See, the person that you see in her lyrics - the one that's jealous, neurotic, obsessive and scared of feet - is kind of pathetic. Her slightly stilted explanations almost always place her songs as autobiographical, too. There are moments when she's obviously exaggerating for comic effect, like "Last Bitter Song"'s 'I'm feeling happier already' followed by an overdone grimace, but these are few and far between. For the most part, this is being presented as straight down the line.
And yet, as she marches her way through great song after great song, taking in much of her debut album and more recent Would You Let Me Play This EP 10 Times A Day? it's impossible not to take her side. Surely someone able to write songs this consistently funny, insightful, and quotable can't really be such a wreck as she makes out? Not the one whose new year's resolutions in "2006" include 'I will learn a new word every day, today's word is dejected' or who can make the brilliant handclappy pop of "My Best Friend" and make despair sound as good as on "Summer's Going To Take The Pain Away".
A handful of new songs even suggest that there's still better to come. The finest is about how 'people are like songs' and balances very funny verses ('I'm like Can't Get You Out Of My Head/Sure I'm annoying sometimes but I'll make you dance') with a chorus that's the most ingenious and affecting declaration of love I've heard in a long time: 'You're the only one who is like God Only Knows'. Aww.
From there it's back downstairs for Belgians Goose, whose name seems particularly ill-suited to their energetic dance-rock. LCD Soundsystem and Soulwax says the bits of the EuroSonic programme entry that I can understand and both are fair comparisons. But they're most similar in the more song-based early part of the set, where they are good but suffer from a frontman who doesn't quite have the necessary authority to convince. No such problem later on as he gets more into it and the emphasis switches to pounding, euphoric instrumentals. They're great enough to be worth looking up as soon as possible after the festival and it turns out that they're signed to Skint Records with an album to come out in the UK next month. With the right press and a flimsily attached new rave label, they might just get somewhere with that.
After Goose it's a quick trip to Fancy, whose preposterously awful glam rock provides a few minutes of laughs. Bar some time at an underpopulated but still enjoyable party on a boat, that's it for Eurosonic 2007. With some luck, I might just be back next year!
(Thanks to Ada for photos, bar the Hello Saferide one for which I have Sabrina to thank)
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