Big Thief’s Folk Tornado Makes Best Kept Secret Explode

You have to be patient for forty minutes, but then your faith in humanity will still be rewarded.

The miracle takes place during the performance of the American guitar goddess Yasmin Williams. She was programmed – blunder one – much too early, on Friday afternoon in the Casbah, a corrugated iron dome shed that can accommodate at most – blunder two – a few hundred men.

There the stage – blunder three – is much too low and barely lit. Williams performs her virtuoso instrumental plucking while sitting, laying her acoustic guitar flat on her lap, racing the fingers of both hands over the neck, hitting the strings with a tiny hammer, pounding her fist on the sound box or with rattling feet (stab in tap dance shoes) tapping the rhythm.

In short, it’s all pretty genius.

Only: no one can see it.

But then, on the penultimate track ‘After the storm’ – Williams’ instrumental ode to the Black Lives Matter movement – ​​all the spectators suddenly sit down spontaneously, so that the back rows can finally see who is haggling so unparalleled here.

Also read the interview with Best Kept Secret director Maurits Westerik: “We’re going full steam now.”

Hyperemotional worship

It’s the first highlight of Best Kept Secret. At the festival in the forests of the Beekse Bergen, 24 thousand visitors per day went on safari: not among the wild animals, but along an extremely diverse biotope of oncoming pop comets (Merol, Froukje, Sigrid), living legends (such as the 82-year-old soul cannon Mavis Staples) and indie heroes from home (no-wave pride Tramhaus) and abroad (shoegaze bosses DIIV).

Everything was possible: anyone who wanted to danced himself into a trance at night with DJ Joost van Bellen to therapeutically headbang the hangover the next morning and cry out in a whisper with the Flemish metal pioneers Amenra.

That three-day lavishness ended Sunday evening—when this paper had to go to the printer—with what was to become a hyper-emotional service for Nick Cave. The Australian singer very recently lost one of his sons for the second time, but decided to keep performing anyway. Like no other, Cave, the ultimate explorer from ashen to pitch-black fringe fans of pop music, knows how to transform intense suffering into crushing urgency and comforting catharsis.

It almost felt as if Best Kept Secret was one long run-up to that very show, which hung like an exciting cloud of expectation over Hilvarenbeek and at the same time formed a leaden burden for the other passers-by who filled the main stage: as if they had to shadow box against The Great Unapproachable.

monkey rock

This assertiveness made Stage One look like a monkey rock, where the other primates tried too hard. Tom Barman van Deus kept working out against the rocks with rock star poses, but forgot to sing cleanly. The Strokes not only started too late, but also managed to easily improve the world record for time-wasting by loafing around unbearably long between the (incidentally excellently interpreted) (punk) rock.

Vocalist Julian Casablancas admittedly complimented the scenic setting as he pointed with his leather gloves at the moon glittering over the tree-lined lake: “Freaking beautiful postcard shit.” But he also started ranting at fans who walked out early – all at the cost of clean playing time.

Only the Irish post-punks from Fountaines DC seemed to withstand the pressure. With the perfect blend of nonchalance and hooliganism, poet Grian Chatten pocketed the flooded sands of his black and green Adidas track pants that fluttered over his cowboy boots. He genuinely viciously snapped at Best Kept Secret: “Is it too real for ya?”

“Can I go back?”

The smaller the stage and the less testosterone pumped through the veins, the more there was to enjoy. In the tent of Stage Two, Pip Blom let the sun shine forever with her very strong and always delighted pop songs. Further on, the super-sympathetic Flemish singer-songwriter Meskerem Mees – unlike The Strokes – played too long, even when nervous men next to the stage started pointing at watches. She had no choice: the audience was so frantic about her acoustic ballads that it refused to stop clapping and whooping – until Mees finally dared to ask timidly: “Can I go back?”

But the ultimate revelation was the passionate folk-rock tornado that caused American band Big Thief to take off on Saturday night. Front woman Adrianne Lenker’s voice, crackling guitar playing and tender personality form a wonderful mixture of defenseless and ferocious, fragile and stern.

Magical moment: when she forgot her lines at the beginning of the soul-splitting ‘Not’ – blunder four – and despaired “FUCK!” screamed out, froze for minutes and stuck distraught in the same chord, Lenker still made the tent explode in ecstasy. As soon as she had pulled the song together, she forced a heart-wrenching tirade of crackling thunder out of her guitar, as if the instrument had been connected to a Hilvarenbeek high-voltage pylon.

If you can impress like that even with mistakes, you have nothing to fear from Nick Cave.