Nowhere to Hyde

An inordinate amount of my last few days has been spent in Hyde Park. Wednesday night's appetizer was a 10K race, rescheduled from April thanks to Kate'n'Wills. Just over 54:00 - not too shabby if I do say so myself, and helped by the perfect conditions and nice scenery (only partially spoiled by the sight of a man tumbling into a dirty puddle thanks to an errant cyclist. I swear they do these things on purpose.) There was of course a dirty great artificial barrier blocking off the northern section of the park - erected because we were in the middle of the annual two-week span during which the park temporarily turns into central London's biggest gig venue.

The first festival, Hyde Park Calling, had been and gone, but Arcade Fire's gig was a standalone affair and therefore not quite as corporate. I arrived in time to see The Vaccines, who one has to feel somewhat sorry for. Had they arrived a few years back they could have made a relatively gentle, low-key entry into the indie scene, instead they entered the guitar-rock oasis of 2011 burdened with the sort of ridiculous Saviours-of-Indie-Rock epithets which do nobody any good. As it is, they make for a perfectly serviceable, reasonably catchy mainstream indie band. Total failures then, in other words.

I didn't catch much of Beirut, but did take in a fair bit of Mumford and Sons while getting into position for the main event. Here's one Brit guitar band who've bucked the recent trend, and it was obvious that the younger elements of the crowd were very into them. The tunes are straightforward and anthemic and the fiddly-dee folksy stuff is toned right down, but I'm still not entirely sure how they've scaled such heights. Plus I  can't quite forgive Marcus Mumford for stealing the delectable Laura Marling away from poor Charlie Fink - although that did end up giving us The First Days of Spring, which may well stand as his biggest musical legacy.

There isn't much to say about Arcade Fire that I've not said several times already. However, it's rather ironic that they've become a stadium band on the back of by far their least stadium-friendly album. As much as I like  The Suburbs for working as a coherent whole, most of the individual tracks don't have the same visceral live appeal as their earlier material. They are clearly aware of this, with less than half the album getting an airing here. Perhaps they could do a two-tier tour, with smaller gigs focusing on the more low-key songs. It'd be a shame if I never hear them play City With No Children or Suburban War in the flesh. That'd work, right? Maybe.

Yesterday was Pulp headlining the Wireless "Festival". Now I'm sorry, but you can put as many stages as you want in a big field, and stick in however many food outlets, bars and assorted other attractions and it still don't  make it a festival. Are many folk likely to come for all three days, wild musical disparity between the daily bills and all? And how many would realistically turn up if they didn't have any interest in the headliners? Let's be clear - this was a giant Pulp gig. Nobody was there to soak up that unique "Wireless sponsored by Barclaycard" vibe.

TV on the Radio were the only other band who held any interest for me. Despite coming across as somewhat prickly characters in more than one interview, they seemed to be having a jolly good time. Frontman Tunde Adebimpe was a bundle of energy throughout, overcoming a murky sound mix, although this may have been intentional - they're not totally mainstream you know. And the sight of four black guys, one the possessor of an unfeasibly large, greying 'fro beard (plus one geeky white dude tucked away at the back) beating whitey at his own alt-rock game is pleasingly incongruous.

Grace Jones was the semi-main event, whose singing career can join Naomi Campbell's books, Kelly Brook's acting and Naomi Campbell's singing in the list of evidence in support of the theory that models should stick to what they're good at. I still can't shake off memories of that scene in A View to a Kill where she drops her clothes and gets into bed with Roger Moore, although the bit where he chases her up the Eiffel Tower (not a euphemism) is cool. (Grace, a young Christopher Walken, a noticeably old Moore, what an odd film that was.)

Anyway, this set consisted of middling reggae-tinged pop interspersed with unintelligible shouty patois, all performed in increasingly dubious items of millinery. She sang a bit of Amazing Grace at one point, which takes some balls (metaphorical ones I mean... although one can't be 100% sure). In recent years Grace has been feted as some kind of hipster icon by the same journalists who have a field day when someone like Mariah Carey displays similar levels of high-maintenance bonkerness and diva tantrums. Baffling.

I stupidly never got to see Pulp in their heyday, so naturally I was excited to get a second chance. The crowd were so up for it that this set was an open goal which even a skinny gangly fella couldn't miss. Mr Cocker is getting plenty of praise for his 6 Music shows but the stage is clearly his natural home. The combination of gawkiness and self-confidence ensures Jarvis stands out from the pack, but it's his natural between-song banter that puts him up there amongst the great frontmen of recent times. His winning personality carries him through some of the more obtuse lyrical gambits - catchy pop songs like Disco 2000 and Babies, intelligent as they are, can make you forget that much of their oeuvre is semi-spoken, pretty damn dark and obtuse.

They did do I Spy and This is Hardcore, but otherwise wisely stuck to their most well-known and radio friendly hits. Fair enough, although I wouldn't have minded a couple more tracks from TIH or even the underrated final album (Sunrise doesn't count - it's the one song of theirs I can't abide for some reason). The set did sag towards the end but the whole thing could be regarded as one long build-up for the climactic Common People, which cemented its status as a genuine for-the-ages classic here. 

The one obvious complaint about this band is that they were and remain a one-man show, and nothing's changed in that sense. Not to suggest that any of them are not up to the task musically, but they certainly offer very little onstage to distract during their frontman's quieter moments. Just as well those are few and far between. "Fuckin' ell, I'm knackered now!" Jarvis exclaimed after an energetic Mis-Shapes. He was being modest, as is his want. He and his band have never seemed more vital. Hopefully they won't keep us waiting another 15 years for the next time.