COCOS LOVERS

 

“Sorry for the delay,” Will, the male lead singer from Cocos Lovers announces as the band behind him deal with some last minute issues. “We’re having bladder problems.”

It’s an unusual opening gambit for a band which never really gets properly explained. Still there’s nothing like a good mystery. Even if it is bladder related.

It’s the final day of the Sweeps Festival in Rochester – an annual gathering of Morris dancers, much eating and drinking and, of course, some mighty fine music. Already your correspondent has witnessed the joys of Los Salvadores, Galley Beggar and Green Diesel, all folk acts from this very county, along with Truckstop Honeymoon, an Old Time country, bluegrass, rock ’n’ roll hill-billy duo who come all the way from Louisana.

Now, just before the Loose Women Border Morris set are declared winners of this year’s Green Man Shield (I assume this means they are particularly good at Morris dancing – to the point of probably being better than all the rest), Cocos Lovers are performing in the marquee in the castle grounds.

Once whatever bladder problems the band were collectively or individually experiencing have been resolved (however temporarily), Cocos Lovers get under way. The three female band members take to the microphones singing in beautiful close harmony. There’s a gorgeous Deep South gospel feel to it. The song’s straight out of the baptismal scene from the Coen Brother’s “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”. It’s ethereal and splendid.

In the final moments the song is interrupted by a not so gorgeous clanking guitar which, it turns out, probably wasn’t part of the plan. The illusion of peace and serenity is shattered, albeit briefly. But it’s not long before the shards are stuck back together with minimum fuss as the whole band strike up and harmony is both literally and metaphorically restored.

As with many of the bands playing the festival, Cocos Lovers have a large line up with eight band members playing guitars, violins, a bass, a banjo, drums and bongos and a mysterious long, thin, silver, horizontally held wind instrument my neighbour in the audience can’t quite identify. I think they call it a…flute. Oh dear.

If you’re familiar with the Fleet Foxes, you’ll have some idea of where the band are coming from: sumptuous, sun drenched harmonies and summery tunes. Cocos Lovers, though, take things much further than this.

 

 

The presence of the banjo, fiddles and flute add to the warmth and sunny texture of the music. But the band’s arrangements take things far beyond the West Coast of America, visiting South America for a Mardi Gras carnival one minute and then drifting across to sub-Saharan Africa the next.

The pan-continental feel is explored and celebrated with much more verve and enthusiasm than you’ll find on the band’s album, “Johannes”. While it remains an excellent – if not brilliant record, a thing of immense beauty, there are some things that can only be truly captured live. And Cocos Lovers as a live experience should not to be missed.

If you wanted to recreate Cocos Lovers under laboratory conditions, you’d need to take a bit of the aforementioned Fleet Foxes, a dab of Stornoway, a hint of Laura Marling and Mumford and Son, dollops of Vampire Weekend, Paul Simon and the original African music which inspires them, a book of Shaker hymns and the essence of a Rio street carnival, all mixed together and chilled.

Even then, you’d only get so far. Best just deal with the real thing.

The crowd are lapping it up. To begin with its just two slightly inebriated men, clutching their lager cans as they shimmy around the tent’s dance floor. Soon, children will be racing around excitedly while grown ups dance gently (or not so gently as the case may be) to the strains of the band’s unique sounds. And at the end of each song there are whoops and hollers. Which can only be a good thing.

On and on the music comes. This is festival music at its best, celebrating free spirits and emancipation from the daily grind – a truly beautiful thing which, incidentally, the band often sing about.

By the time we get to the end of the set list, including a much called for encore, the place has been set ablaze with something truly magical. Forget the naysayers who dismiss folk as a load of old men singing with one hand over their ears. Acts like Cocos Lovers are showing there’s definitely life in the old dog yet.

Later, I catch up with Will who tells me a second album will be available later in the summer. If the current album and today’s performance is anything to go by, we should be in for a right old treat. This is the first of many festivals the band will be playing including the holy grail of Glastonbury itself.

Michael Eavis is in for a treat.

 

1/05/2011 • Sweeps Festival, Rochester

By Stephen Morris • Photos by Stephen Morris

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