With twenty acts performing in nine hours across three venues, the inaugural BSM Big Day Out! festival is like a turbo-charged Great Escape. All three spots are within 400 metres of each other, making it feel more like a sprint than a Brighton marathon. The day begins over at Empire Bar with a series of acoustic sets that would have given the day a calming feel, were it not for the fact that Mare Street is quite possibly the least calming place on the entire planet.
With the day sold out, the audience cramps and folds themselves into a tiny room at Paper Dress Vintage as well as the larger space of the famous Moth Club, where the Big Scary Monsters team nail it with a procession of perfect choices. Brighton’s Orchards are the first to light up Moth Club, with a set largely taken from their recent ‘Losers/Lovers’ EP as Lucy Evers expertly gets the room buzzing. Meanwhile, Bellevue Days bring more than a hint of Manchester Orchestra to PDV with their emotionally wrought lyrics and performance before Gender Roles prove themselves once more to be a seriously hot ticket. Such is the crush to see them that people are nearly hanging off the ceiling lights in order to gain a view. Fresh are exactly that, Kathryn Woods remarking that she “would give all my limbs to play at a day like this” before blasting through a set that was so loud that it was almost concussive.
There is plenty of time and space for a more experimental outlook. Talons summon up a sound of galaxies ending, an apocalyptic cacophony of violins and crunching guitars smashing into a fearsome post-rock sound, while Yr Poetry are a revelation with their mix of poetry and Dinosaur Jr-slash-Pavement lo-fi guitars. Their socio-politically aware lyrics (“How long before KOKO goes the way of Madame JoJo’s?” are sometimes lost a little in the mix, an issue that briefly threatens to derail Kamikaze Girls’ set due to the guitars being turned up to 14 at least.
Math rock titans Tangled Hair have no such issues, swiftly turning Moth Club into one big, sweaty ball of perspiration. So in demand is their set that round the corner, Cassels joke that their crowd is pretty much just full of people who got turned away from the other venue. They don’t need to worry, they show a vibrancy and energy that more than justifies their own headliner status. That only leaves one thing, the ridiculously fun supergroup Say It Ain’t Bro. Members of Nervus, Kamikaze Girls, Doe, Fresh and Happy Accidents on stage together, playing just Weezer covers. It’s just as gloriously, brilliantly perfect as it sounds. Kicking off with ‘Surf Wax America’, it’s a thing of wonder to behold and is unstoppable in its sheer euphoria. Can we have a Big Weekend Out next time, please?
