Belladrum, near Beauly, Inverness-shire, 3-4 August 2012

EVEN as the country’s lower reaches found themselves inundated once again, northern Scotland’s enviable track-record for festival weather this summer continued at Belladrum 2012 – the last before its landmark 10th outing next year, and another complete sellout.

FRIDAY had been forecast mostly sunny; Saturday dry though cloudy, but in the event, that still-unfamiliar (to us Lowlanders) bright yellow thing in the sky – itself a vaguely remembered cerulean hue – beamed down throughout both days, adding a generous extra measure of mellow blessedness to Bella’s famously warm atmosphere.

Treacherous Orchestra (photo Schorle)

Even more than the considerably bigger RockNess, Belladrum seems to have been taken to Highland hearts as their festival. Not that it doesn’t draw its 14000-strong audience from considerably further afield as well, as Friday’s and Sunday’s traffic at the bus and train stations in Inverness made clear, but this particular temporary community has a primarily local base – ‘local’, as is the case in these parts, spanning a radius up to a couple of hundred miles. Perhaps it’s to do with the event’s kinship to traditional Highland festivities, in the way it brings all generations together, literally from babies to grandparents, with family-friendly ticket pricing and amenities helping cultivate its future crowds.

It’s patently a huge highlight of the summer for teenagers across the region, and while the stated rule that under-18s be accompanied by an adult at all times was honoured at least as much in the breach as the observance, especially in the main campsite, it is at least a relatively safe space for the predictable illicit over-consumption to take place. At the same time, while unmistakably a proper, grown-up festival, Bella mingles this aura of let-your-hair-down hedonism with elements of a rural gala day or Highland games, its central tented village including stalls run by various community groups, local food producers and craftspeople – albeit that such latter gatherings probably wouldn’t include as high a proportion of adults in outlandish costumes and ridiculous wigs.

Ryan Keen

While many of the youngsters who massed their tents alongside the main route into the arena (privately nicknamed Carnage Alley, for its thickly-strewn wreckage of carry-outs, camping gear, discarded clothing and collective brain-cells) seemed mostly to prefer avoiding the gate searches and hanging out there, presumably returning home with little memory of the weekend’s music, the tastes of the crowd as a whole were once again spoilt for choice. Among some 150 acts performing over the two days, across nine stages, you’d have to be a seriously determined niche anorak not to find something you liked – there were even new genres being born, as Highland four-piece Hoodja teamed up with London rap duo Too Many Ts on Friday afternoon, for arguably the world’s first hip-hop ceilidh.

As has happened before, this year’s official headliners – Liverpool indie-rock trio The Wombats on Friday, Scotland’s own Travis on Saturday – were among the least memorable aspects of the proceedings. The former should know that if you need to instruct your listeners, prior to the end-of-set hit, to “put your hands in the air, and get ready to go completely mental”, then the game’s already a bogey – especially at Bella, famous for the fervency of its welcome – though lead singer Matthew Murphy won points for commending the terraced, tree-lined Garden Stage as the most beautiful they’d ever played. Travis’s Fran Healy won loud applause for paying tribute to the festival’s special quality of togetherness, but their performance typically generated more of a warmish fuzzy glow than any real passion or excitement.

Frightened Rabbit

Thankfully, though, those boxes had been emphatically ticked immediately beforehand by Frightened Rabbit, whose gorgeous lyrical melancholy inversely and thoroughly uplifted the crowd, and were subsequently ticked again by a solo Roddy Frame, over at the Black Isle Brewery-sponsored Grassroots Stage, revelling in the response from a packed-out tent and demonstrating, via a deftly-mixed mixed old/new set, what a vital, richly seasoned force he remains in Scottish music.

The same space had earlier played host to the young Devon-born singer-songwriter and guitarist Ryan Keen, who was clearly bowled over by his Bella welcome, but wholly earned it with his winsome, wistful songcraft and dazzling six-string prowess. Earlier still, up at the GoNorth Seedlings Stage, local cross-genre firebrands Donald MacDonald & the Islands had also comprehensively brought the house down with their rapacious folk/blues-centred attack, icing the cake with a final number dedicated to SPL newcomers Ross County.

Back on the main stage that same afternoon, teatime in the sun with the Treacherous Orchestra was another weekend highlight, their grandly orchestrated, wickedly groove-driven mass instrumentals even inciting many of those sprawled on the grass at the back up onto their feet – supplying all the more participants for the ensuing disco flash-mob, to the sound of Abba’s ‘Dancing Queen’ and Maroon 5’s ‘Moves Like Jagger’, led by the Eden Court Young Dance Company. A characteristically daft but delightful unexpected treat amidst this most individual of festivals: roll on number 10.

© Sue Wilson, 2012

Links

• Tartan Heart Festival