Inside Nottingham’s Dot to Dot 2024: Superstars in the making, indie-pop farewells and electronic escapades
D2D 2024 is another resounding success for both the Midlands city and the contemporary indie landscape.
Photo: Jake Haseldine
Dot to Dot 2024 is a peculiar celebration. At the core of the festival is an interconnected web of intimate venues: each one full of flair and character, each one full of enthusiastic music fanatics, each one showcasing the very best of contemporary independent music.
It’s an enthralling experience for all gig-goers open to exploring new music and new venues, but perhaps even more so for the artists that get to showcase their work across the day of the festival. Student bands swagger with start-up ambition (Dura Mater), quirky international acts get to make waves further into the UK indie scene (Anna Erhard) and acclaimed names get to prove their worth in the heady high of the evening atmosphere (Wunderhorse).
But it’s three acts in particular that I find to be truly indicative of the dazzling variety on offer at Dot to Dot — not just musically, but also in terms of varying career milestones. Across the evening, Nottingham is simultaneously home to those swiftly, and stylishly, climbing the industry ladder, those returning for one last victory lap before calling it a day, and those who are determined to keep on riding the wave of flourishing commercial and artistic success. It’s a whirlwind of emotions journeying through different venues (or, going dot to dot), and seeing artists at radically different stages in their lifespans. It’s something I’ve never seen as clearly as at Dot to Dot 2024.
At a festival, it’s always important to try some names you’ve never heard of. For me, and for many others I’m sure, it’s alternative rock outfit mary in the junkyard. As tight-knit as any worthwhile three-piece (Cream, The Police, The Orielles, etc), mary in the junkyard dazzle with their intertwining arrangements, hushed vocal interplay and glittering guitar-work. Reminiscent of The Cranberries at their most intimate, the AMF RECORDS signees disarm their audience with tapestries of finger-picked guitar (ghost), and get heads rolling to an erratic, yet synchronised rhythm section (marble arch). The stage is more than happy to play host to Clari Freeman-Taylor’s whispery blend of Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell and Björk.
The delicate, dynamic intricacies of the group’s recent debut EP this old house are on full display in Nottingham’s Black Cherry Lounge — and perhaps this is Dot to Dot at its very best. The trio are rapidly growing as an act, and it’s moments like this, intimate and welcoming, that act as essential milestones. Across their allocated half an hour, they earn a room full of new devotees. Nottingham’s audience of indie enthusiasts leave the venue, in an excited murmur, singing the praises of a potential new favourite band. Of course, it’s only a murmur. The crowd want to keep them to themselves, after all… their own gem-like secret to keep.
The swarm of festival-goers spill out of Black Cherry Lounge, still humming along to the last refrains of mary in the junkyard’s teeth, eager to get to Rock City in time to say one last farewell to indie veterans The Magic Gang. If the last half hour was a surge of excitement for what’s to come for a developing alternative outfit, then this will be a musical montage of moments already gone by for the earnest indie-poppers. This may very well be the last ever show in Nottingham for The Magic Gang. No pressure, of course.
Photo: Jake Haseldine
The four-piece know what’s expected: a quick pit-stop joyride through their catalogue of throwback indie hits. Whilst this isn’t the most original or artistically exciting of prospects, it’s undeniably what’s needed for a successfully bittersweet goodbye. And that’s what the Brighton quartet are more than content to deliver. Jasmine, What Have You Got To Lose, Death Of The Party, Getting Along — all the favourites are here. Rock City shuffles along to the non-stop slew of breezy indie pop, trying its best to forget that this’ll be the last time they’ll hear these melodies live (“And I don’t wanna close my eyes…”).
But of course, it is the last time. The band launch into Take Back The Track, and the bittersweetness of it all becomes palpable. The coiling guitar riff, elastic and spring-like, reverberates with newfound longing. The playful vocal line occasionally cracks, giving way to heavy-heartedness (“Take back the track… I wanna hear it again…”). The Magic Gang have travelled the world via their bouncy, festival-proof ditties, persevered through a pandemic which hit right as the group were on the precipice of mainstream attention, cultivated a huge following of likeminded fans of indie pop optimism, and, by the looks of it, always managed to have a ball throughout it all. Closing track How Can I Compete feels like a culmination of all of this, the whole of Rock City swaying in shared, melodic catharsis.
One of the smiliest groups in indie music, the four young men exit with the knowledge that’ve brought a lot of joy to people’s lives. As Ian Brown of The Stone Roses once said, “don’t be sad it’s over, be happy that it happened”. Of course, The Magic Gang aren’t anywhere close to the cultural significance of a group like the Roses, but their accessible, quicksilver take on modern indie music has inarguably made a mark in its own small way. Sometimes, it’s enough for bands to just make people smile.
Alas, the show must go on. One of contemporary music’s most exciting acts waits in the wings of Rock City, ready to erect their off-kilter brand of electronica on the same stage that The Magic Gang resigned their efforts and unstrapped their guitars. The act, of course, is Dot to Dot headliner Jockstrap.
Photo: Jake Haseldine
What is there to say that hasn’t already been said about the electronica duo Jockstrap? They are undoubtedly one of contemporary music’s most beguiling oddities: experimental dance music that stutters more than it sprints, and yet itches just the right spot in the brain. They make themselves at home within Rock City’s raucous via the playful bleeps of Debra, developing an 8-bit shuffle into a bass-heavy swagger. Rock City is invited into the ethereal world of I Love You Jennifer B — a genre-defying album which has secured a cult following for Jockstrap. It’s unnerving, it’s strange, it’s wonderful.
The London duo’s set echoes around the crevasses of the venue, harp strings tingling in the corners, dub backbeats ricocheting off of bodies in the bustling centre. Only Jockstrap can produce a track like Neon, its folky guitars gently roping in its audience, only to punch them in the gut with aggressive, over-driven percussion and an emotionally-strained lyric (“I won’t do this again to myself / I won’t do this again to you, or to anyone”). As her voice sails through air stale with sweat, front-woman/vocalist/guitarist/violinist Georgia Ellery acrobats between starry-eyed folk singer, and illusive disco diva.
Jockstrap are perhaps at their height in their heavier moments. Not that tender cuts like Sexy 2 or Glasgow aren’t appreciated, but they fall short of the duo’s further — and braver — ventures into electronica. Good Girl is a remix delight, setting the beer-stained dance floor alight, but it’s in Concrete Over Water and 50/50 that Jockstrap really make their mark at Dot to Dot. Concrete Over Water shimmers with regret, nostalgia and existential uncertainty, its vocalist caught between the memories of European sunsets (“I think of Italy, champagne… I think of Spain”). Timid guitars and curious synth pallets build in a hushed manner, then a growing, growling backbeat creeps into the mix. When the fuzzy bass drop finally hits, the encircled mosh pit is ecstatic.
50/50 continues the genre-blending party, a neurotic breakdown of a dance track. In the final moments of the set, Jockstrap’s music feels much bigger than soundsystem-wizard Taylor Skye’s mixing desk and Ellery’s disarming presence. It’s developed a mind of its own. The glitching, pulsating drumbeat overflows out into the venue, like something out of Pandora’s box: self-sustaining, self-perpetuating, alive. And then, almost miraculously, it retreats back into the shadows of the stage. There aren’t many headline sets that can create a curtain-call moment like that.
After Dot to Dot 2024, a few things are clear. mary in the junkyard are bound to become alternative icons, memories of The Magic Gang will be passed down favourably to indie kids of the generation yet to come, and Jockstrap are one of the most individual, essential acts in electronica since Underworld. Oh, and that Nottingham knows how to throw one hell of a party.