Intended to celebrate the rampant Anglophilia of former Pavement ideologue Stephen Malkmus, and highlight transatlantic cultural exchange, Down the Dustpipe is, effectively, a mini Meltdown festival over two nights. Friday offers the less successful bill, but gains kudos for including Graham Coxon's first appearance since leaving Blur - if he has actually left, that is. Blur chose American alternative rock as their route out of the Britpop ghetto, so this feels like the repaying of a debt.
Last seen in the building being introduced, by a bewildered Arthur Lee, as Gram Caxton (during one of the recent Love shows), Coxon treads a fine line between elemental indie loser and overwrought fifth-former. Mumbling, sniffing and rubbing his face, he looks like he might have trouble tying his own shoelaces - which is worrying, since he's in his mid 30s. Though you can't help rooting for him, the truth is he is an extremely able (if unoriginal) guitarist who just can't sing. There's some charm in the first few songs, performed acoustically, but once the band arrive all subtlety is lost in a series of fierce but obvious Sonic Youth pastiches.
Saturday offers more marvels. Vashti Bunyan may only play three songs, but she carries a substantial part of the evening's expectations. Veteran of only one album, Just Another Diamond Day (from 1969, impossibly rare until reissued in 2000), Bunyan's timorous, spectral folk is utterly captivating, though her nerves are obvious. To her right, playing perfectly judged delicate guitar, is Four Tet's Kieran Hebden, who has been working with her on new material. Hopefully this tantalisingly brief turn isn't the last we shall see of Bunyan.
Super Furry Animals have just completed a new album, but play only a handful of new songs (such as The Golden Retriever, a marvellous rock'n'roll romp oddly reminiscent of Hawkwind, is accompanied by film of said dog, leaping). Instead, they construct a languorous set of gently anthemic ballads. They are simple and fantastic: elegantly eccentric, lush with soaring trumpets - unique in British music.
On record, it can be hard to tell when Malkmus is being sincere, and when he's slyly winking. Live, he is just having fun (which he certainly wasn't during the miserably tense final Pavement shows). Friday's set is lighter, poppier and mainly from his rollicking new album Pig Lib. Saturday is rockier, proving it is not so far from the vertiginous shifts of prog rock to the angularity of post-punk. Dark Wave sounds like mid-1970s Sparks, all staccato exclamation; many of the songs sprawl into muscular workouts powerfully redolent of Television. Drummer John Moen is clearly the reincarnation of The Lovin' Spoonful's Zal Yanovsky: an inspired musician and an inveterate clown. Who knew being the don of nerdish art-rock was such a riot?
