The Harvest of Art was a one-day festival in Wiesen with shows by Kate Nash, Bloc Party and Arctic Monkeys.
[Here’s my review of last year’s edition of that festival.]

I only attended the short version of the festival (because my sister celebrated her birthday on that day so I only arrived in the middle of Kate Nash’s set), but much as last year it was a wonderful show with even better weather this time round.

This year I had to attend the festival on my own. Somehow everybody else was either busy that weekend or not interested. But since the Arctic Monkeys were playing (and I’ve been listening to them practically non-stop since March or so), there was no way no how that I would miss this show.

I was a little apprehensive because many many years ago, I already went to a concert on my own (it was Panic! at the Disco) and it was awful. I felt so alienated because I just didn’t fit the crowd and the concert itself wasn’t great either, so I actually left early. And I was afraid that it would happen like this again. Luckily, though, I felt completely at ease and the concerts were great.

As I said, I only arrived in the middle of Kate Nash’s set – right as she was playing Mariella, one of my favorites from her. I’m not a huge Kate Nash fan. Most of the stuff I know from her I like a lot, but never really enough to listen to her things extensively. But I got to hear the songs I liked most: Mariella, as I said, Foundations and Dickhead, among other things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyv7W9fKQoU

She closed her show with a bit of a rant that there should be more female musicians and that women should make more music and to get creative. Which I appreciated, of course. There can never be enough feminist rants.

Altogether it was a really nice show and I had fun, but I also admit that I only got really excited when Bloc Party were playing. It took them about half an hour to really get started but then their show absolutely rocked.

There was a whole lot of audience interaction and Kele Okereke just has a great presence on stage. Probably my favorite moment was when he covered Rihanna, as an introduction to Flux:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9g3ZGA9QCI

They also had a pretty cool light show, played most of my favorites and it was generally brilliant.

And then it was time, finally, for Arctic Monkeys. Fortunately their show was able to fulfill my expectations (which wasn’t easy since they were really high – my expectations, not the Monkeys), despite their show being a little on the short side.

But they had a perfectly paced set list that had the danceable stuff and the lulls at the right moment and was a good mix from all their albums. And I can’t tell you how much I’m waiting for their new album in the fall. The few songs they already released on youtube are absolutely addictive. Like Do I Wanna Know (with which they started here):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snpmrdogD6w

Alex Turner was a little disoriented. He greeted the audience first with “Hello Vienna” and a few minutes later apologized that he fell asleep in the car and that he realized that he wasn’t in Vienna. The rest of the show he only generally talked about being in Austria and at the very end, he tried again only to put his foot in his mouth again by saying “Goodbye Salzburg.” The place we were at is called Wiesen, which is nowhere in the middle of fuck-all. I don’t blame him for not knowing and it was actually all kinds of adorable.

I just really enjoyed their show. Next time they come to Austria, no matter whether it’s Vienna, Salzburg or Wiesen, I’ll probably be there again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHfyASfXpQk

Summarizing: it will be interesting to see what the Harvest of Art rbings next year. This year it was amazing again.