Saturday afternoon in London’s Camden Town. Crazy outfits, drunken people, lots of noise…it’s like any normal weekend in the locale…but a lot busier. It can only be the 2011 leg of the Gaymer’s Camden Crawl. And loads of tourists getting in the way of our revelling.

Plenty of itching-to-be-discovered bands flock to the stages of the North London festival each year with hopes of making it big, and to share stages with already-established acts. The Crawl gets bigger and bigger each year (though not neccessarily better, it depends on your view about the dilution of music and how much branding can a festival handle).

After a brief hangabout at the Kentish Town Forum, we headed to the infamous Hawley Arms for some of the ‘fringe’ events advertised to keep crawlers occupied until they’ve drunk enough cider to barely stand. Hotly-tipped The Supernovas (360 Degree Music favourites) lived up to their hype with raucous vocals and muffled lyrics. Perfect Camden music and the sun beaming down onto the roof terrace where the crowd were eeking for a view made for a fun start to the weekend. We were going to stay for Gaoler’s Daughter but decided to head out into the sun for some planning. Which just ended up being a load of scribble and circles on the schedule. And a cock and balls drawn on for good measure.

Did you download the Camden Crawl app? We thought at £2.99 for the Android version, it was a jolly old rip-off, but apparently the BlackBerry version was over £4! Shame on you, Crawl organisers! What’s that all about? As a ticket-holder we get your own pretty little fold-out schedule (which was in some cases, wrong, on Sunday) but then came along this lovely little app. Well-designed, it was, very sleek and smooth, and didn’t crash once. But it wasn’t much use to us as it was draining our poor tweeting-as-long-as-they-could phones. Shame really – nice idea though.

Back to the line-up anyhow. We raced to Electric Ballroom to check out female-fronted Japanese Voyeurs. Taking grunge to a whole new level of filth, singer Romily Alice sounds like Aqua gigging in a sewer and can do it like a dude. Although except those hung jeans to be RIPPED. Awesome.

Various Cruelties were introduced as Steve Lamacq’s stint at The Dublin Castle got underway.

Another pretty boy indie band. Big fecking wow. Actually, you should probably TAKE NOTE and head over to here to listen to them while you read the rest of this. Various Cruelties were pointed out to me toward the end of last year and have built up quite the following even though on the internet, they are reasonably hard to locate. Thing is, I really hate it when bands get big and all popular and massive. It’s music snobbery at its best but I like them pure and untouched and not featured on Soccer AM, which is where these guys have been.

That’s besides the point – our frontman has a fantastic voice, Various Cruelties are innocent, romantic Britpop (and a retro touch?) with decent lyrics and no Oasis copycat in sight. They’re quite soulful and I can see the charm that Lamacq sees, a perfect Crawl band.

The Agitator was next, at Underworld. I was excited. A fabulous vocalist and two drum sets awaited our support on the stage. I made sure that I didn’t read too much about this band and their political promise so I could take my first view of them without prejudice. This band has a mental following of singalongers who danced like their Keds depended on it throughout his set. But The Agitator got on my nerves.

He spent the set slagging off the Tories and the Royal Wedding and it just seemed cheap. He priced me right out of his market with that and I lost interest, trying to resist enjoying his catchy tunes and wigglesome moves. Sorry Derek, I’m just not buying it. You get on my fricking wires. To be honest, it was just like watching my Grandad grind in those post-war trousers anyway. If he’d have stage-dived however, he may have won me over a bit. We can’t remember much after that. Apart from Crawl Legs. Ouch.

And Sunday beckoned. Straight to the HMV Forum for tickets, wristbands and the like, then up into the VIP bar to find Wolf Gang hanging out and waiting for the music to start. While simultaneously pouring over the schedule and a thousand dilemmas. Which bands to see? Who are typical Crawl bands, do we want to avoid that?

Benjamin Francis Leftwich was to take to the stage first at XFM’s hosted arena. There was a bit of confusion going on over Twitter about who was playing when, schedules changing and WHY THE HELL DID THE OFFICIAL PRINTOUT SAY FRANKIE & THE HEARTSTRINGS!? But we got over it, *adjusts collar* and waited for a late Mr Leftwich to arrive.

You gotta feel sorry for the expectant Frankie fans, and also poor Ben when greeted by an audience of popsexers.

He was worth the weight as you can imagine the XFM favourite would be. Recent single ‘Pictures’ was his second track, and the room was full, especially considering he was the first act of the day at The Forum AND the mixup. Good on you, Ben.

Have a listen for yourself here:
Benjamin Francis Leftwich at Camden Crawl by CamdenCrawl2011

We dashed to Koko to catch the end of Lethal Bizzle but got a bit distracted by the The Comedy Crawl in a random café. Got a grip, and ran along to see one of the bands I never thought I’d run to see. But Koko was on fire.

That’s Lethal Bizzle right there and a crowd going INSANIA. We ran in as Pow was on…

At the risk of sounding naive, I’ve never seen a crowd move like that before. SO into the music and it was about 5pm on a Sunday afternoon. Ah, sun and cider. Having only caught the end of Lethal Bizzle’s energetic show (energy from fans, not rapper-hand-waving), CockNBullKid was at The Dublin Castle and having seen her new single (with her in the form of a doll) advert on the back of every Camden Crawl guide, it made perfect sense.

Anita’s perfect blend of itchy, feminine pop tells of London life and lost love in an almost-nonchalant way. New single Asthma Attack was the catchiest of catchiest on the setlist (you can grab a Ghostpoet remix here btw) and had so much more punch than the recorded version. I loved her sweeter-than-honey vocals and fell in love with her personality and then. Cocknbullkid’s stage presence just made me want to give her the biggest hug! I’d have had her on stage in a garden though – it’s perfect self-pitying sunshine music. Much more realistic than that there Jessie J.

Oh, now do we have a new band on our radar or what! Tom Williams And The Boat were on stage at The Black Cap back on Camden High Street – and you’ll notice here that so far, we picked a variety of genres to Crawl around/on/ahem. The Kent boys are the only unsigned band to get their track on 6Music’s playlist so we had high expectations. You’ll be pleased to know that they delivered. A packed-out room and your 5ft4 writer listened on as screeching violins and desperate strumming created a bittersweet celtic aura, brought up-to-date with rocky chords and Tom’s growling storytelling. Shouting and exclaiming, this was no bedtime story.

Slow Club had already played once at the Camden Crawl, at the Jazz Café the day before. They were an unusual choice to be on before Razorlight in my opinion, but I like a bit of a mixup. Razorlight seem to be a bloggers’ hate. But I love them. I’m not scared to admit it, so we dashed off to Electric Ballroom with glee to check out Slow Club and make sure we were in the venue before the crowds were. Gotta love a gameplan.

Adorable female-fronted Slow Club seemed a bit annoyed at the crowd’s lack of attention towards them, and I think they were perhaps scheduled too late in the day. Perfect at Hop Farm Festival perhaps, but not in Electric Ballroom before one of the UK’s biggest rock-pop acts try and make a comeback. A shame – I reckon they’re a surefire duo to check out at a ‘proper’ festival though, they’re really lovely (and Northern!)

So a few ciders and a bit of a boogie later, Johnny Borrell and friends appeared with a new ‘personnel’ line-up that looked a bit, er, heavy (I mean the hair).

All the classics were in attendance – ‘Golden Touch’, ‘Rip It Up’, ‘Dalston’, ‘Somewhere Else’…and we were treated to some new material: ‘Keep The Right Profile’, ‘Vertical Woman’, and ‘If It Bleeds’. Then it was time for an unexpected encore via a rocked-up covering Edwyn Collins’ ‘Girl Like You’ followed by ‘America’. Johnny seemed glad to be back judging by the sweat dripping from his jaw, and it seems that his audience were pretty chuffed about it too.

I do, however, regret not catching Simian Mobile Disco, damn my curiosity.

And then it was time for the Afterparty upstairs at the Electric Ballroom after the punters were chucked out, to find out about how we missed Odd Future potentially being banned from gigging every again, about Cerebral Ballzy and about, well, all the bands we missed. And realising we knew most of the words to some terribly-amazing 90s hip-hop.

Another Crawl under my belt, and the festival season proper is now open. It’s been fun to see how the Crawl has expanded throughout Camden over the years from backstreet divey pubs with shocking loos to the Ray Ban bus and a Red Bull arena. But you know what I’d prefer? A mix-up of the schedule. Rather than fringey stuff during the day and names at night, the Crawl should stir it up a bit. Big acts during the day too, and comedy at night. Why the hell not.