Amid festivals with homogenous crowd-pleasing lineups and corporate sponsorships, Bristol’s Simple Things is a welcome returnee in its first year back after the pandemic: an ambitious 15-hour programme of forward-thinking music across seven venues, including a bowling alley. It’s perhaps too ambitious – there are plenty of clashes, queues and frustratingly short sets – but it’s still hearteningly different from other festival bills.
Lauded multi-instrumentalist L’Rain warms up the day at Strange Brew as she glides through her quietly experimental album I Killed Your Dog, complete with a full band and samples of barking dogs and ringing phones. Like many of the performances that follow in the DIY space, L’Rain’s is strangely intimate, even in the face of the huge, enveloping rhythm section, owing to her delicate harmonies, faint bedroom-pop sensibilities and, no doubt, the band’s commitment to playing in socks.
