Digbeth Drama

Supersonic is again a brave festival proposition, removing the obvious rock and alternative crutches of the mass sing-a-long or worshipful archive grave-robbing, and relying on the hypnotick and primitive power of its forms to keep the audience from chin-stroking nerd-dom. We saw some properly cracking stuff, topped by Richard Dawson, an unprepossessing bearded Northerner, with a ululating wail of a voice and a tear-jerking way with a folk story. A gob-smacking sequence of key-changes as he worked his way through "Poor Old Horse" (a simple but affecting tale of the botched execution of aforementioned equine) were as powerful a musical device as we heard amid all the laptops and tone generators. His gag about being surrounded by the ghosts of various grandparents and pets, playing as his backing band, was the funniest thing we heard all weekend, outside of the dare-you-to-laugh "Black Star" refrain that Modified Toy Orchestra deployed.

There wasn't great deal of real onstage charisma if truth be told, though what there was, was electrifying. Jarboe, for me, has been a spectral presence known only from the "Burning World" Swans LP and the terrifying "Anhedoniac". She took the very simple but appallingly effective route of just standing onstage and singing the songs; with the eye-rolling and entranced delivery she has, this was more than enough to grip. There are matter-of-fact lyrical gestures towards barely-imaginable torment and heart-stopping devotion, which Jarboe can deliver like a public service announcement.

Rock is a tired and tiresome form, so needs something de-stabilising to jolt it beyond cheesy posturing (yes, Six Organs of Admittance, I'm talking about you). The babyish and fraught contortions of the Doomsday Student (bad name, good idea) vocalist was the only convincing rock stage incarnation of the weekend. He gibbered, plucked, arched, grasped and groped while the band delivered a harsh traumatised punk rock, knowingly stylised and sleekly aerodynamic.

The finale was well-chosen by the curators; I only know Oxbow from barely-comprehensible inky reports of muscular performative confrontation. On this evidence, they've had criminally poor coverage: a stark and rhythmic string section gives the declamatory and distressed vocal plenty of room to manoevre, the gasps and guttural groans in the delivery all too close for comfort.