I had been curious about hearing Bombay Bicycle Club’s second album, ‘Flaws’. Last year’s debut had been satisfying enough but rather top-heavy, propelled by the success of promising singles ‘Evening/Morning’, ‘Dust on the Ground’ and ‘Always Like This’. BBC’s presence on the British Indie scene has been under scrutiny ever since the band won the poisoned chalice of Channel 4’s ‘Road to V’ competition four years ago; with the inevitable media hype surrounding such an achievement, it was often forgotten that BBC had two more years of school left before they could concentrate full-time on their music.

‘Flaws’ is a charming album, showcasing not only BBC’s developing talent for songwriting, but providing an insight into their more folksy influences; marketed as an interim acoustic album, but not at the expense of quality. Jack Steadman’s gently lilting voice sounds just as at home on opening track ‘Rinse Me Down’ as on any electrified number from ‘I Had the Blues But I Shook Them Loose’. ‘Many Ways’ is self-deprecating bluegrass with Steadman the vulnerable, indecisive youth on whom the burden of an undisclosed, unsavoury choice weighs heavy. ‘Dust on the Ground’ is dusted down from ‘I Had the Blues’ and given a more mellifluous mix, before golden track ‘Ivy & Gold’ twinkles light-heartedly by – though lyrically rather pedestrian, a sultry summer sing-along nonetheless.

The unhurried and beautiful guitar-picking on ‘Leaving Blues’ is a perfect opportunity to hear Steadman’s trademark vibrato. It is followed by a cover of the opening track to John Martyn’s 1968 debut, ‘Fairytale Lullaby’, whose saccharine tone (riding a rainbow, sugar fish, catching a star) is soon undercut by the falling cadence of ‘Word by Word’ and the descent back into brooding self-contempt on ‘Jewel’: ‘Our love was just one of your old discarded jewels / You think of its price and oh you feel a fool’. Indeed, the mood of the second half of the album seems to mimic teenage depression and despair, as Steadman rounds on a loved one in ‘My God’. The tone is accusatory, the guitar insistent and cloistering; most disdainful of all are the vocals, retreating into inward reflection, Steadman muttering ‘My God’ to himself as the track fades out.

The album ends on strangely unmemorable title track ‘Flaws’ and a Joanna Newsom cover, ‘Swansea’, which though experimental is slightly half-arsed, choosing only the first two verses and neglecting Newsom’s ever more surreal lyrics of rows of bungalows distending ‘like endless toads’. Despite that, BBC’s second full-length is still a quietly alluring piece, showing in parts the enticing turn of phrase and compositional magnetism that had Laura Marling nominated for this year’s Mercury Prize. Maybe now would be a more appropriate time to show Bombay Bicycle Club some of the hype that was so superfluous four years ago.

Regular clubbers and concertgoers will be familiar with the ringing and temporary deafness that follows a particularly loud night. But while subjecting ourselves to the occasional Metallica gig isn’t likely to cause lasting damage, many of us put our ears at risk on a daily basis.

An explosion in the sales of digital music players over the past few years has left a set of headphones dangling out of almost every pocket. The privacy afforded by these miniature speakers, combined with the portability and massive memory capacity of today’s MP3 players, offers us the ability to listen to what we want, when we want. Gone are the days of bulky shoulder-mounted boomboxes. Instead, we can walk down the street cocooned in a bubble of cheesy 80s pop, sheltered from the judgment of passers-by.

Unfortunately, all bubbles eventually burst, and the ascent of the humble headphone has not come without the inevitable health risks. The World Health Organisation advises headphone users not to listen at a volume of over 85 decibels (dB) – as loud as a two-stroke chainsaw being operated at a distance of ten metres – for more than an hour, and warns that those who do run the risk of damaging their hearing.

Unsurprisingly, the public don’t appear to be following this advice; statistics from the Royal National Institute for Deaf People suggest that a whopping two thirds of users listen to music above this level. But it isn’t merely out of a predilection for the sound of chainsaws that listeners subject their ears to such volumes. The earphones shipped with today’s music players are typically cheap and poorly designed, with little or no noise-cancelling capacity. As a result, users have to crank up the volume in order to drown out ambient noise. Specialist in-ear monitors and headphones that physically cover the ear can reduce this noise, but they tend to be prohibitively expensive.

The ability to strap ten thousand songs to your upper arm has also made the MP3 player an appealing accessory for the fitness-focused. Not only can it provide motivation through repeated plays of “Eye of the Tiger”, but it is also an effective remedy for the incommunicable boredom that sets in after the first hundred yards of a fifteen-mile run. It’s often tempting to turn up the music when exercising, but this in fact when your ears are at their most vulnerable. Blood is diverted from the ears to the limbs and other parts of the body, leaving the cells in the inner ear unprotected and more susceptible to damage from loud noises.

Wearing headphones while you’re out and about also poses an indirect health risk. Having sealed yourself off from the world, you’re less aware of your surrounding environment, and even wrapping yourself in a blanket of Johnny Cash’s dulcet tones won’t protect you from traffic or potential assailants. In June this year an Australian cyclist escaped with minor injuries after being hit by a tram, and in 2008 a Canadian student was killed when a helicopter crashed on top of him as he walked to the post box. Both had been listening to music through headphones and failed to notice the approaching vehicles.

It’s fair to say that headphones have given listeners a remarkable freedom. But unless we start changing our listening habits, we might not be able to enjoy that freedom for much longer. And in the meantime, keep an eye out for helicopters.

For further information on the dangers posed by headphones, consult the following pages:

http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/beauty-hygiene/how-to-care-for-your-ears1.htm

http://www.helium.com/items/82464-the-risks-of-running-with-headphones

Tucked between the great god Glastonbury and the mock-hippy island sanctuary of Bestival on this year’s British festival circuit, WOMAD’s world music experience – featuring “no clue who anyone is on this lineup” – is easy to overlook. But mainstream pop festivals and their big name listings are overrated. Where’s the fun in having to endure a set of Rascal’s overly commercialised recent output, when all you really want to hear is some Boy In Da Corner gold dust from 2003? It often seems that we festival-goers are just there for the name and not the music.

But WOMAD doesn’t try to quench your thirst for chart toppers or Mercury Prize winners – and that’s precisely its forte. Stroll around the “World of Wellbeing”, pass by the woodland BBC Radio 3 Stage, investigate the small marquees in the main arena; soon you don’t care about who’s playing, but what they’re playing. All you have to do is listen… and appreciate.

The fact that a few weeks ago not a single guitar based band featured in the UK Top 10 – a first in chart history – just goes to show the extent of the digitised music invasion. Recording (and maybe even playing) “live” is now faux pas Ga Ga. In this musical climate of digitally manufactured melodies that are squeezed through beat-mapping software and neatly packaged into mere three-minute soundbites, it comes as a relief to hear something a little rawer and unconstrained.

Thankfully, WOMAD delivers on this promise with acts such as Orchestre National de Barbès, from Paris. Cheerfully mixing ska, chanson, and north African music with a treatment of La Marseillaise, the Orchestre asserts its vision of a multicultural France. Also “representing” are the female duo Nouvelle Vague, who provide alternative cabaret adaptations of punk-rock classics, including a amusing acoustic rendition of “God Save The Queen”.

There were, however, some grand failures on the “original” music front. The Bays’ collaboration with Heritage Orchestra, John Metcalfe and Simon Hale was an attempt to fuse a classical orchestra with a band while both improvised. The gig featured two composers writing music, which was then projected on an array of music-stand-computer-screen devices by the attending orchestra. It was like a situation from Wall Street, but with the bankers bearing violins. I can’t fault the orchestra’s performance – all members seemed to be on full steam. But the accompanying band, The Bays, drowned everything out with roaring drum and bass dance rhythms, devoid of any creativity. A nice idea, but this musical stock market quickly descended into a state of liquidation.

But with every failure there was a surprise gem round the corner. The highlight of this year’s festival was far and away the Congolese group Staff Benda Bilili, a band formed by musicians who have suffered from polio. With one on crutches, and four rocking up on wheelchairs, they delivered one of the most inspiring performances of the festival. They later teamed up with a group of street kids, one of whom had fashioned his own instrument out an old milk-powder can and a strand of electrical wire. This blend of Congolese rumba, funk and R&B paired energy with sensitivity.

The size of the names on the bill is also matched by the size of the site itself. The fact that the main stage is only the modest West Holts Stage from Glasto’ gives some perspective on this. Neither does WOMAD have much to offer those late-night basshunter bandits who feast on sub woofers and paralytic light shows. Most of the tents pack up shop by midnight with only the odd hypnotic drumming workshop pounding on into the early hours. An early night every night? Yes. But at least you’re lulled to sleep by the sounds of a Mongolian throat-singing finale.

Bestival is the festival that doesn’t take itself seriously. I realised this halfway through my toboggan ride. Skirting the hills on the outskirts of the site, the rickety toboggan (slogan: “Your safety is in your hands”) trundled uphill on a conveyor belt. It passed one sign that ordered me to “OBEY ALL SIGNS”, then another that simply read “!!!”, at which point it reached the top of the hill, pulled a sharp U-turn, and gave me a commanding view of the festival down below. I saw a spider-shaped stage spewing flames (see photo), a funfair, Tinky Winky, Princess Mononoke, Jigglypuff, and 55,000 other costumed revellers. I was on all kinds of highs when the toboggan abruptly plunged downwards.

The festival’s objective – to “bring magic to [the Isle of Wight] and spread the love worldwide” – is decidedly Woodstock, and it’s fulfilled by the neo-hippy crowds and relaxed psychedelia of the décor. Also crucial to the festival’s sense of easy-going camaraderie is its relatively small scale. The site (in contrast to the website) is easy to navigate – unlike Glastonbury, it doesn’t span an area the size of Sudan, and unlike Benicassim, it isn’t split in two by a village. How it fit the whole of North London is a mystery. Yet this was the year Bestival was upgraded to the major league – its lineup was for the first time world-class, and its tickets sold out faster than ever before. Rumours that it will relocate to a far larger site in 2011 worry me.

For Bestival is also the festival that doesn’t take its logistics seriously. Though smaller than Glastonbury and the others, it nevertheless has the task of shifting tens of thousands onto and off a tiny island. The organisers did not rise to the occasion. In a bizarre inversion of the Speed films, ferries and buses crawled along as if stoned; the return buses on the Monday morning drove past every twenty minutes, ironically pumping The Beatles’ “Get Back” as they picked up thirty passengers at a time from the mile-long queue. If Bestival is to expand in next year, this problem will have to be addressed.

The lineup didn’t quite suit the 1969 vibe, because Bestival aims to be as musically diverse as possible. Curator (and Radio 1 DJ) Rob da Bank compiled the best and most eclectic festival setlist of the summer, cramming in hip hop, two-step, indie, and a whole lot of that new strain of wistful folk-rock. He himself turned up on Saturday afternoon, looking stressedival, to treat the dance tent to an hour-long mix of Prince’s greatest hits.

Of the headliners, The Flaming Lips best summed up the festival’s ethos. Their set was gimmicky, colourful, and totally euphoric; most importantly, singer Wayne Coyne incited a sense of community in his audience, engaging them in call-and-answer singalongs and feel-good conversation about drugs. On the following night, The Prodigy – a bunch of evil people – went headlong against the Bestival spirit, but still sparked the crowd like a live wire. The two bands have rightfully been hailed as the highlights of the festival.

2010 caught Bestival in a period of transition. On the back of a stellar lineup, Rob da Bank’s festival was larger, more popular and varied this year than before, and it has begun to strain at the seams – I felt that the site was messier and more crowded than in 2009. All around lay cans and pizza boxes, in flagrant violation of the festival’s green credentials (it received the “Outstanding Greener Festival Award” in 2009). How the hippies deal with these problems remains to be seen next year.