Junk food! Crap beer! Soggy carpets! ATP vs the Fans is a festival with a difference, and not just because of its neon-swathed, logo-addled venue. This is a festival where ticket holders got to vote for half the bill, where not even the most torrential of downpours could get you wet, where you can play air hockey at 2am. That it's in Minehead, which takes ages to get to from anywhere (even nearby Taunton) and has a populous of mostly baffled elderly folk, and that man cannot live on Burger King and Pizza Hut alone, are but a minor quibbles. Festival-goers live in holiday camp chalets for the weekend and get to watch special ATP TV, which tips them off about unscheduled events taking place around the festival, like the show that Grizzly Bear played on the beach. Oh, and there's dodgems and water slides too. What's not to like?

Friday Review
Saturday Review
Sunday Review

Friday

Daniel Johnston is not much of a guitarist, and his vocals could probably be questioned as well. But the occasional bum note and the toothless lisp he has acquired since his earliest recordings do little to hide the fact that he is a genuine talent with a knack for melodies that are engaging and lyrics that are disarming. You listen to his songs and every so often a phrase will strike you - something honest, something painful, something you can immediately identify with - and that is the beauty of his songwriting; that is why so many other artists - Teenage Fanclub, Tom Waits, Beck, Sparklehorse and the Flaming Lips - have covered his music. Watching him perform on ATP's Centre Stage (one of the two entertainment venues/nightclubs at Butlins being used as stages) is a strange experience: he is visibly nervous and has his songs in front of him on a music stand; he shakes noticeably, especially during his final song, Devil Town, where he grips the microphone stand as if he might fall over without it. He seems thrilled to be onstage as well as nervous and thanks the crowd towards the end, saying that he's going to keep practicing in the hope that one day he'll make it. On this afternoon's evidence, though, he already has.

ATP's main stage is in a food court-slash-entertainment centre, flanked by a children's ball pit, a Pizza Hut, a Burger King and various slot machines, including a facility where you can stuff your own soft toy for the bargain price of, er, twenty pounds. Look above your head in Butlins' Skyline Pavillion and you'll see jaded old helium-filled foil balloons that have floated up there, clinging to the ceiling as if bidding to make their escape. It's a feeling that's no doubt familiar to hundreds of thousands of harrassed parents that bring their tartrazined children here every year and it is a bizarre setting for a music festival - it's like watching a gig at a motorway service station, and the ceiling is so high that the sound during Yo La Tengo's set is all over the place, the acoustics of the Pavillion at odds with their squalls of noise and sweet, crooked tunes. They jokingly marvel at the Skyline's, ah, skyline, comparing it to that of New York: they will not be the first band to comment on these surreal surroundings over the weekend. They are the opening act in the Pavillion and their set is well-received, but the best bit comes after they've gone offstage and returned with Daniel Johnston, who sings Speeding Motorcycle - one of his songs that Yo La Tengo covered in 1990 - with them.

A he or a they? A he or a they? A he, really, given that Sparklehorse is essentially Mark Linkous and whoever he has with him at the time - in this case, not a full band but someone on keyboards and a couple of laptops. It is a subdued, downtempo set that would have sounded absolutely gorgeous in a smaller venue but it gets a little lost in the depths of the cavernous Centre Stage, which is a pity. Don't Take My Sunshine Away sounds nice, though.

You'd think that Death Vessel might be some sort of scary Danish heavy metal band with a penchant for songs about innards and goat-murdering, but no. Death Vessel is Joel Thibodeau of Brooklyn, who plays gentle folk songs and sings like a girl. There's quite a lot of chitter-chatter in Reds as Thibodeau takes to the stage, but the moment he opens his mouth it ebbs away. His singing is arresting and lovely and seems completely at odds with the lurid settings of the venue, where everything is bright red and feels like a tacky strip club or similar (though actually, it's The Home Of The Redcoats). "I think I'd fancy him if I closed my eyes," remarks one chap. Quite.

"So anyway, I arrive at London station and, um, I'm seeing pictures of this girl, Maddy. Um, who is this Maddy?" Oops - Minehead, we have a problem. It's not the rapper's fault to unknowingly comment on a missing girl amidst the current media shitstorm. In fact it probably needed saying to burst the emotional cocoon we've been wrapped in. Still, one or two detractors aside, Subtitle makes for a welcome break from the usual guitar pantomimes, firing off a whirlwind delivery that, just like Buck 65, rides the beat with rollercoaster subtlety. Only he's quicker, much quicker. Especially when he blazes through a few set-closing acapella bouts. After a shaky entrance, and with a barnet style and size last seen on House Party's Kid, he brings the Reds Stage to its feet, and the house down. Smart, affable and unabashedly jovial, Subtitle proves not just a privilege for the hard of hearing.

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Saturday

It would be a shameful and unforgiveable cliché to say that The Go! Team are like a breath of fresh air, so I won't. But when hyperactive vocalist Ninja bounds about the stage and pokes good-humoured fun at the beard-stroking tendencies of the indier-than-thou ATP audience, you've gotta admit that she has a point. She declares that everyone shall dance, have fun and not care a jot about what they look like and pretty much gets her wish as The Go! Team play a mix of songs from 2005's Thunder, Lightning, Strike and their forthcoming record, including the first single, Grip Like A Vice. They are not a band that take themselves too seriously and nor are they interested in whether or not they are cool. They have scant regard for being arty or studious or angst-ridden and their music is such shameless, childish fun that they even manage to raise a smile amongst the navel-gazers. It's okay to enjoy yourselves, guys!

Morrissey once sang, "I thought that if you had an acoustic guitar then it meant that you were a protest singer". Try telling that to Okkervil River's Will Robinson Sheff performing on the Reds Stage: he has the acoustic guitar and he can't sing, of that there can be no protest. Sheff's display is cripplingly overplayed, reeking of someone desparate to make any kind of difference. Sadly, all this achieves is indifference. And he is desperate too, far well too thought out and premeditated, from his identikit garb of skinny tie and guitar worn as high as a baby's bib to his handcrafted look of sincerity and the attention-seeking stroppy leaps. Haven't we seen all this before with Mr. Oberst? Yup, and it wasn't too clever then. Yet at least Bright Eyes have a partially endearing songwriting metier to fall back on. Not so Okkervil River who, on the evidence of this showing, can only turn their hand to turgid rock sludge.  And does a band honestly require six people to conjure something so tediously routine? Call a union meeting boys, tonight's shift caught you sleeping on the job.

Stop what you're doing. Look up! Eyes left. There's something monumentally captivating right there. No, not a mysterious monolith. Although, to the great unwashed stood aghast by the Pavillion Stage the image (and smell) of bone smashing apes isn't too far from reality. No. There's a moment during Wilco's Handshake Drugs, on the cusp of its supernova flight, that the band reach something of an epiphany. Heads turn, eyes glaze over, jaws may even fall. In fact almost all of Wilco stop short of dropping instruments, facing east and rolling out the prayer mats. Remember I said 'almost'? Welcome to the Nels Cline Show.

Cline's fully charged detonation during the outro of Handshake may lay waste to convention, and his suitably astonished bandmates, yet it also confirms his rise to the throne as king of the anti-guitar heroes. Unassuming, not showy; expressive, not indulgent; respectful but absolutely necessary. And then there's tonight's playing...

He's the rollerskate that tumbles Via Chicago and Glenn Kotche down the stairs; the exorcist to Bennett's syrupy sheen during Shot In The Arm; the skywriting string section of Hummingbird; the one to go improvised native during Impossible Germany whilst Tweedy and Sansone mind the fort, returning the favour by marking Tweedy's back on At Least That's What You Said and stepping into the shadows to grant Sansone his rock shapes on Walken.

Despite clashing with the baffingly popular Battles, Wilco treat ATP to a mercurial performance that reinforces their status as an unparalleled live act, one to silence doubts over the questionably safe and predictable Sky Blue Sky, today bewitching with pleasingly loose and adventurous takes. And it's appreciated, even if the band's reward is an audience-donated Whopper with cheese. Thanks too must go to the crowd; after all, they were responsible for voting Wilco in to the ATP club and thus allowing such a spectacle. For once, you were right about the stars.

The appearance of Cornelius not only welcomes chief auidovisual manipulator Keigo Oyamada on the Centre Stage but a fan invasion of precision architectural hairdos, tiny jackets and borrowed nostalgia too. The stage set-up is even more fearful with more chimes than you'd expect at an M People concert. Worry not, because dad-friendly disco is not on the cards: instead, a pop experience so broad it deserves its own film to celebrate. And it's got it, and not just one either; each song is synched and backed by a huge panoramic visual piece. The videos are no cheap mask to hide a shy demeanour, an ugly face or some crap tunes, but an integral part of the show that heightens the spectacular harmonies of Point of View Point with stop-go animation, embellishes the plastic funk of Smoke with CGI wizardry and propagates the effervescent punk of Count Five or Six with a blizzard of cutesy images. It's a display that's meticulously assembled and even though it has the veneer and whiff of manufactured artifice, when conjured with love, daring and style who cares about the process?

Possessing faces and looks that won't trouble the sealed section of Cosmo, Apples In Stereo do have the skills to turn us all onto some refreshingly cosmic guitar pop. It's not startlingly original - think the Ramones if they could play, or a Teenage Fanclub if they couldn't - but it is unapologetically effective. So much so that tonight's show is one of the best recieved at this three day party, whipping both the audience and beverages to bounce off the walls and ceiling. Latest album New Magnetic Wonder is heavily mined, with the likes of Can You Feel It?, Energy and Beautiful Machine hurled out of their own Utopian pop cosmos and into ours so fast that there's little time to catch breath. Robert Schneider informs us that New Magnetic Wonder is available from your nearest post office. Not ours - stamps, cold feet and depression are all that's available, but who knows what goes on in the the post office at the end of their universe?

Whoa! This is some cool shit. Imagine raiding your elder brother's record collection and taking all the worst offenders (Iron Maiden, Rush, AC/DC, The Police, and, er, Thomas Dolby) on a voyage of rediscovery. Trans Am on the Centre Stage take all those hoary nuggets, refry and serve them, Taco Bell-style, ready to bolt down. The band, just like their music, fit the turn-of-the-80s photofit: proto-mullets and and sleeveless t-shirts adding colour to their emerging digital age rock. It's all here too from fancy time signatures to elaborate drumming, prehistoric synths to vocoders. Set highlight Consiracy Of The Gods is Permanent Waves-era Rush all the way down to the Neil Peart-esque tour of the tom-toms, but it's dispensed with such an adrenalised vitality that there's an irresistable urge to forego personal hygiene and spend all your future wealth in Games Workshop. Trans Am provide one of the best live experiences at ATP, although we're not sure if any snowdogs were hurt during its production.

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Sunday

Oh, Shellac are loud. And apparently ATP is the only festival they deign to play, which means they're exactly the sort of band you probably should like if you want people to think that you're a discerning, knowledgeable muso. And they're the sort of act I probably shouldn't like in a reverse-music-snob sort of way, but actually they're good. Walking into Centre Stage from the bright seaside sunshine and into a smoky fug of near-darkness is an odd experience but Steve Albini and his band have drawn a large crowd away from the funfair and into the venue, filling it with their edgy, fidgety rock. Albini - with his neat, sensible  hair and glasses - barely looks capable of the sounds he so adeptly wrenches from his guitar but drummer Todd Trainer, in contrast, is every inch the demented rock star, fending off a heckler with barbed sarcasm and wandering off into the crowd banging a drum like some sort of tribal leader: you can't take your eyes off him. They close with The End of Radio, which lasts forever and sends everyone off into a sort of trance to close a triumphant, hangover-busting set.

You know those skate kids that hang out down your local bus station? The ones with the jeans and the trainers and the chains hanging from their belts that disappear mysteriously into their pockets? You've wondered what's on the end of those chains, I bet. Well, Micah Paul Hinson - a young man from Abilene, Texas who resembles those ne'erdowells in appearance at least - has got a watch on the end of his. And he keeps checking it because he is late, largely thanks to his drummer, who is from Manchester and probably should know better but nevertheless managed to convince him that it'd only take an hour and a half to get from Brighton to Minehead. Ah. And as a result the band - introduced as the Opera Circuit - doesn't really follow a set list, which means that there are long pauses and discussions between songs about what to play next. But this ramshackle approach actually complements the music, which is warm, honest and at times deeply personal, delivered with real passion. Hinson closes the set with a raw, rasping version of Patience, which finishes all too soon and leaves Architecture in Helsinki, the next act, with quite a big ask: how do you follow that?

There's something deeply unlovable about Architecture In Helsinki. The performance underlines that they are a band seemingly impossible to pin down, not in a way to be cherished but rather like trying to explain the benefits of the colour grey: it's bland, man. AinH welcome an array of instruments (syths, drums, laptops) and personnel (six) on Centre Stage, and you're left to ponder the fact that for such a visually chaotic and instrument rich mix, it is terrifically dull. The Aussie sextet try their reflections on the Tom Tom Club's heavily percussive sound and Fiery Furnaces' meandering naiviety, only to leave the keys to either's Fun Mobile at home. Joyfully bounding about the stage, swapping instruments and imploring us all to dance, they look like they're having such a good time too. Just a shame that we're actually not.

"Will they be as good as My Morning Jacket, then?" asks my Twisted Ear partner in crime. "No," I reply flatly, believing that no matter how good Band of Horses' debut album Everything All The Time is, it just could not be within the realms of possibility that they could put on a live show that was as thrilling as those performed by that band from Kentucky. But I was wrong, I guess, because Band of Horses' debut UK show turned out to be equal to any of those by the band they're probably sick of being compared to. But yes, I was wrong, and yes, they're every bit as good as My Morning Jacket. And as if to tempt any worries that they might be, BoH kick off with Monsters, a song with more echoes of Jim James than Jim James' mirror. But they're not the same band, and such comparisons probably do not extend beyond the vocals. Frontman Ben Bridwell is revelling in the occasion as he sits, beaming, at a pedal steel guitar. They play virtually all of Everything All The Time in a comparitively short set, also showcasing some new material with a rockier edge. They admit to not having practiced much recently and as a result they mess up - notably on Our Swords - but nobody cares, least not the band. You can't help thinking that this is one of those shows people will be talking about years down the line, a gig you'd regret if you missed, and that Band of Horses will be remembered as one of the best acts at ATP this year.

Modest Mouse, Johnny Marr in tow, are apparently one of those bands we're all supposed to get excited about. Well, I'm not. The music shilly-shallies about the Pavillion stage whilst people nod their heads in respectful admiration, and even though Johnny Marr's on stage, even though just about every album they've ever put out is critically acclaimed and even though they have been compared to the Flaming Lips on occasion, it's not particularly convincing, and I can't help wandering what all the fuss is about. But Modest Mouse were voted onto the bill by the fans, after all, and several housand people cannot be wrong. Can they?

Hidden from view on the Reds stage, tangled in a bed of FX pedals and gadgetry, is Alexander Tucker, a lone figure using acoustic guitar and self-replicating sampling technology like that of Juana Molina (good) and KT Tunstall (bad) to produce numerous sheets of baroque harmony and bent out of shape discord.  Like a medieval version of Panda Bear, with folk replacing the Beach Boys and heavy duty electronica replacing dub, Tucker amazes with what you can achieve from a sampler and sequencer - the weapons of choice for digital one man band wunderkinds. The subtleties and deviations in Tucker's songs do require patience as they are timely in rising to the surface, but the whole experience is hypnotic in its journey from simple melody to towering Gothic noise corridors.

Daniel Johnston's hastily-arranged set in Reds, his third of the weekend (fifth if you count the appearance with Yo La Tengo and the impromptu performance he played outside his chalet), is running late to the tune of about an hour, and by the time Reds opens the queue stretches back inside the Pavillion. What happens during and after his set is quite remarkable; the crowd adores him and none of the other acts that play Reds afterwards can quite recapture their attention. Johnston can be erratic and has a history of hit-and-miss performances but this falls into the former category, and when he sits down at the keyboard to play a quivering rendition of Love Enchanted he could almost make your heart break.

Who would've anticipated these problems? A rabble-rousing set of undiluted innocent joy from Daniel Johnston has left the whole of the Reds' crowd mentally pre-occupied when Mariee Sioux takes to the stage. Slightly intimidated Sioux falses starts her opening number three times, but who would know? She's the unfortunate victim of the audience's comedown and with it their embarassing malaise: almost to a man they are infuriatingly ignorant and unapologetically distracted.

One can only only feel sorry and sympathize with Sioux - a girl of native American descent whose gentle acoustic folk is reminiscent of a less shrill, less Anglicised Meg Baird - she warranted more appreciation than she received. Yet ATP doesn't do timid, as Brightblack Morning Light are soon to find out.

Coaxing out their Spiritualized-esque cool waves of delta blues, one would expect Brightblack Morning Light would afford the adulation heaped upon the similar but weightier and sterner Vetiver. Not to be, as Brightblack prove one of the biggest disappointments of this year's ATP: their tissue thin sound limply drifting over the heads of the chatting masses and straight out of the nearest window. It's sad that only Black Feather Wishes Rise shows a glint of spirit, but for a band happy in its own shadow (even leader Nathan Shineywater disguises himself in dark face paint) and content with just a mere whimper of sound, it can only be expected. The tremor of audience approval clearly bites the band with many key players leaving the stage early, visibly upset. Especially Shineywater, provoked into an incoherent tirade that's signed off with him flipping the bird to one and all. Ouch.

Far more exciting, and one of the few unexpected delights of ATP vs The Fans, is Grizzly Bear over on the Centre Stage. A band transporting the vintage melancholic American folk-pop of Simon and Garfunkel along with modern magicians of the unexpected like Andrew Bird.

Hearing extended versions of Knife, Colorado and Lullabye, from their latest album Yellow House, is an intoxicating and completely winning experience for all tonight's witnesses. Grizzly Bear provide proof that they are a band who appreciate and understand widescreen composition: light and shade, quiet and stillness gleaming epicly through their every note.

The main players add a charismatic quirkiness to the appeal also: the wistful look of Paul Simon and David Crosby belongs to the pocket-sized Daniel Rossen, whilst the deep vowel stretching tones and the theatrics of Rufus Wainwright shine through Edward Droste's delivery and between-song chats.

What's also impressive, as evidenced in their cover of traditional folk-ballad Deep Blue Sea, is their attention to detail; the band happily and patiently colouring their canvas with inspiring and reflective moments. Grizzly Bear also possess a charming restless spirit: every question they pose themselves answered correctly, every change of direction taking them somewhere new and, more pertinently, better.

Beautiful is a word used far too often in music. Tonight, Grizzly Bear not only earn the right but reclaim its meaning in the truest sense. Their adoration is compulsory; only the heartless and joyless could, and would, disagree.

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