The great British festival.
A right of passage if ever there was one. Music. Music and beer (copious amounts thereof, this is Yorkshire after all). Music and food (patchy quality and only two groups: meat and carbs, this is Yorkshire after all).
Music and friends (or just speaking to anyone who will listen, this is Yorkshire after all). Music and rain (well this is Yorkshire after all). And most importantly music and mud (again, this is Yorkshire after all).
Day after day of music and mud; the very essence of a British summer. After a while it becomes almost impossible to shake the feeling that you are constantly downhill from dysentery.
The line-up for Leeds Festival may be the same as Reading on paper, but the expectations are very different. The Leeds crowd does not accept merely a rehash of what happens at Reading, and Godspeed any band that tries this. You may not come out alive. So how to survive? Well you could be local heroes like the Sunshine Underground, returning after a hiatus with an excellent record and new sound. Always sure to get a crowd whipped up into a storm and giving classic tracks a new lease of life. Klaxons may not be local, but work a similar furrow. Laying down their new material with energy whilst belting out exactly what a festival crowd wants to hear. Then there’s newcomers such as Prides, who bring their particularly bright and bubbly sound to the BBC Introducing Stage. This is high-gloss pop, and is a wonderful anathema to a lot of the heavier sounds surrounding them.
But really the prize for surviving the festival’s first day goes to Augustines they deliver a set of absolute beauty and passion. Bombarded on all sides by bigger sound systems and crowds, they ensure they are never outfaced or outgunned. Their crowd, beholden throughout, is left pleading for more – so much in fact that the band returns to the stage merely to thank their audience.
Saturday starts with a stumble and a short cut, but stumbling across LTNT whilst on the way to We Were Evergreen offers a rude awakening on a brisk day. We Were Evergreen themselves bring things back down with a soft touch and a wry smile. Then the rain, and the unexpected edge and groove of Southern whilst seeking the proverbial shelter from the storm. Thankfully the storm was short lived, but the memory of Southern will remain. Later, Blood Red Shoes on the Main Stage – if they brought the thunder, then Drenge brought the lightning. Track after track flashes past, exploding, blindingly powerful and fast. Awesome. What next? For your consideration, here are Fat White Family. A master class in misdirection, peculiarity and violent, frenetic brilliance.
At the mid-point of any festival there is often a lull, not necessarily in music or line-up, but in energy and attention. However, Leeds keeps throwing out more and more notes of interest. Sweethead – Queens Of The Stone Age‘s guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen’s current side-project – is worthy of note, as is a rowdy fueled set by The Orwells, whoe hop back and forth between their heavier early material and more upbeat current record. In doing so they seem to split the crowd, but only in so much as to almost turn it into a bounce off, with each side trying to show who is more excited.
Catfish & the Bottlemen probably command the biggest crowd of the weekend for the Festival Republic tent in what almost feels like some kind of homecoming performance. After an evening double whammy of Vampire Weekend and Childhood, the big guns come out. First salvo, Queens Of the Stone Age. Josh Homme‘s troupe constantly change, but their brilliance does not. Then a rush to NME/Radio Stage and Metronomy, who are visually and musically sublime. This is not a band, this is a show. Meticulous and detailed, and also wonderful.
Sunday’s plan is to be blown away by the ferocious Pulled Apart By Horses. Sadly, this humongous hometown show is not to be. Who next then? Nico Vega is the new plan, and on earlier arrival, Little Matador are busy; stripped of the sheen of the singles, they are a wonderful live proposition. Raw, with an over-the-top Lynyrd Skynyrd tri-guitar attack. Nico Vega may arrive on stage in a very understated manner, but what follows cannot be overstated. What erupts from Aja Volkman’s miniscule frame is epic and volcanic. The band frantically matching her step for step. Just.
Alternately, Royal Blood make a grand entrance, and then erupt. The crowd is large and expectant, and not disappointed. The duo are always reliable live, but this seems palpably different. The consummate professionalism and sheen is gone, instead it’s sheer enjoyment, and they let rip. So much so the Leeds organisers have to pull the plug when they overrun. It’s impossible not to get carried along with it all. As the evening begins to close in, so does the atmosphere in the tent with Wolf Alice. Somber and intense, they lend the evening a wonderfully bleak hue before the youthful exuberance of Circa Waves. Where Wolf Alice brought shadings and mood, Circa Waves brought the party with gusto.
So just time for Band Of Skulls, where arms flail, riffs let rip and the music pounds, before settling in for the ever popular, ever entertaining Arctic Monkeys. Alex Turner, looking like South Yorkshire’s answer to Frankie Dettori, sounds as wonderfully wry as ever. And the style carries through to the performance. They are louche and debauched, tempos slowed somehow, everything given just the minutest amount of extra breathing space. And it really leaves an impression, the performance is natural and honest, and quite fascinating. This is a band at the very peak of their powers, and the crowd is merely along for the ride.
Songs like ‘Do I Wanna Know?‘ and ‘Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I Moved Your Chair’ are given more gravity. They rumble along almost expectantly, certain of their brilliance. It’s intense and almost writhing, not your usual raucous headline set that relies solely on an audience’s recognition. This is deliberate and striking, the Arctic Monkeys taking control, and giving an epic finale.
Within moments there is nothing but space and debris, and the ghost of a shared experience. It may be annual, but the reality is that this will never happen again, and to have been there and seen all this is the true pleasure.
There will never be another now, and what a now it was.