Glastonbury
Worthy Farm | 24 – 28 June
The habitual hot air pre-Glastonbury chat propelled by no other than Iron Maiden’s insanely wealthy front man Bruce Dickinson, who argued that Glastonbury had become ‘the most bourgeois place on the planet’ and that the great unwashed would head to metal festival Sonisphere, which is taking place contradictorily on the grounds of Knebworth House. Other developments that may have irked middle-class loathing Dickinson, who is also a pilot, a fencer and has previously described himself as a ‘conservative’, may have included mobile phone company EE making the site 4G compatible, the increase in yurts and VIP camping areas, or the money spent on improving the toilets. Or maybe it was because his band, who surely rank as one of the most gallingly uncool of all time, have never been asked to play, and Metallica have? We can only speculate.
While the debate surrounding Glastonbury’s clientele and their bank balances continues at pace and Dickinson skulks off to play in front of 80,000 Warhammer fans at Sonisphere (see, we can all generalise Bruce), there are certain pockets of Glastonbury’s incredibly socially diverse crowd that couldn’t be happier about the state of the portaloos. In a similar vein, the choice of food and drink now available means that you no longer have to dine exclusively on breakfast baps and dirt burgers and instead of just drinking home-brewed cider you can buy wine and cocktails, but hey… who likes variation anyway? Even when the majority of it is locally sourced.
So where could you find the great unwashed at 4am while Martha and Charles were reclining in their water mattress adorned yurt? They were everywhere, lining the hills, the alleys and the ditches of Glastonbury; they were one of the thousands of them, accidentally stumbling across at least three musical hybrids they never knew existed and discussing with a stranger I.T consultant called Holly why time was divided into 24 blocks of 60 minutes rather than 18 blocks of 80 minutes, before finding a level of serenity, transcendental beauty and peace that they hadn’t experienced for years and realising how important his family and girlfriend were to him. The great unwashed were everywhere this year at Glastonbury.
The singularly great thing about a music festival that expands its horizons on this scale is exactly that – parameters increase and this year options were bountiful on a scale than ever before. If you’re in a place that has over 100 stages and over 200,000 people, you should be able to effectively hunt down your kind of crowd. No one is making you watch Ellie Goulding or The 1975.
After Thursday’s extended festival day saw us catch a clearly galvanised Metronomy do a secret gig at Williams Greens and Richie Hawtin play a perfunctory set in the superb Blues construction in Silver Hayes, we got up on Friday with gusto.
Our musical highlights came thick and fast. As opening forays into the festival proper go, you could do far worse than dragging yourself through the drizzle to West Holts to witness Jonny Greenwood muster looping magic from his Les Paul for Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint, before introducing the London Sinfonietta to segue into Reich’s Music For 18 Musicians, gently undulating and smokily filling the damp air, lulling us through our first cider of the day. After making the initial error to go and see Blondie instead of The War On Drugs (we discovered they’d attracted perhaps the biggest Other Stage crowd we’ve ever seen and in the process reduced our vantage point to the Socks stand), our mid-morning voyage of premium pop continued by heading to the John Peel tent to catch Jungle ahead of their LP release later this month. Just like their US late night appearances proved, they have honed their live show to the point where it is one of the tightest of the weekend.
Back over at West Holts, the singular interplanetary jazz of Sun Ra Arkestra is sparking into life, drenched in sunshine. Celebrating the centenary of their namesake’s birth as he looks on benevolently from a projection behind them, as well as 90 years of the master saxophonist Marshall Allen who beams proudly on the stage, it’s an indefinable, frankly remarkable journey through brass wigouts, sheer astral ambition and implacable, unknowable energies. Incredible.
With the sun very much out, we headed to the Main Stage for Rodrigo y Gabriela and their virtuoso guitar double act, the nature of which perfectly suited the afternoon time slot and the 45 minutes they had been afforded. This kept our attention span and level of wonderment at their outrageous skill throughout.
De La Soul’s funk, hip-hop, live jam odyssey is infinitely more entertaining than this reviewer could have wished, a particular highlight coming in the form of the gig stopping impromptu until a security guard got his “mothfucking hands up”. Quick pause, and…they are in the air. That’s entertainment.
Courtney Barnett on the Park Stage is perfectly enjoyable but eventually the Melbourne soloist’s stream-of-consciousness lyricism becomes a little nauseating. She is definitely a unique talent but as with all acquired tastes, it’s best not to over indulge. So on to Arcade Fire to steal the weekend. Three separate members of this office have watched the BBC performance and been reduced to tears in the wake of it. The enormous scale of the show, from dancers, to canons, to the giant reflecting suit man, to the whole sense of euphoria that accompanied, cemented a monumental victory for arguably the greatest band of this generation. Ghosts of previous performances were banished from the moment the opening four tracks of Reflektor, Flashbulb Eyes, Rebellion (Lies) and Neighbourhood #2 (Power Out) had us reaching for our nearest mate. It’s the requisite effort level a headline slot on The Pyramid demands and the universal confirmation of a band so multi-layered and so visibly pumped for this occasion that the usual rules went out the window. Costumes changes and big-headed invasions – visually it’s absolutely stunning. Like minstrels from outer space, the clatter of classics rubbed up against the new with ease. Watch it back and even the hardest cynic is surely won over. What the fuck do they do next?
It’s late in the day by the time we see some music on Saturday and our eyes are completely transfixed by Lana Del Rey’s otherworldly film noir cinemascapes, sonically amongst the most engaging spectacle of the weekend. Criticised in some quarters for showing a lack of interest, Del Rey’s marauding of the stage with an opaque look in her eye showed the hallmarks of an utterly stunning femme fatale. With her videos as a backdrop, new title album title track Ultraviolence sounds like her most honest and brooding to date, and there are genuinely moments of real beauty.
It’s nigh-on impossible to pin any kind of ‘lifelong best’ tag to the Manic Street Preachers, a band who’ve shapeshifted so distinctly and profoundly through their career. But whether you call this their third or fourth iteration, we can’t remember seeing the boys from Blackwood on such thrilling form. Latest effort Futurology is their best record since Everything Must Go, JDB is sounding fresh and looking lean, Nicky’s in his ranting prime; and what’s more, it’s been 20 years since the seminal The Holy Bible, which means renditions of the searing nihilism of PCP and the achingly poignant Die In The Summertime.
It’s barely a breath before another of the great rock bands take the stage, the reborn and rejuvenated Pixies. Having witnessed, and been melted by, their appearance at Field Day barely a month ago, despite a slightly shorter set length (meaning no Monkey Gone To Heaven) this was a similarly masterful display. Not a word, just perfect renditions of perfect songs: Bone Machine first, Where Is My Mind? last, and pure glory at every juncture between. Now, whose idea was it to put Jake Bugg on next? Let us at ‘em.
One place that offers a completely mixed bag of nuts year on year is The Glade Stage. But on Saturday they had a hell of run. Bonafide friends of the magazine and footwork royalty DJ Spinn and Taso brought their entire Chicago dance troupe entourage with them, giving the required energy despite only performing to a small crowd. Machinedrum’s live set-up failed to impress and get out of first gear, before we finally got round to Jon Hopkins’ own live show. Cuts from Immunity rumble around and The Glade is lit up with lights and energy.
2014 has been a strong vintage year for Mogwai, and headlining The Park is an ideal setting for their divine swells and crepuscular hum. The crowd extending into the distance, the sonic ritual is heavy on the heavily-effected electronics of Rave Tapes, heavy on the way down, heavy on the way up, and fills the heavy night air with a heavy sense of unadulterated triumph.
When night time fell, all signs led to the audiophile fantasy of Despacio where James Murphy and 2manydjs filled their tent with a treatment of disco ball-friendly crowd pleasers and the most euphoric drops you’ll find this side of Pilton. When one of our party gets a step too close to the speaker stack, security tell her to “step back, it’s worth more than your life and mine”. Getting told off never sounded more exciting. Murphy’s said that even moving the system around breaks the bank so don’t clear the diary in the hope of a Despacio world tour, but if it comes then run to it.
Leaving the world behind for late night frolics has become a staple of any Glastonbury night out and Block 9, The Common, Shangri-la and The Unfairground (though the writing might be on the wall for Bez’s Acid House Tent) have been almost traditional annual pilgrimages for those who like their mind a little re-jigged. Meandering between mini-club after mini-club in Shangri-la, getting down with the transvestites at the NYC Downlow, watching German techno royalty bang it out on the Genosys, or boogieing in The Diner to rock’n’roll classics, the visual stimulation in these areas was relentless and aurally pounding.
Sunday left a slightly dark hole in the heads of those who’d been going at it for four nights straight. A hole punctuated in brief by a trip to the Irish gypsy bar we’d found the night previous on the way back to The Stone Circle, whose entrance is a portaloo and whose policy makes getting into Berghain look like finding your way in to a Wetherspoons. After one of Crack’s cohorts had sufficiently flirted their way into the charms of the portly Irish gent manning the whole thing we walked through the portal door to find a bar on the inside with a seventy year old man playing piano on the stage and the drunkest people we’d witness all weekend. After ordering a pint of brown Irish cider, the colour of which had us universally questioning the validity of its contents, we thought it best to continue the weirdness with a spot of Connan Mockasin at The Park. After a few issues with his amp and dressed in a turban that made him look just a little bit like the mushroom from Mario Kart, he moves through a selection of tracks whose languid pace were perfect Sunday afternoon material.
Arguably the most talked-about, inarguably the most well attended set of the weekend was Dame Dolly Parton’s Sunday afternoon sermon. After setting up camp way, way back, further back than the tree where everyone meets, the entire spectacle becomes a joyous memory being made. Her vocals are pitch-perfect (we’ve since heard rumours she mimed; we call that sacrilege), and even the new, totally alien tracks are hugely enjoyable. The classics, meanwhile – Islands In The Stream, Jolene (oh, Jolene!), 9-5 – are, without fail, utterly spectacular. But it’s the between-song patter, the tales of growing up in the Smoky Mountains and the breezy effortlessness when talking to an ocean of faces which will render this one of the great Glastonbury sets.
After soaking up Brian Jonestown Massacre’s excellent new record, we get our shit together for the Massive Attack finale. Opening with new material was ballsy but rewarding with new tracks sounding tougher and techno influenced, and the crispness of their delivery leaves the majority of onlookers soaking it up with their eyes shut. A much needed re-jigging of Teardrop gives the track new life and the usual array of collaborators in the form of Martina Topley-Bird and Horace Andy do justice to the wonderful Psyched and Paradise Circus from their last record. Angel retains its raw power in the drop and the sounds, fresh and rehearsed with talk at a minimum. So on to Unfinished Sympathy to close the weekend and melt everything in sight with its unrequited beauty. They are a national treasure of alternative British music.
But perhaps the final words should go to the chap at the Stone Circle who brought a trolly with his Traktor system and his decks up there at 5am Monday morning, or the family that spent all weekend in the Green Fields, or the old hippy couple that educated our friends on the spirit of Glastonbury and its source, or the people who built Shangri-la or the thousands of people who organise the incredulously smooth logistics that underpin the entire thing. Their work is validated by the folks who year in year out pay the large sum of money to be there, whether that’s those that can afford it, or those that find a way. Rabbit holes and acid trips aside it’s the en masse amalgamation of society that provides the largest factor in Glastonbury’s addictive wanderlust. That’s why artists play it for next to nothing, why people give up huge amounts of their time to build and construct temporary installations, and why it sells out in an hour every year. For those who want a lesser festival experience there are a number of other options available, but for all the so-called ‘bourgeois’ who attended, returning will be of paramount concern next year.
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Words: Thomas Frost
Photography: Luke Taylor, Timmy Fist
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