READING FESTIVAL
Richfield Avenue, Reading | August 23rd-25th
Reading Festival doesn’t come without connotations. Nightmarish visions crop up of drinking lukewarm Carling at the tail-end of a Gogol Bordello set, or seeing two guys play-fighting while Jen Long DJs at the Silent Disco.
It’s a lot of people’s first festival, which means a lot of people are getting a lot out of their system. There isn’t anything wrong with that – we just had to take a little time to come to terms with the atmosphere before heading down to Richfield Avenue for the whole hog. It turned in to a kind of pilgrimage – the quest for closure from a writer who has been wrapped up in the zeitgeist for too long. Reading 2013 didn’t disappoint. If anything, it was a bit great.
Proceedings started with some punk rock revival from Parquet Courts whose debut LP Light Up Gold packs just as much of a punch on the live stage as it does on record. They opened with album opener Master Of My Craft and went on to play a string of tracks from an album which will no doubt be making many a ‘best of’ list come the year’s end.
After seeing some characteristically irreverent and side splittingly hilarious stand up from master-tweeter Rob Delaney, we headed over to the main stage for System Of A Down. While their somewhat outdated brand of ethnic nu-metal may not grace our ears as often as it once did, we decided to venture to pastures that haven’t been explored for a few years, snubbing A$AP Rocky and Major Lazer in favour of the American-Armenian outfit. It went down a treat, their wealth of material and years of live experience making for a genuinely eye-opening experience. On top of that, B.Y.O.B, Chop Suey! and Sugar are certified bangers. You don’t have to be a Kerrang! reader from the early 00s to appreciate that. Guitarist Daron Malakian also started a song by covering Donna Summer’s I Feel Love. You wouldn’t get that from A$AP and Diplo now, would you?
We stuck it out at the main stage for Green Day, who after a string of tracks from some albums that aren’t American Idiot or Dookie played loads of tracks from American Idiot then played Dookie in full. The LP turns 20 next year and, say what you like about Green Day’s lightweight anti-establishment pop-punk, but that album is an enduringly enjoyable listen and any kind of anniversary goings-on that crop up next year will be more than justified. They did eventually pull out the semi-political chart-plaguers from 2004, which aren’t to everyones taste, but Skrillex was on at the same time. If you don’t like Green Day, why don’t you piss off and watch Bangarang on the Radio 1/NME stage? While admittedly something of a guilty pleasure, Green Day cemented themselves as a highlight of the weekend. They were so good that Basket Case was being sung by guys in onesies from Purple Camp all the way to the oxygen bar thing that doesn’t really make sense.
Saturday kicked off with a set from the sugary-sweet groove pop of Dan Croll. He’s an artist who can undeniably pen an impressive stream of airtight pop numbers, but after 25 minutes of the stuff it becomes a little over-saccharine. We then caught another chapter in the rise of Rough Trade heroes Palma Violets who filled the Radio 1/NME tent and proved, yet again, that while lead single Best of Friends may well end up being a one-hit-wonder of sorts, for now it’s a hit and a half. They are clearly reveling in playing at the festival as guitarist Chilli regales that it’s where the band first met. It makes sense really – Reading is the unofficial Mecca for rough-and-ready indie (see Libertines’ reunion in ‘11 or the legendary Razorlight/Ash clash of 2009). The popularity of Palma Violets isn’t undeserved, and if they have it in their power to write melodies that come close to Best Of Friends they could be elevated to Reading’s upper indie echelon before they know it.
We returned to the main stage in time for EarlWolf and watched the Odd Future cohorts put on what was perhaps their best show since their birth in 2010: full of energy and taking the time to play cuts from Doris such as Hive and the perfectly obnoxious Molasses. Tyler also closed the set with Tamale which saw possibly the wildest reaction of the weekend. The song itself is a complete oddity in the landscape of Odd Future’s output, but this show proved the longevity of the booger-flicking adolescents could be healthier than some might think. Feeling positive, we wandered along only to see Johnny Marr performing What Difference Does It Make? by some band he used to be in. Sigh. The only tonic was the Queens based weed-rap of Action Bronson. In the midst of his set he left the 1Xtra Tent and strutted around its exterior followed by hordes of fans who wanted to pat his back, touch his beard and call him a ‘legend’. Most of them got the chance. After that he brought out the most exciting rapper in the world (genuinely) Chance The Rapper for a rendition of NaNa. Bronson was slightly upstaged by the animated stage presence of Chance, but the pair created a great atmosphere and asserted themselves as two of the most thrilling characters in hip-hop.
After seeing the other end of the narcotic-infused musicianship spectrum in the form of Tame Impala, we headed to the main stage. Ever since Holy Fire Foals have been headlining festivals, selling out the Royal Albert Hall and generally being well massive. Reading was no exception, as they brought their bombastic new sound and mixed it in with older cuts to create a performance fit for the setting. They were victims of a few sound hiccups and a few people couldn’t cope with just how long Spanish Sahara made them wait to beat the shit out of each, but on the whole, Reading was another step towards making Foals one of the biggest British bands of recent years.
After Chase and Status nearly got cut short because loads of people nearly died and stuff, the wait began for Eminem. A ramp opened up in the middle of the stage and Marshall Mathers strolled out to what was surely the biggest crowd of the weekend. If Crack learned one thing from this headline slot, it’s that opening with a track that was tailor-made for Call of Duty and using gameplay footage as a backdrop isn’t that entertaining. For the majority of this set, Eminem was playing songs that fell almost totally flat on a crowd who wanted to see the irreverent, discourteous Detroit boy who gave us Fack. Until the last 10 minutes, we were given a barely relevant rapper performing meaningless rap-ballads with next to no stage presence. Even bloody Dido coming out for Stan couldn’t rescue him. That being said, Crack’s writer unashamedly lost his shit for Lose Yourself, though mish-mashing My Name Is and The Real Slim Shady was almost like a hurried nod to his best material so Eminem could quickly get back to the songs nobody cared about. It’s now been announced that he’s putting another LP out – it’d be fleeting and unfair of us to write this legendary rapper off for good, but if this set is anything to go by, the future isn’t too bright for Shady.
Keen to see some really unpalatable rap music, Sunday could only start in one way: Waka Flocka Flame on the 1Xtra Stage. Cue airhorn on airhorn, manic DJing and a standard of head banging that made Alkaline Trio look like Bastille. Before he played Rooster In My Rari Flocka spotted a guy in the audience wearing a chicken suit (staple Reading activity) and brought the poor kid on stage. The guy was dressed as a chicken and had literally no idea what the song was while Big Homie Flock was under the assumption the fancy-dress was just for him. A priceless misunderstanding. Flocka was everything you’d want him to be: manic, hectic and totally engaging.
After seeing Disclosure show off the fact they are massive by pulling a massive crowd for their massive tunes, we had one of our biggest surprises of the weekend in the form of Azealia Banks. She still acts like she’s far better than she is, but certain tracks actually sounded genuinely promising ahead of her debut LP. She also performed with live backing dancers and her super-bitchy flow held out well on top of busy production. She is still eclipsed by the colossal success of 212 but on the evidence of this, she might have more tricks up her sleeve.
We went for a Sunday night headline hybrid of half Phoenix then a bit of Biffy Clyro. Phoenix were super-tight but played to a half-full tent, bizarre considering they headlined Coachella a few months back. Tracks from Bankrupt! were very much upstaged by cuts from 2009’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, and the headline slot for them didn’t feel at all unnatural. In fact, they looked built for it. Biffy Clyro had to use a load of fire and confetti to make it not seem weird that they were headlining, and that seemed to work. But to be honest, we had a pop up tent to dissemble and there was a rumour going around that Relentless were giving away samples by the Lock Up tent so we moved along.
There’s no doubt you have to be in a certain mindset for Reading festival. It’s not a weekend for arms-crossed modish musos or diehard purists. It’s a time to admit you once thought Billie Joe Armstrong was cool, a time to realise that AlunaGeorge in the charts isn’t the end of the world, and a time to see that, at the end of the day, the kids are alright. Maybe the pilgrimage didn’t fully break Crack’s writer out of a lull of SoundCloud pages and 100-capacity venues, but we left in the knowledge that if ever a dose of carefree relief was needed, there was always a place to go.
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Words: Duncan Harrison
Photos: Julian Caldwell
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