If boutique festivals were all about going to a roller disco dressed as a Cyberman, Festival Number 6 arrived on the scene in 2012 as a far classier affair. Taking place in the stunning Italianate village of Portmeirion in Wales – built, presumably, to discover if a tiny slice of the Italian Riviera could survive the challenges of being dropped unexpectedly in North Wales, like a kind of I’m A Gorgeous Mediterranean Town, Get Me Out Of Here – it took its theme as Patrick McGoohan’s surrealist 1960s cult TV series The Prisoner, which was filmed here. It’s human chess scene was played out daily by the official Prisoner appreciation society, white ‘rover’ balloons and bizarre processions paid tribute to the series and a Prisoner blazer was the ultimate de rigueur item of apparel.
It was as much a bizarre dream as a festival, but 2018 was announced as the last “for now”. So, heavy hearted, Gigwise wended it way to Portmeirion one (possibly) last time, to bring you the highs and lows…
THE HIGHS
THE TOWN
It’s impossible to avoid the fact that, whatever the line-up, Portmeirion itself is the real star of Festival No 6. Whether the Brythoniaid Welsh Male Voice Choir are regaling the piazza throng with covers of Rag’n’Bone Man and The Manic Street Preachers, there’s an arts masterclass or a stripped down set by Everything Everything in the Town Hall or you’re at a roast lamb banquet by Gareth Ward (from the Michelin starred Ynyshir) at Clough’s restaurant in the onsite hotel, Portmeirion is a magical place to float through. Down by the concrete dance ship embedded into the bayside, punters take fully-clothed dips in the barside swimming pool; out in the woods they rave on floating dancefloors; in the winding village itself they take tea in quaint cafes, sup prosecco by the barrel on the immaculate lawns and watch postmen dressed in wrapping paper cycle by. It’s a festival you constantly wonder if you’ll wake up from.
FRANZ FERDINAND
Amongst an impressive line-up, Franz stole the weekend with their frenetic, joyous Sunday headline show. Dressed in full Prisoner costume and releasing ‘rover’ balloons into a stiff breeze that sends them flying straight over the yard arm and off to cause consternation to Snowdonian ramblers, they pile into their enthused, sex brainiac disco rock smashes like ‘The Dark Of The Matinee’ and ‘No You Girls’ like the 2004 indie explosion is still white hot. Mingling touching moments – ‘Walk Away’ is remarkably heart-warming for such a cold-hearted sentiment – and more electronic new tracks from recent album ‘Always Ascending’ (‘Lois Lane’, ‘Lazy Boy’, the brain-spinning title track) with monster hits like ‘Take Me Out’ and ‘Ulysses’, their hi-energy performance hits like pop electro-convulsion, a jolt to the hardest heart.
EVERYTHING EVERYTHING
If Franz represented alt-pop past, Everything Everything looked magnificently to the future. This is music that seems to twist and spin in your hands; one minute it’s jolly tropical sci-fi pop like ‘Spring/Sun/Winter/Dread’ (kind of Howard Jones In The 25th Century) and the euphoric ‘Kemosabe’, the next they’re redefining the power ballad on ‘Desire’, veering off into amphetamine electronica like ‘Cough Cough’ or getting lost in a frenetic ‘Fever Dream’, all shimmering balladry and spiralling curlicues of guitar. Hell, at least they’re living up to their name.
THE LOWS
THE WEATHER
Reports ahead of the festival suggested we were in for a repeat of 2016, when a virtual monsoon hit Festival No 6 and stranded hundreds of people in the waterlogged car park for days. Thankfully Neptune had mercy and only enough torrential sideways rain fell on Saturday morning to make the site a sticky mess, but at least not a lagoon.
SATURDAY’S BILL
Not the strongest. Jessie Ware bleating out soporific R&B. Hurts doing synthpop like 1986 never went out of fashion. The Horrors leaving it until their closing song, ‘Something To Remember Me By’, before approaching a tune that anybody might be expected to remember at all. Even the highlight, a career-spanning 80s nostalgia-fest from The The complete with rampant ‘Dogs Of Lust’ and strident blues rock aplenty, got cut short when Matt Johnson lost track of curfew. Definitely a day to spend down on the human chessboard, awaiting The Brythoniaid.
THAT IT MIGHT BE THE LAST ONE
There was a vaguely deflated air to this ‘last’ Festival No 6, dampened by the elements and not inclined to celebrate this fine festival season closer. Perhaps the theme has grown stale over seven years and the chill in the air too relentless, but there’s surely a place for a revived, midsummer event in this most perfect of festival backdrops. A Venetian carnival event? A classical gothic shindig themed around the stormy creation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein would surely suit the space. A tribute to The Italian Job, even? Let’s hope, in whatever guise, we’ll party around Portmeirion once more…
