More about: Victorious Festival

Returning after a COVID-enforced hiatus, Victorious Festival proved this year why it has become such a staple on Southsea Common, combining a local touch with a line-up featuring Royal Blood, The Streets and festival favourites Madness. 

Since the first event across town in the Historic Dockyards nine years ago, the three-day festival has grown rapidly and now boasts a sprawling seaside home with nine stages, a kids’ arena and a remarkable array of attractions for visitors. 

While all the additional extras will keep the crowds around, it is the music that draws them in the first place, and the Victorious organisers are developing a knack for securing an impressive array of proven performers and rising stars on the bill. 

This year was no different, with Madness a canny choice to headline the main stage on opening night. Despite the band now advancing into their 60s, Suggs and the gang are textbook performers and had their set down note-perfect, rolling out their list of classics to approval from a healthy-sized crowd. 

The bumper audience that arrived on Saturday posed obvious logistical issues, with many complaining of insufficient toilet facilities and others spending hours in queues for food and drink. While some can be fairly blamed on stricter COVID regulations, others—poor stage signage, empty vendor huts—hint that this is still a festival in relative infancy with much to learn. 

Certainly, as a local who had heard ominous tales from previous years of technical issues and poor performances, there was plenty of apprehension. But, as the vast array of stages and impressive list of acts attests, Victorious is growing quickly and confidently. Indeed, the site is considerably bigger than expected, stretching into every corner of Southsea Common and making use of it pretty effectively. Indeed, you will struggle to find a more picturesque stage at any UK festival than the Seaside Stage, with its stunning Solent-facing views only enhanced by the excellent weather. 

As far as the music goes, the mixture of the old and new seemed to work well. The Mysterines delivered a solid Saturday early-afternoon, second-stage set on the charming Castle Stage to much appreciation from the growing crowd. 

Despite the growth of the festival, it retains it roots in the local area, with many stalls promoting local causes and organisations. Two of the festival organisers attend nearby Havant and South Downs College, and the school duly had its own stage showcasing its teenage performers across the weekend. Far from lip service, the offerings here more than held their own against the seasoned professionals occupying other stages. 

With this, we headed rapidly into the Saturday evening stretch. If any artist in the world right now could take to the main stage of a festival armed only with his guitar and a mandolin player and make it feel like a full-blown stadium show, it’s Frank Turner. The singer-songwriter, raised in nearby Winchester, was tasked with the early evening slot and delivered a stunning tour de force of his greatest hits. Turner is nothing if not full blooded, and relished performing live after a Covid-enforced hiatus, delivering standout hits ‘Wessex Boy’ and ‘The Way I Tend To Be’ with particular gusto. 

Next up in a mad dash to the Castle Stage were indie rock’s latest great hope, The Lathums. Already, in a burgeoning career that has taken in a best-selling album, a pandemic, and multiple future classics, they have established themselves as one of Britain’s finest exports—or at least they will be when they can be exported. They were near-flawless, able to draw upon a staggering number of hits already— ‘Great Escape’ is a truly stunning piece of art—and in possession of a priceless, easy on-stage charisma. This surely will be the last time they get anything less than main stage billing at a festival. 

The Streets closed the Saturday festivities on the Common Stage: such a contemporary and undoubted star a sign of how Victorious keeps rising. The key though is the delivery, and Mike Skinner knows how to put on a show. Swigging from champagne, teeing up the end-of-set fireworks and easily taking the crowd on a journey from ‘Never Went To Church’ to ‘Fit But You Know It’ without missing a beat. 

There was a shock for those on the acoustic stage where Lauran Hibberd did her level best to drown out the other nine arenas with her brand of punk rock, admitting that ‘someone appears to have booked us on the acoustic stage by mistake’. Hailing from a short ferry ride away on the Isle Of Wight, Hibberd has begun her fledgling career as furiously as she began this set.  

Having seen the new it was now time for something more familiar. Scottish outfit The Fratellis are still churning out the albums nearly 15 years on from making a splash with debut record Costello Music. That album unsurprisingly features heavily, but the band delivered a pleasingly melancholic set at times while managing to work in all of the classics as well. 

While Victorious has the entirety of Southsea Common to play with, its recent expansion also means you will find some stages in curious places. This year, the Beats and Swing stage found itself stationed in a car park. This did little to deter Wren, who proved themselves to be a promising outfit whose charm and gritty rifts outshone their modest surrounds. 

Another veteran of the festival circuit showed up on Sunday on the Castle Stage. Melanie C, whose career burst into life with the Spice Girls in 1994, seems to simply keeps going—and for good reason. Nearing 30 years of performing, she knows how to throw a party on stage, even if the backing tracks left a few in the audience a bit cold. Many were won over however by her willingness to throw a few Spice Girls classics into her set. 

With a cool wind starting to bite on Sunday evening, there was nothing that could warm you up faster than Lily Moore’s voice. It may be a slightly lazy comparison, but there is a real sprinkling of early years Adele in her bittersweet love songs. It was there too in her earnest, self-deprecating mid-set exchanges with the audience on the packed-out acoustic stage. 

Indie rock princes Royal Blood took on headlining duties on the Common Stage, but our festival was only ever going to end in one place. A veteran of potentially thousands of festivals by now, Beans On Toast returned to Victorious to headline the acoustic stage in typically inimitable fashion. There are very few working artists who embody and understand festival culture as much as Jay McAllister and, after a year’s enforced absence, there was no better way to end than seeing an artist back delivering the sort of performance he has spent his entire career perfecting. Onto the next one. 

More about: Victorious Festival