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Dreamland theme park provided a kitsch and cutesy backdrop to Margate’s Leisure Festival, a day of music from an international list of indie and pop acts. Fans of the ‘Sad Girl’ genre will have been especially happy with the line-up, and US songstress Clairo took the crown as the Saddest Girl of the lot by contracting COVID and pulling out at the eleventh hour. Despite Clairo’s absence though, I doubt many were too severely disappointed, since the day still had a whole lot to offer across two stages – a main outdoor stage as well as an indoor ‘Hall By the Sea’ venue. 

Those who showed up early were met with a wholesome performance from the Social Singing Choir, a locally based community choir made up largely of people in Lucy and Yak dungarees and flamboyantly conducted by a man I can only describe as Margate’s answer to Gareth Malone. With the sun beating down and an iced coffee in hand, it was the perfect way to start the day.

Next up was French singer-songwriter Léa Sen, whose silky voice and laid-back jams kept the crowd feeling chill. Introspective lyricism and tricksy chords made new track ‘I Like Dis’ a highlight of the set, and despite barely being familiar with Sen before the gig, I walked away very impressed. She was followed by jazz experimentalist L’Rain, whose use of unconventional time signatures somehow made me want to dance more, despite the beat often being beyond me. 

Then last-minute Clairo replacements Surf Curse took to the main stage, while I ran over to the Hall By the Sea to catch indie quartet High School. The Melbourne trio are clearly big Joy Division fans, though they do bring a heaped tablespoon of their own personality to the table – Rory Trobbiani makes for a scatterbrained and unruly frontman, while the deadpan Lili Trobbiani on keyboards adds some too-cool-for-school charm to proceedings (if you’ll pardon the pun). The audience seemed especially enthralled by ‘De Facto’, a song whose pulsating, one note chorus had everybody jumping.

Following High School on the indoor stage was Irish country-pop act CMAT, whose opening observation that she’d never seen so many bisexuals in one place before drew an excitable cheer from many in the crowd. For me, CMAT was the highlight of the day – her powerful live vocals are so precise as to be indistinguishable from the recordings on her fantastic debut LP If My Wife New I’d Be Dead, and both during and in-between songs she exudes enough charisma to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.  

Unfortunately, the afternoon at Leisure Festival was plagued by delays, which caused acts to clash, meaning that I barely caught Nilüfer Yanya’s indoor set. I did however manage to catch Sorry, whose songs are as witty as they are confrontational and as funky as they are sensitive – they brought all of this genre diversity to their live show, and there was not a foot in the house not tapping to the London five-piece’s infectious basslines. 

Back on the main stage, Soccer Mommy I’m afraid to say left less of an impression. Sophie Allison is one of my favourite songwriters of the moment, but I couldn’t help feeling that her performance – while strong – was aiming for cool and laid-back and had accidentally landed on bored. Allison’s brand new album Sometimes, Forever had been released that morning, and it was great to hear tracks from the record freshly performed, but I fear the festival crowd had maybe been hoping to hear some more of the classics. Nevertheless, gloomy recent single ‘Unholy Affliction’ translates wonderfully to a live context, and ‘Circle the Drain’ and ‘Your Dog’ both proved captivating. 

When headliner Mitski finally appeared, there was a real feeling in the air that this is what everybody had been waiting for – the festival was at its busiest, with a cohort of people having arrived after work purely for this finale. For an artist who barely says a word between songs, Mitski has an astonishing ability to communicate with her audience, balancing a dry sense of humour with a compelling sense of earnestness. She is one of the most theatrical musicians I’ve ever seen perform, and has the crowd in the palm of her hand, provoking cheers, gasps and whoops purely through her use of movement and gesture.  

Mitski’s set – which represented a lengthy value-for-money tour of her greatest hits – may have been the main attraction of Leisure for many festival-goers, but by the end of the night it felt like just one of many magic moments in a day chock-full of them. It was the perfect weather for it, the perfect post-ironic backdrop, and the perfect female-first line-up. I think the only person who didn’t enjoy themselves was poor old Clairo. 

See the photots from Sophie Vaughan:

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