Photo: WENN
So the final day of Optimus Alive saw vast crowds again basking in Portuguese sunshine and, with the modest yet vocal British contingent preparing to welcome indie heroes The Libertines to their first mainland European festival performance in over ten years, spirits were high.
The band arrived on stage shortly after 10:15pm and other than Carl Barat sporting the band’s trademark red guardsman's jacket, the entrance was a world away from their chaotic UK show at Hyde Park last week. The crowd was a fraction of the size and although in fine form, even at the very front, space was very easy to come by.
As the band rattled through their opening numbers, Pete Doherty did not have to act as a health and safety officer and drummer Gary Powell did not have to plead with the masses to calm down. It all felt like a rather civilised affair.
The quartet, playing to a mainly British crowd, gave particularly sterling renditions of ‘Time for Heroes,’ ‘Boys in the Band’ and ‘Don’t Look Back Into The Sun’ and with Doherty and Barat sharing the mic, bass player John Hassall treating the whole occasion like a day at the office and drummer Powell keeping everything together, it did at times feel like the band were going through the motions.
An impromptu snippet of Otis Redding's '(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay' and various between song garage jams meant that interaction with the audience was minimal, other than a few appreciative thanks in both English and Portuguese.
As the set came to a close Doherty ended up draped in a Portugal flag and despite not all members of the band being off stage at one point, the ‘encore’ was entertaining in a unique Libertines fashion.
After 'France', 'Up The Bracket', 'What A Waster', 'I Get Along' and 'The Ha Ha Wall', Doherty and Barat ended up in some kind of wrestling embrace before Barat leaped on Powell’s back. With horseplay out the way they all, other than Hassall, said their final words and took a united bow to the enthusiastic, but ever thinning crowd.
Earlier in the day, Bastille struggled with sound problems during the final song of their set ‘Pompeii’ which lead to front man Dan Smith apologising for “the fuck up,” in reference to the sound, as opposed to their truly horrendous cover of TLC’s ‘No Scrubs.’
The War on Drugs stunned the Heineken Stage, putting on a show that has to be in contention for best of the entire festival. Lead singer Adam Granduciel was in fine fettle throughout and with a spectacular air show going on in the background the mesmerising brilliance of the whole occasion felt rather surreal.
Drenge rocked up rather ironically to the Clubbing Stage to deliver a barnstorming set, which looked to please what has otherwise been quite a timid Portuguese audience. Crowd surfing and mosh pits had been rare but both material from the brilliant debut album along with new material went down very well indeed.
Performance of the night unsurprisingly came from Britain’s best new band. Jungle wowed the packed Clubbing Stage and with hits like ‘Time’ and ‘Busy Earnin’’ in their armoury it’s hardly surprising. With the much anticipated debut album released tomorrow, this is a funky outfit with bags of potential and collection of songs to delight any crowd.
