Photo: Michael Lee Jamison
The National
It’s not a recycled platitude when Matt Berninger announces, midway through the band’s headline set, “This festival saved our career.” It really did - and thank goodness. Nearly a decade on from their first time here, The National’s status as a band is on less shaky territory – and they treat tonight’s set like a triumphant second coming. At one point, Berninger launches himself on top of the crowd, before standing amongst them, his glasses lost somewhere among the throng but his baritone voice still as palpable as ever. At the end, he becomes part of the crowd in a different way – ditching his microphone to join in with a mass singalong to ‘Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks’. No-one can hear him, particularly over the weepy singing of everyone around, but it doesn’t seem to matter.
Chvrches
Almost a year to the day since they released the first track, ‘Leave A Trace’, from their second album, Chvrches have cultivated a polished, grounded self-assurance in their live set. Lauren Mayberry’s vocals, which have sometimes proved a little pitchy in the past, are on point, shining like cut glass above the vast synth-pop sounds being churned out by her two bandmates. Things cool off a little when Martin Doherty takes lead vocals for two songs back to back – the enthusiasm is there, but it only highlights how much Mayberry’s magnetic presence adds to the band’s appeal.
John Grant
“Is it difficult for you to be so beautiful?” John Grant utters, shimmying across the stage in a black t-shirt and basketball shorts, “Or do you find the advantages tend to outweigh the disadvantages?” His conversational lyrics, treading a fine balance between funny, beautiful and heartbreaking, are a delight to both the hardcore fans in the crowd, and those who simply stumbled across his strange, genre-melding set on their way to the Cypriot food stand (the food here, incidentally, is impressively varied and wildly overpriced). Though Kylie Minogue doesn’t turn up to sing with him on ‘Glacier’, as she did at the Royal Albert Hall a few weeks earlier, his own rich vibrato – which he unleashes only occasionally amongst his regular speak-singing – more than makes up for her absence.
Grimes
In a tent as packed as it has been all weekend, on a day hotter than it’s been all year, Grimes is anxious that everyone in the crowd looks after themselves. She’s an anxious performer too, but in the best way possible – a whirligig of energy, emitted in fits and bursts as she blazes through her pumping, tightly produced alt-pop.
Christine And The Queens
Poised on the edge of smashing into the mainstream, Christine & The Queens has spent this summer winning over new fans at festival after festival, a missionary converting the world to her own music. Tonight’s set doesn’t meander too far from the mission statement – beautiful, delicate electro-pop broken up with messages of queer positivity and the perks of being weird – except to offer a world first when Perfume Genius comes onstage to sing his part of ‘Jonathan’, one of the best songs of last year. “Everything is so straight everywhere,” she says ahead of a song that earns her a one-minute ovation, “why not be slightly tilted?”
Mø
Given that Mø is one half of one the most popular songs of 2015 – her Major Lazer collaboration ‘Lean On’ – it’s a little perplexing that the tent is only half full when her set begins. Particularly given that the rest of her solo output is about as catchy and intriguing as pop music comes. Still, by the time she closes the set with that track, flinging her ponytail around her head, squatting onto the floor like a wrestler about to pounce, she’s pretty much doubled the crowd.
The Big Moon
If you’re worried guitar music is starting to ferment in its own macho self-aggrandising, look no further than The Big Moon for reassurance. Their scuzzy guitar riffs are raucous but precise, underneath pitch perfect melodies and lyrics of which Alex Turner would be proud.
In conversation with Mark Kermode
Jason Isaacs and David Morrissey – both renowned actors who have a special relationship with Kermode & Mayo’s film review show – are hovering around the Film & Music Arena half an hour before Mark Kermode is due onstage. Surely they’re the surprise guests? Nope. They, like everyone else, are simply there to sit in the audience and soak up the articulate, self-effacing wisdom of the UK’s best film critic.
