Hello lovelies!
Well, it’s been just over a week now, and have just about
recovered from the events of last weekend. I love the holiday atmosphere when
you’re at Glastonbury (especially when you’re as lucky with the weather as we
were this year; could definitely get used to chilling out in the sunshine
dozing to Hozier!), but not such a fan of the post-festival blues that
inevitably strike a few days later. I think one of the weirdest elements of
Glasto is the Monday after, when you wake up and there is no live music wafting
around the site or shouts of delight from the circus field, and instead there’s
this sense of a post-apocalyptic exodus as hundreds of weary, dirty folk trudge
towards the carpark gates with their life possessions on their backs or being
pulled behind them on ancient, mud-encrusted trollies.
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| Our campsite's stunning view of the Pyramid Stage overlooked by Glastonbury Tor. Take me back! |
This year was so much fun, though! We explored a lot more
this year than last, happening upon things like the silent disco which quickly
became one of my all-time favourite things to do ever. Seriously, moshing out
to Rage Against The Machine whilst everyone else is bopping along to Angels was an incredible feeling, and I
will forever think twice about wearing heels in place of sweet, comfortable
Converse every time a night out is on the cards in the future. We gasped whilst
eight girls balanced on top of one tiny bicycle and hurtled around the Big Top,
and we very quickly learnt that if Fatboy Slim ends up doing a secret set on
the Blues stage it really won’t stay secret for very long, so good luck trying
to get in to see that if you’re late to the party…
Apart from all the side attractions we ended up seeing this
year, the backbone of Glasto – the music itself – was absolutely brilliant. For
the most part, anyway. I wanted this post to be a kind of mini music review for
some of the acts we caught at Worthy Farm this time around, so I’ve selected a
few of the best (and worst) of Glastonbury 2015.
Florence & The
Machine
The second Dave Grohl reluctantly confirmed that the Foo
Fighters would have to pull out of headlining Glastonbury due to Dave’s broken
leg, I’ll admit it: I was devastated.
Everything this year had led up to us seeing the almighty Foo, and I know I’m
not alone in feeling more than slightly gutted that they wouldn’t be able to
continue their already brief stint in Europe. When Florence was announced as
their replacement, the overwhelming reaction was negative, and I initially agreed
– they weren’t a rock band, they weren’t prolific enough to replace the Foo
Fighters let alone headline the biggest festival in the world, the organisers
had clearly just panicked, etc. We turned up at the Pyramid Stage with sky-high
expectations, but my god, were they fulfilled.
Florence was fantastic. At no point did she underestimate
the size of the shoes she was filling, but she took everything in her stride
and won the crowd over in just a few songs. The energy she displayed throughout
the whole set was mesmerising – I was shattered just watching her (although the
Buxton bottle full of warm vodka lemonade may not have helped with this,
granted) – and her voice, holy hell. That girl’s not half got a pair of lungs
on her! By the time Flo was trilling through ‘Sweet Nothing’, I was sold. Even
their cover of the Foo’s ‘Times Like These’ was wonderful, and I’d previously
been dubious about Florence’s ability to make a Foos song her own. It was a
gentle homage, not a tacky rip-off: an almost haunting version of a rock
classic. Finally, the encore of ‘Dog Days’, with thousands of people yelling
the lyrics drunk on joy and cheap cider, was immense. We even got a peek at
Florence’s own machines as she raced around the stage topless…
Circa Waves
A total misreading of the line-up guide meant that, instead
of seeing Wolf Alice as originally intended, we ended up catching the last
fifteen minutes of Circa Waves’ set on the John Peel Stage. Not being a massive
fan of what I’d usually dub ‘plinky plonky indie noise’ as a rule, Circa Waves
made for a surprisingly good performance. On the radio their music comes across
as a little try-hard for my taste – another secondary school band thinking they’re
all that because they’ve got their fifteen minutes in the spotlight. But live,
they’re really quite different. Much heavier, much more experimentation with
guitar solos, an infectious, upbeat energy that lights their audience up. It
probably helped that by the time ‘T-shirt Weather’ was played the sun had
reappeared after an otherwise exceedingly damp day, and the crowd lapped up the
relevance, bopping away in appreciation. Would rather have seen Wolf Alice to
satiate my inner crooning emo, but Circa Waves were a nice surprise and I’m not
disappointed to have ended up at the wrong stage and seeing them.
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| J and I fully poncho'd up during Circa Waves. #GlastoChic |
Twin Atlantic
My total highlight of the entire festival was standing four
rows from the front as a Glaswegian foursome rocked the Other Stage to the best
of their little Scottish abilities whilst Lionel Richie was asking 125,000
other people if it was him they’d been looking for over on Pyramid.
We discovered Twin Atlantic accidentally last year as they
filled Chromeo’s spot on John Peel last-minute, and they ended up being all
levels of awesome. This year, however, they outdid themselves. Despite being in
a huge field and performing on a huge stage, TA’s gig felt oddly intimate and
their audience was nowhere near as large as I’d expected it to be – probably
mainly due to being up against Mr Richie, which is bad luck on their part. But
they still managed to win their comparatively small crowd over by making eye
contact, and commenting on the youngest member (ten years old and strapped to
his dad’s chest in the front row. Rock on, little dude). My personal favourite
moment came in the form of a slow, balladic version of ‘Crash Land’, which
united band and crowd alike and, alright, brought a small, singular tear to my
eye. Absolutely cracking performance – hoping to see the boys from Glasgow on
Pyramid next year!
Pharrell
For a lot of Mr Williams’ set, all anyone around us could
talk about was how good he looks, and they’re right – 42 years old and the guy could
still pass for 25. Maybe Pharrell’s secret is his passion for making great
music (I mean, it could be…), but either way he was both looking and sounding on
point on the Saturday evening. The atmosphere was electric as Pharrell pulled
out some classic tracks; from his N.E.R.D days, right up to performing his
latest single, ‘Freedom’.
A pumped-up audience screaming that eponymous word, buoyed by Pharrell’s
insistence that ‘English girls are the most beautiful of all’, finally reduced
the main man to tears as his set ended – which was actually a beautiful moment.
It had clearly hit home to him where he was and what he was doing, and seeing
someone give so much of a damn about doing what they love was wonderful. Lots
of respect to the guy, he’s obviously in the right business. The tears quickly
dried as he launched into the much-anticipated encore of ‘Happy’, complete with
a group of young children onstage, most of whom shared the same bewildered
expression (‘who is this man and why is he singing the Minions song?’) but were
all adorable and instantly won the hearts of the crowd. Pharrell definitely
looked happy enough as he strolled offstage with his backing dancers in tow,
and who could blame him? It was the performance of the night.
Kanye West
Which is more than can be said for Kanye West’s set; which,
if I’m being totally honest, paled into comparison next to Pharrell. Despite
playing to one of the biggest crowds of the entire festival, Kanye’s blasé and
self-indulgent performance left the majority of the audience asking the same
questions: ‘what the hell was that!?’;
and, ‘what was the point?’.
A friend who was also at Glastonbury summed up Kanye’s
headline act in one short, really pretty accurate statement – ‘it was like
Kanye was rehearsing to a mirror in his garden shed’. That’s the best way I can
think of to describe the two hours of The Kanye Show we bore witness to.
Whereas Pharrell relished the crowd and at times shared the same disbelieving
look as James Bay had worn so endearingly the day before, Kanye barely
acknowledged his audience at all the entire time. Except, of course, to inform
us all during the finale of how we were ‘watching the greatest living rock star
on the planet’. Ever heard of Motorhead, buddy? The Who? Foo Fighters? Great
men, great actual rock stars, who had
played or were going to play that same stage after decades of making incredible
music instead of mediocre rap. The mind boggles, it really does.
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| Our view of Kanye. This is about as impressive as the light show managed... |
The thing about Kanye is that he actually started out fairly
strongly: after an hour’s wait the crowd was treated to a bank of warm white lights
beaming down on the solitary figure onstage as he launched into ‘Stronger’, and
screams of delight and satisfaction (hell, probably a fair few of pleasant
surprise too) filled the air. Unfortunately, however, the performance took a
definitive nose-dive after the opening tune. The beginning of a song would
start, the crowd would go wild – and Kayne would perform half of it at most
before stopping and starting a whole new one. This trick got very boring, very
quickly. The lack of anything visual to enjoy didn’t help matters: would a
couple of lasers have killed ya? Cos that haze of plain white definitely did
not make you stronger, Mr West. It was a boring set, with boring lights and a
boring set-list -all that autotuned mess which took up the main body of the gig
was plain ridiculous, and had people around us leaving in scores muttering
about feeling ripped off. Honestly, I don’t blame them at all. Even the cherry
picker stunt wasn’t especially impressing, mostly because it made the crowd
feel more alienated than ever as Kanye soared jerkily over the heads of
thousands of confused Glasto-goers, looking noticeably uncomfortable as he
clung on and got through most of ‘Touch the Sky’ before appearing back onstage.
If Florence had done something like that everyone would have been going crazy;
Kanye just had everyone going, ‘what the fuck…?’ I won’t even mention the
half-assed cover of Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ for fear of imploding with
rage.
So, there we have it. Another Glastonbury over, complete
with mental headliners and awesome new discoveries. Will I be going again next
year? You’d better believe it – Glasto fever is a hard one to shake! Will Kanye
West ever be asked back? I sincerely and honestly hope not.
Did you go to Glasto this year, or were you happy to catch
it on TV from the comfort of your own sitting room? Who were your high- and
low-lights of 2015? Let me know in the comments!
x
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