Glastonbury 2022

 

I've very much enjoyed Glastonbury 2022 over the last few days. Not that I was there. I've never been  and it's not frankly one of my great regrets or for that matter ambitions. I've only been to one great outdoor music festival and there witnessed, Magazine, Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Iggy & The Stooges, Morrissey and the great British comedian Stewart Lee, in quick succession in the company of my late and still dearly missed older brother. How could you possibly beat that.

I also have a deep and quite unshiftable aversion to ever sleeping in a tent again if I can help it, after a childhood of asthmatic family holidays. Also, as a fifty six year old, I'm starting to develop an aversion to large crowds. So, sitting upstairs at my parents home with my laptop while on a short break, stage surfing on the i player was an ideal way for me to experience the return of Glastonbury after the years that we didn't have it, while the world changed.

Of course it was a highly life affirming event. Glastonbury generally is. But there was something special about the return to normality this time. Thousands of people in a huge expanse of fields doing what large groups of people should do but sadly don't always. Enjoy themselves in an inclusive, affirmative. environment. Reminders of the rather less than perfect world outside did surface occasionally this weekend, showing that this is, has been and will always be a festival with a conscience; The Ukraine, the Environment, Roe V Wade. But mostly it was an extended immersion into a vast heterogeneous ocean of music, positivity and joy..

I enjoyed an enormous amount of it. If there was something I didn't, and that particularly seemed to apply this year to the whole raft of Post Punk bands that alternative UK seems so prone to right now, I just needed to change channels.

The first thing that really appealed to me was a chance encounter with Phoebe Bridgers playing with her band in their signature skeleton outfits on Friday evening. I'm vaguely familiar with Phoebe but was unaware that she's pretty much a full on indie phenomenon. This was confirmed the following morning when she featured on the cover of the Guardian Cuture section.

I had a social media discussion with Rod Waterman, one of the great music friends and really just great friends of my lifetime about Phoebe over the weekend. He didn't really appreciate her glum and slightly mannered approach. Having read the Guardian interview I'm possibly in agreement. I won't bother too much with the whole package. But I did enjoy the show, the high tech, (certainly for an 'Indie' act) presentation of it and her own not inconsiderate charisma and I'll pay more attention to what she puts out from now on.

Elsewhere on Friday I enjoyed Rufus Wainwright. The incredible skill of the construction and delivery  of his songs is still a thing of wonder, even if he doesn't generate quite the attention and appreciation he deseves these days. Greentea Peng, who was responsible for the album I still treasure most from 2021 was also good value for money. I didn't watch Little Simz though I'm aware she's a huge, huge talent, for reasons I'll return to later on in this piece.

Jesus & Mary Chain bored me slightly after a couple of tracks and I switched over. I didn't even bother with Primal Scream after watching their opening song with Bobby Gillespie stumbling across the stage to Swastika Eyes, wearing a crumpled Screamadelica suit that it looked like he'd been sleeping in for three weeks. It's over thirty five years since both bands first emerged now, claiming most of all to be very, very Punk. I prefer to remember them the way they were rather than watch them now.

St. Vincent seemed alright though I'm still not much of a fan of her records where she seems to me to be trying, much, much too hard. But she gave good set. Didn't watch it all. So on balance, Phoebe Bridgers won my Friday night. Didn't watch Billie. On to Saturday. 

Haim was one of the things I enjoyed most on Saturday. I've been vaguely aware of them over the years without ever giving them my undivided attention but they played an excellent late afternoon set at just the point of the day when you'd appreciate them most if Fleetwood Mac weren't available or else too expensive or just too plain old to play instead.

Haim fitted the bill anyhow. They sashayed across the stage in their knickers for quite a while which was nice for the middle aged men in the audience, put on a slick show with plenty of amusing Valley Girl banter that managed to bridge the gap between utterly rehearsed, highly spontaneous and slightly, but not unacceptably risque. They were a drop of pure Californian Sunshine.

Elsewhere, the British Post Punk bands of the moment stalked various stages. Dry Cleaning, IDLES, Squid and Black Midi. Of the four, only IDLES won me over, mainly because they played a damned good set that allowed their audience to hurl themselves into each other for quite a while to their hearts content with great relish and vigour. Angry I suppose. But most of all great fun. You need a good share of both to pull this off. 

Dry Cleaning were more puzzling and far more mannered. I still don't really get them though I like their angular, abrasive but also highly melodic mesh of guitar sounds. These come from tattoed, muscled and bearded Tom Dowse. He also supplies a good half of Dry Cleaning's stage act. Gurning, preening and throwing shapes, he's good value for money both in terms of the way he plays and the way he acts.

The other half of the Dry Cleaning live package is singer Florence Shaw and she's altogether more problematic than Dowse. She looks like an Alice in Wonderland in her early Thirties. Forgive me Florence if I've piled on a few years which you haven't actually experiemced. She and Dowse met at the Royal College of Art in round about 2010.

They're clearly an Art project but here comes the issue with Shaw and Dry Cleaning. She doesn't sing. Almost nothing that she does could really be describes as singing. She barely breaks into a sweat.  Instead she favours a monotone sprechgesang Post Modernism stream of nonsense approach which leads to her delivery being an odd and mostly incoherent marriage of Grace Jones and John Cooper Clarke's sensibilities. It's often just as odd as that sounds. This by definition limits the band's appeal and unless they find a second string to their bow, and fairly soon, they strike me as a one trick pony and it's not even the greatest trick in the first place.

Still, I preferred Dry Cleaning utterly, to either Squid or Black Midi. The former's main calling card seems to be a singing drummer and a rhythmic line of attack that most obviously brings Can to mind. Unfortunately when the drummer sings he appears to favour a comedy voice that reminds you of the most annoying stand up comedian you've ever had the misfortune to witness. I'll leave it there. They're exceptionally irritating and I do hope they don't thrive because I'd rather take an aspirin.

Black Midi if possible are even worse. They're just show offs. They attended and formed at the BRIT School and are the very definition of pretension.. They seem collectively to own a hell of a lot of unlistenable Free Jazz records. If you're going to listen to Jazz, you're well advised to listen to the countless fabulous and highly enjoyable Jazz records recorded and released down the years and not to the ones which Black Midi own and clearly venerate. They also seem to have the most annoying set of onstage mannerisms I've ever seen in my life. They're truly a waste of electricity and everything else about them is pretty poor too.

The set I enjoyed most on Saturday were Big Thief. They've been a band I've loved for a few years now and it's gratifying to see them getting some critical and commercial recognition recently. They're  a band apart. They're not quite like anyone else and what struck me, watching their Saturday evening set was that they were the only artists who played Glastonbury all weekend who could have slotted into the original Woodstock bill, without so much as raising an eyebrow.

They have a lot of that Hippie earnestness, (they're first and foremost Hippies). That idea that it's their god given mission to change the world for the better. They played as if in a trance. Often turned in a circle and playing for and to each other, which is always the sign of a band worth listening to. Lead singer Adrienne Lenker was obviously exceptionally nervous. It was probably the biggest gig and biggest challenge of their career. Lenker limited her interaction with the audience mostly to a few shakey Thank Yous at the end of some songs. I thought they played a blinder, though I'd imagine that a lot of the vast audience at Glastonbury were unconvinced and possibly slightly bemiused or else bored.

On to Sunday. I didn't watch Sir Macca McCartney's headline spot, though I will catch up during the week. Now Sunday was always going to be largely about one artist for me. Courtney Barnett, who headlined her stage late in the evening, I wouldn't make any great claims as to where Courtney stands in the grand scheme of things. She's churned out a reliable set of melodic, thoughtful and occasionally quite rocky songs in the tradition of Nirvana, The Lemonheads and The Velvet Underground over the years. She's a safe pair of hands. She's never put out a bad record over the course of a decade and has been responsible for several very, very good ones.

The difference with Courtney is that I love her. In a way I've probably never loved a musician before. I love her in the way you love a really good friend I hasten to add. She's humane. She's kind. She's very intelligent. She's talented but doesn't show off about it. She's funny. She's good looking. What more could you want in a good friend.

Last night her performance was slightly perfunctory and certainly not flashy or attention seeking really.. I've seen her a few times and she's been much better than this every time I've seen her though it might have seemed different if I'd actually been there. Her set was pretty much of a run through of her Greatest Hits going back to early stand outs like Avant Gardener, Out of the Woodwork and History Eraser. I like her loyalty to these classics. It shows she knows they're part of her story. I also like her loyalty to Bones Sloane and Dave Mudie, the two musicians she's played with for almost all of her solo career. It's an indication that she has integrity and would be the priceless friend I imagine her to be should I ever actually become friends with her which I probably won't.

So Courtney didn't disappoint. I knew she wouldn't really. Elsewhere on Sunday, Jarvis Cocker put on a characteristically Jarvis Cocker performance, demonstrating English eccentricity as well as you could want anyone to do. English Post Punk bands meanwhile were rather thin on the ground. Cate Le Bon was terrific as usual. Decked out in a rather fetching Medieval chain mail outfit ad helmet which she returned to the stage in a few hours later towards the end of CB's set for a thrilling guitar duel. With Courtney of course. It was an elaborately staged draw and then they hugged. Nice moment.

Herbie Hancock was great. Suzanne Vega showed up on the BBC feed, to play and sing Marlene on the Wall, one of my very favourite songs of all. Amyl & The Sniffers showed that there's nothing quite as enjoyable as a loud, rude, unapologetic and sweary Australian Punk band. I didn't watch headliner Kendrick Lamar just as I hadn't watched the headliners for the previous nights, Billie Eilish and Sir Macca McCartney. This says more about me than it does about any of them. The bands that I like most rarely top the bill on the main stages of festivals. This blog after all is named after a line in a Go Betweens song. I'll catch up with them all later in the week. Lamar's performance was apparently outstanding but as with Little Simz I wasn't in the mood for righteous, loud Hip Hop this weekend.

Anyway Glastonbury 2022 was altogether rather wonderful and highly memorable. It did what Glastonbury does better than almost anything else and more. Most of the key performances will be on the BBC i player for a couple of weeks. Make sure you don't miss them. Meanwhile, my enjoyment of just how good it was, certainly isn't over.