That's everything for tonight
Thanks for joining us for an epic Friday that brought two of the biggest crowds the festival has ever seen – Foo Fighters filling the Pyramid and Fred Again the Other stage – as well as a ton of other gems from Star Feminine Band right through to Warpaint and Wizkid. Tomorrow’s coverage will cover sets from Lana Del Rey to Lizzo, Central Cee to Mel C – and of course a headline set from Guns N’ Roses. See you for more liveblog shenanigans from noon on Saturday!
Kelis review
The bizarre start of Kelis’s set turns out to be one of the most reliable things about it. She plays a series of anonymous house bangers that could be made by anyone: you’re left wondering where one of the most vituperative pop stars of this century is among the bland empowerment of songs such as Brave, when surely the visceral bloodletting of songs such as Caught Out Here are far more real, and affirming for anyone in the throes of sadness and/or revenge.
When she finally starts playing Caught Out Here, three tracks in, followed by others from her brilliantly wild early-2000s heyday, its spikiness is a true tonic. And yet she cuts off her peak-period songs at the knees by playing them in a monstrously frustrating series of medleys. Just as the itchy brilliance of Millionaire gets going, it’s over; same too for Good Stuff, a welcome blast of filth, and Got Your Money. She plays them in such a rush that it seems more as though she’s scratching for time, not a main stage headliner. And yet far more boring recent songs get a full airing (also: no Jerk Ribs). Trick Me is the rare exception, its reggae undertones amplified and made brilliant by her live band, who fluctuate in and out of use, and it is heard, thank god, in full.
The end of the set is pure chaos. There’s a flash of Riton’s Rinse & Repeat, then a rendition of Milkshake over Wu-Tang Clan’s Gravel Pit, then a bit of Smells Like Teen Spirit that swiftly undergoes a donk remix. One man near me yells “I just don’t understand what’s going on”, another in a separate group exclaims: “I just can’t explain it!” It’s a truly unpredictable set, and not in a pleasurable way. When she winds up back in the tedious house territory where she started, it feels unfortunately like relief.
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Long-time Arctic Monkeys fan Ian Scott, 58, was in front of the Pyramid to see the band with his daughter Jade, 31, and son, Angus, 21.
Ian thought they were technically great and conceded it was difficult to assess them fairly by the sound stages, but added: “The old stuff - everyone loved it. I don’t mind some of the slower stuff but when it’s live it’s different.”
Jade added: “It makes it harder to sing with him.”
Angus thought the staging was “brilliant” and they were “really tight” but said: “They have lost a lot of love with the last two albums – they’re totally different albums.”
That seemed to be the general feeling around me: this was a band in their prime, technically, but perhaps for those hoping for an uptempo headline show akin to their last Pyramid headline set a decade ago, this felt too low-key.
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Wizkid review
There’s a chill in the air as the cloudless day gives way to night and Wizkid takes to the Other Stage for his headline set on Friday. The Afropop star’s small but committed crowd need not worry about the elements for long though, as his 75-minute set is packed with enough pyrotechnics and hip-swaying hits to get even the most hardened revellers sweating.
As one of Nigeria’s bestselling artists of all time, Wizkid strolls out to a range of shoutout accolades from his DJ: “Starboy number one”, “Africa’s number one”, “Grammy-winner”. Then he delivers a pre-packaged, arena-ready show that tallies with the hyperbole. As he prowls, hood-up, he is backed by an eight-piece band and horn section, floor-to-ceiling screens, grand staircase, and the biggest diamond ring I have ever seen, forever gripping his microphone.
The hits pour forth: Energy, Ginger, Come Closer, My Way – the list goes on, though with none of the A-list feature artists. Yet it’s anyone’s guess as to how much Wizkid is doing behind that mic, since his vocals are heavily Auto-Tuned and there are several moments when he pulls it away from his face as the lead melody carries on, indistinguishable from before.
Still, the crowd – one of the most diverse of the festival so far - keeps dancing, holding out for one of those features to materialise. Sadly, we’re left with backing track. Closing number Body, which is Wizkid’s biggest hit to date and features singer Tems, only fires a confetti cannon over her pre-recorded vocal – a little sparkle to add to the sheen of the show.
There are enough bright lights, shooting flames and tight, earworming instrumentation here to keep an audience entertained but as far as headline sets go, Wizkid’s feels like more of a polished commercial for his craft than the raw, real thing.
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Chemical Brothers review
I forgot to mention in that epic five-way clash earlier that a plucky little dance music duo called the Chemical Brothers were also playing at the same time! Just DJing, but still. Elle was there: “Last year at Arcadia it was impossible to get anywhere near Calvin Harris’s headline set – there’s not so packed a crowd for the Chemical Brothers at the same stage at peak hours on Friday night, but the space to dance suits their fast-paced, fluid, confident set. There are no hits tonight, or even much by the way of lyrics, but a lot of easily danceable, big-tent bangers from a pair of consummate but never safe professionals.”
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For balance, this kind of “banter” does seem to be resonating on social media re Arctic Monkeys’ headline set. Not in my name.
Live scenes at Glastonbury #ArcticMonkeys pic.twitter.com/iWrMjToPqB
— Sam Houghton (@Sam_DH_MCFC) June 23, 2023
Arctic Monkeys frontman #glastonbury2023 pic.twitter.com/X98tu11Eum
— Jay J (@JibbaJabb) June 23, 2023
They’re now charging through the closing sections of R U Mine?, to which even the most Turner-resistant wag will probably be doing some pogoing around.
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Arctics open their encore with I Wanna Be Yours, which I find just such a brilliant bit of culture jamming – this John Cooper Clarke poem becoming one of the most popular pieces of British verse ever via the Monkeys crooner treatment. I spoke to John about this bizarre state of affairs earlier this year, as it crossed a billion streams on Spotify:
From Josh at Monkeys: “Mirrorball into 505 was a brilliant little segue that got most people moving near me. Then we’re back into slow-bopping solemn appreciation for a croonerish Body Paint, which lifts at the end. That said, some people around me aren’t satisfied. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Sir Paul McCartney,’ shouts one man, referring to the hit-heavy – but also rather long – set by the Beatles man last year.”
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Not sure where they’re up to in real life, but Hot Chip are in strident form doing Hungry Child on the iPlayer stream, bolstered by Valentina Pappalardo on backing vox, all Promised Land pianos and Belfast synth widdles. And then into Over and Over. Most reliable party band in a generation – nay, two generations now.
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Kelis has brought Laura back to the yard with a milkshake of completely insane sonic ingredients. “OK Kelis did Milkshake over Gravel Pit and then segues into Smells Like Teen Spirit then a donk remix. And now I Feel Love. A man just yelled ‘I can’t understand what’s going on’. Another yelled ‘I can’t explain it’.”
Arctic Monkeys have just done the drop on 505 – there’s a lot of turf getting throughly stamped upon right now.
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There Must Be a Mirrorball now from Arctic Monkeys, another utterly perfect ballad but hardly likely to get the blood rushing among the neutrals. I’m actually very pleased to see them get so emphatically behind three of their best recent songs – this, Sculptures of Anything Goes and Perfect Sense – by including them in a Pyramid stage set, even if their pace will annoy the Dark Fruits crew.
The Fomo is flowing as an only-at-Glasto clash takes place: Arctic Monkeys vs Kelis vs Wizkid vs Hot Chip vs Fever Ray. Keza is at the latter: “Genderfluid Swede Fever Ray is bringing the weird woozy electro funk up at Park, with a keyboardist who appears to be wearing a dressing gown and a cloud for a hat.” That sounds positively normcore in the world of Fever Ray tbh.
Any sofa-bound Glasto watchers in need of context and fashion tips to frighten your neighbourhood’s children away from your house can catch up with our cover feature with Fever Ray’s Karin Dreijer earlier this year:
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From our man Josh in the Monkeys crowd: “Someone just shouted ‘Where are the ChurnUps?!’ and another yelled: ‘Get em out!’ I think this is slightly underwhelming the crowd where I am, just to the left of the sound system.” They probably weren’t that whelmed by Perfect Sense just now, probably the slowest moment in the whole set but for my money one of the band’s loveliest ballads. They’ve switched up into Do I Wanna Know? now though, so any fairweather fans will be placated…
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Cate Blanchett dancing at Sparks appreciation post
Sparks reviewed
It’s been quite the few years for the brothers Mael, between a rapturously received Edgar Wright documentary, a Top 10 album and now the biggest tour of their career. What better way to cap it than with a Glastonbury performance, their first ever? Well, how about a Glastonbury performance that starts with actual Cate Blanchett doing some interpretive dance?
Blanchett’s turn – reprising her performance in the video for The Girl is Crying in Her Latte, in the same yellow pant suit and red headphones – is electrifying: a Hollywood A-lister throwing shapes in the middle of a field in Somerset. But it also comes with a bit of danger: could the rest of the set be a little anticlimactic?
Not at all. Sparks are canny, experienced performers who know how to perfectly pace a set. So there’s a smattering of old – Angst in My Pants and, naturally, This Town Ain’t Big Enough For the Both of Us, still as bracing and bizarre as the first time you heard it – and new. And there’s the trademark interplay between Russell – bouncing around like a Labrador – and Ron – stern-faced and virtually motionless, except for a fantastic dance routine midway through The Number One Song in Heaven.
Things wrap up with All That, a new song that has the feel of an oldie, and after Russell has to literally shove the reluctant Ron into the spotlight to take a deserved round of applause, they gather for a picture. Blanchett is back out and so is Wright, on photo-taking duties. Russell looks ecstatic, even Ron cracks a smile. There have been worst Glastonbury debuts, that’s for sure.
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Pics of Arctic Monkeys performing
Our photographer Jonny Weeks was just in the pit for Arctic Monkeys and ferried these back.
Laura not feeling it at Kelis. The phrase “terminally plodding” has just been dropped in the group chat. “She’s really selling herself short with too many medleys/blends, killing the momentum. Some songs barely last a minute. There’s a greatest hits set in here bursting to get out.” Waaah!
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Meanwhile Wizkid is now headlining the Other stage, with a gorgeously warm full-band sound including some shamelessly corny sax (the best kind). Ammar is there for us and says the crowd is relatively small – certainly in comparison with the preceding Fred Again – but easily the most diverse, and he’s warming everyone nicely. Certainly sounding in very fine voice on my headphones in our portacabin.
Cornerstone gets a lovely new arrangement for this Monkeys tour, all slowed down and mooching around – and, contrary to some grumbling fans, the slowed down versions of Mardy Bum and other are really winning, too. There’s also been gripes about Turner not delivering the vocals exactly as he does on record, to which I say: I really hope you never hear about this music called “jazz” because you’re going to absolutely freak out.
Up next is Why Do You Only Call Me When You’re High, one of the many Monkeys songs to go massive on TikTok and pop back into the lower reaches of the charts for a spell. We’re due another one, to be honest.
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Crying Lightning just now from the Monkeys which – whisper it – I think is a shade overrated. Keen liveblog followers will know that Mary who I spoke to earlier on the front row will be actually crying at her favourite song being played. The front row of the Pyramid stage during the day is the place to be if you want to be reminded of the sheer intensity of fandom: people settling in for a 12-hour marathon of sunburn, dehydration and having to watch all of Royal Blood to make it to the promised land. We salute you.
Laura is over at Kelis on West Holts, which she said started a little slow with generic dance (that was Benny Benassi’s Spaceship, generic dance fans) but now she’s doing Caught Out There and it’s all going off.
Meekz review
It’s been a close and clammy Friday at Worthy Farm. So probably not the best day to rock up on stage wearing a ski mask. Might this finally be the moment that Manchester rapper Meekz removes his defining prop? For a moment it looks like he might – he even teases that he’ll take it off … once he gets backstage after the gig. Ski mask remaining stubbornly on, Meekz launches into an energised set of minimalist drill, swaggering around the stage confidently during his Dave collab Fresh Out the Bank and raining invisible bills on the crowd during More Money. An exciting new face in UK rap – even if he’s unlikely to ever let us see it.
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Brianstorm now for Arctic Monkeys, the song which rightly condemned the T-shirt and tie combination to the bin of history’s greatest mistakes – I’ve worn some crap in my time but at least I never went there – and then it’s time for some shoulder shimmying to the pounding piano of Snap Out of It. After that deliberate wrongfooting of the audience with one of their stranger new songs, they’re now waist deep in anthem zone. Our Jenessa is in the crowd and says she thinks she can detect a touch of vocal reticence to Alex’s delivery, but that he’s essentially going full tilt already.
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Young Fathers apparently drew an ever growing crowd for their West Holts set – and our Josh Halliday says they ended it with a chant of “Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here. Fuck the Tories!” That’s the ticket!
Arctic Monkeys begin their headline slot
I can hear Arctic Monkeys sparking into life on the Pyramid about 100m away from where we’re sat. They’ve started up with Sculptures of Anything Goes, which for me vaulted straight into a personal band Top 5 – a kind of malevolent Bond theme full of dreamscape drama and those wonderful particular Turner details: “Village coffee mornings with not long since retired spies / Now that’s my idea of a good time”. I can’t hear a trace of laryngitis, meanwhile.
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A big spark of joy every festival season is a sign language interpreter going viral for their sheer rizz, and this year it’s the turn of this woman on the BBC:
The sign language lady on #Glastonbury23 for the Foo Fighters is amazing. pic.twitter.com/s44NiaegBY
— stephanie cowley (@stephCP1975) June 23, 2023
The BBC have laudably got an entire dedicated stream on iPlayer with BSL interpretation, running all weekend.
Russell Mael is still in wonderful voice on the Park stage, strident but made slightly fragile with vibrato; All That, from 2020, feels very much a classic to stand alongside their big well-known numbers, and is a fitting closer to their show.
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Fred Again reviewed
Here’s the thing about Fred Again: he should have been playing on the Pyramid stage. The London-based songwriter, producer and vocalist has been slowly building his fanbase over several years, playing to increasingly huge crowds at increasingly huge festivals; I had a feeling his Friday evening Glastonbury set would be massive, but I clearly underestimated his grip on the millennial market right now. Fred’s crowd was absolutely insane; although he was playing on the Other Stage, Glastonbury’s second biggest, his crowd felt like it belonged at the main stage given how sprawling and excited it was.
But therein lies the paradox: even though he is one of the most popular artists performing at this year’s Glastonbury, he remains profoundly dull, an artist with narrow emotional bandwidth and – with his guest vocalists, remixes of big stars, samples and voice notes – no real perspective of his own. Fred is a bona fide runaway sensation but his music is so intensely neutral and mass-market that, after watching his set, you come away feeling like you know nothing about him. I watched the show with Alexis Petridis, the Guardian’s pop critic, and we both left with the same takeaway: although the show was purely enjoyable it was also strangely anaemic, so mercenary in its pursuit of broad popularity that it forgot to be, like, good. (To be fair, Alexis really enjoyed the show – it was me who found it uncomfortable and weird.)
Still, it’s hard to deny that Fred is basically the headliner of the weekend: he’s the only artist I’ve heard people talking about and his crowd was ridiculously huge. He is perhaps the most significant British breakout of the past 10 years, and the sheer enthusiasm of his crowd confirmed it – even if his music is lowest common denominator.
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Let me take a moment to reflect on last night and one of the most fun things I’ve ever seen at Glastonbury: Jyoty DJing at Lonely Hearts Club. A little selection of her selections: Wifey by Next, Gimme More by Britney, Premier Gaou by Magic System, Exceeder by Mason, plus Short Dick Man and WAP in cosmic unalignment. There was amapiano, baile funk, reggaeton, UKG … like being led around a world of music by the most enthusiastic but easily distracted tour guide. We appreciate you Jyoty!
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This Warpaint set has reached Disco/Very and still sounds funky af. The prowl of it.
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Bit of Monkeys pre-amble. Their setlist will be interesting – their current stadium tour has drawn from a relatively wide pool of songs, with the likes of A Certain Romance, Mardy Bum (nicely slowed down a little), I Wanna Be Yours and Sculptures of Anything Goes getting rotated in and out. It’ll be a shame if some of their ballads get cut in favour of the crowdpleasing indie-rockers, as for me they’re equally strong, and unique to them. At Hillsborough Park in Sheffield where I saw them a couple of weeks back, lots of people filed to the bar during, say, Perfect Sense, and I wanted to frogmarch them back and be like: listen, you fools! Also, the strongest song of the whole night wasn’t one of the old big hits but actually Body Paint off their new album The Car, rehearsed to a T and done with a brutally invigorating and long guitar solo by Alex Turner. I’m buzzing to hear it all again.
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I’m still vibing off the Foo Fighters performance – I’m far from a religious fan and have found some of the recent albums deeply dull, but the difference between those stodgy studio efforts and that bright, oxygenated live set was night and day. The kind of moment where all the gubbins about Glastonbury being full of leyline energy actually feels totally, verifiably, scientifically-peer-reviewed accurate.
“All you need to succeed are: balls!” Sparks are over on the Park stage, and while I’ve missed them on their recent live runs, everyone who has seen them has come away saying it’s like being touched by the hand of pop god. Russell is bouncing around like the aforementioned balls he so reveres: not many 74-year-old frontmen have his pep.
Our Gwilym says Cate Blanchett is there! And has done some dancing on stage to The Girl is Crying in Her Latte.
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Royal Blood review
Royal Blood take the Pyramid stage, between Foo Fighters and Arctic Monkeys, having made a rod for their own back: at the end of May, the two piece sparked a media storm when, at Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Dundee, they condemned the crowd for not being sufficiently appreciative of real “rock music”.
They play Glastonbury in the shadow of what might uncharitably be called a tantrum – and yet they don’t acknowledge it, before or after opener Out of the Black. Indeed it’s a brisk, businesslike set they play to a large but dispersed and distracted crowd as the sun starts to set over Worthy Farm.
As the hour-long show progresses, it starts to feel like Royal Blood’s rock music is less a gauntlet thrown down for the crowd than an accurate description, as warranted by the advertising standards authority: there’s distortion, there are dynamic changes, drum solos, devils’ horns and protruding tongues and posturing to send any self-styled “poptimists” quaking beyond the hill. But what are Royal Blood seeking to express, beyond that they are Here To Rock You?
Of course it’s a matter of taste – but more than any band I’ve seen in recent memory, Royal Blood feel contrived in a cynical way: a low-overhead, easily-wrangleable concession to the (sizeable) part of the industry still catering to people who think “real” music is played with instruments. The name is apt: on stage, the duo communicate a lofty authority that feels unearned and doesn’t translate to real presence. From the enthusiastic response, however, Royal Blood fill a gap in the market and they do so competently, with all the trappings of flair and charisma and “authenticity”. At the end of their hour-long set, however, all you are left with is noise.
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“Let’s try to break the record at a festival for the amount of people on shoulders”, Fred Again tells his mega-crowd. This fills me with dread as I once tried to hoist a girlfriend on my very downward-sloping shoulders during Frank Ocean at Lovebox and it didn’t go well and we had a huge argument. My thoughts are with all my narrow-shouldered brothers at this time.
He drops Marea (We’ve Lost Dancing), which, for all its slightly annoying Blessed Madonna monologue, has one of Fred’s very best melodies – and what a sight to see this crowd losing their minds to a song that was about the repression of euphoria and humanity during the pandemic. Then it’s the strains of Your Loving Arms by Billie Ray Martin. He’s absolutely hammering the crowd’s joy buttons.
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It’s Warpaint over on the Woodsies stage – a band whom I can never decide are either massively over or underrated. But when they’re good – New Song; Champion – they’re absolutely incredible. They’re currently loping through a funky rendition of Bees, and as ever they whip up a very particular drama, all desert wind and longing. Ok, they’re underrated!
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Hozier's secret set reviewed
Tell you what, if you don’t get Hozier – the heartstruck Irish singer with a red mane and a golden voice – seeing him live does go some way towards helping you understand why he inspires such fervour in his fans. There are plenty of other people on stage at Woodsies to fill out his sound – a cellist, several extra guitarists, three backing singers – and there is an uncharacteristic quiet reverence in the tent when he sings his filthy, searching love songs. There’s an interesting Celtic influence to his songs, especially when he gets to folksy fingerpicking and big drums, and you can’t fault the guy’s vocal range. Some songs show off his falsetto, others live in his throat, though there’s never quite enough grit for me.
To Be Alone is a song, oof. There’s a huge reaction from the crowd for that, voices rising heavenwards along with his. Irish flags enthusiastically wave. Work Song gets a great response, the unsubtle but heartfelt lyrics – “Cause my baby’s sweet as can be, she give me toothaches just from kissin’ me” echoed back at him – as does the singalong Someone New. “He’s such a good lookin’ boy!” says a guy standing near me, with a mixture of admiration and envy.
Despite being surrounded by people having a religious experience, I am bored for the second half of the set. Hozier doesn’t have quite enough differentiation, enough real bangers, to fill a full hour. But when he closes, predictably, with Take Me to Church, the secular hymn about sex that was his breakout song (and that also made him a bit of a queer icon), the atmosphere in the Woodsies tent is spine-tingling. Everyone knows every word, and they ring out beautifully. Strangers embrace. Lads grip each other by the back of the neck and sing into each others’ faces. I don’t quite get it, but I’m glad to witness it nonetheless.
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That’s two for two in biggest Glastonbury crowds in recent memory this afternoon: in the middle of that Foo Fighters crowd earlier I could see it stretching back to areas usually reserved for snoozy people in camping chairs; now, Fred Again has absolutely taken over the depth and breadth of the Other stage field.
He’s now playing his remix of Frank Ocean’s Chanel and segues into an edit of Sabrina Benaim’s performance poem Explaining My Depression to My Mother – underlining his credentials as a DJ in touch with the psychic unrest of the pandemic generation.
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Fred Again’s gone full Westlife on the Other stage, doing some very earnest balladeering with a piano, before segueing into Danielle (Smile On My Face). “Can you believe this evening, ow bu-i-ful?” Come on Frederick, you don’t need to drop your Ts.
Hi everyone, Ben Beaumont-Thomas here, taking over from Laura for the rest of the night, as we cruise towards Arctic Monkeys’ laryngitis-free headline set. Having seen them on tour in Sheffield a couple of weeks back, I’m very excited for anyone seeing them in their current form for the first time: firmly channelling the snot of youth with both nostrils while the newer, self-consciously refined material is a huge pleasure too. Yoooooorkshire!
The Mary Wallopers reviewed!
Crow’s Nest, 7pm
The Crow’s Nest is Glastonbury’s hidden gem – an atmospheric tent at the top of the Park area with some jaw-dropping views of the festival site. It has no pre-announced lineup but instead hoovers up the buzziest bands playing at the festival for intimate and often rowdy semi-secret sets.
And “rowdy” barely begins to describe the Mary Wallopers, a ferocious Irish five-piece who mix traditional barroom folk with stinging social commentary. They’re a band who have to be seen live to be properly understood, turning every venue they visit into a massive, undulating ceilidh. Every song – typical subject matter: booze, shagging, hating British monarchs – prompts a sea of flailing arms and grinning faces. The pace never lets up, so much so that even the ballads somehow end up in mosh pits. Euphoric.
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Shygirl reviewed!
Park, 7.45pm
Colossal trek that it is, being on the Park stage can sometimes feel like an unfair disadvantage. It’s a way of isolating the more interesting stuff away from casual eyes. But that’s not the case for Shygirl. With a crowd of fierce disciples ready to show up – and out – the London DJ-meets-rapper-meets-singer turns one of the farthest reaches of the festival into a queer-centric space of celebration and flirtation, the very epitome of getting the party started.
To call Shygirl sex-positive is a bit like calling Glastonbury a sizeable festival, but as she conducts her way through a string of groaning and moaning hyperpop-garage bangers, you realise just how impressive it is that she can command such reaction without twerking up a storm herself. The music simply does what it needs to do: with shades of MIA and Charli XCX, Schlut gets things off to a solid start, while Bawdy elicits huge reaction, a giddy jamboree of writhing waists and bouncing bumbags.
A vision in pink, she often need only gesture to raise a cheer; a chic dominatrix facilitator rather than full participant. “Whooooose from the streets in here? You’ll know this one then!” she announces before Slime, while Freak has us “on the bed, on the floor”, taking the piped porno moans up an extra notch. She slows things down to a more romantic sweetness with Honey, but by her own admission, “I can’t do sweet without talking about coochie ... who else likes coochie?” Unsurprisingly, she then plays a song titled Coochie, and the crowd go wild, matching every note.
The Glasto locals taking in a pleasant sunset just up the hill must surely be appalled, but when she praises us at the end of its delicious sing-song chorus – “Well done” – you’re left feeling just the right amount of filthy, ready and willing to surrender.
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Also from backstage, Very Rock N Roll band Royal Blood currently sound like someone whipping an elephant. I’ve never been happier to be sitting at the laptop.
Semantic delight: Fred Again is technically written with two full stops after the name. On the screen announcing his main stage performance, there are three full stops. I hope there’s a full backstage strop happening about this right now.
Foo Fighters – reviewed
Here’s Ben’s review of the Churnups – AKA the Foo Fighters – on the main stage!
A few Foo Fighters snaps…
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Foo Fighters review incoming...
Here’s a teaser of Ben Beaumont-Thomas’s review: “It’s one of the cruel rules of love and attraction that the more you try to impress someone, the less you’ll succeed; no-one likes a try-hard. And so it proves with rock’n’roll: heavily produced, overthought and desperate to please bands just don’t resonate like the ones who are doing it to please themselves. After a few albums where Foo Fighters have felt like they were trying too hard to do the thing they once did so naturally – rock out – this secret set at Glastonbury, loosened of expectation, sees them finally relax back into what made them great.
“They were billed as the Churnups but this audience has clearly long cracked the code: it’s one of the biggest crowds ever seen on this field, stretching back to verdant turf once staked out by the Rolling Stones, Chemical Brothers and (improbably) the Levellers in the annals of Pyramid big-hitters. “We’re not good at secrets,” smiles Dave Grohl at one point…”
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From Josh Halliday: “If anyone’s wondering where all the kids are at Glastonbury, they appear to have descended en masse to see Joey Bada$$. Huge streams of teens leaving the West Holts Stage, while a noticeably older – and more sensibly dressed – crowd drifts in to see Young Fathers. About half the lads who left seemed to be wearing retro football shirts, as mentioned on the blog earlier – it definitely feels as though someone decided Friday is 90s football shirt day.
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Staff member who will remain nameless: “Is Fred Again a Right Said Fred tribute band?” We can but wish.
It’s 20 minutes until Royal Blood take to the main stage and the crowd can give their implied referendum on whether they are or are not “rock music”, as per their tantrum protest at Radio 1’s Big Weekend a few weeks ago about receiving what they perceived as insufficient appreciation from the crowd. If you’re yet to make up your mind, maybe my comment piece from last week will help sway you one way or another. Either way, I suspect they may suffer from the schedule clash with ginormo club crowdpleaser Fred Again on the Other stage at the same time.
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Meanwhile on the other stage, Lauren Mayberry of Chvrches has covered herself in blood.
And up on Woodsies, the secret set is Hozier.
The Courteeners – reviewed!
Woodsides, 6pm
“This is for anyone who was here 15 years ago,” Liam Fray says before launching into the chiming chords of Bide Your Time. It underlines what a curiously robust proposition the Courteeners have been. Somehow their lumpen landfill indie has endured into a third decade.
They’re still as bewilderingly popular as before: they filled out Heaton Park in Manchester earlier this month. Glastonbury can’t quite match that huge hometown crowd: while the Woodsies tent is just about full, it’s not the overflowing bedlam seen here in recent years for sets from the likes of Gerry Cinnamon. (Although in fairness they’ve drawn the short straw here, scheduled against the Foo Fighters.)
At this stage of their career there’s little chance of an any surprises – a change of direction into gabber or free jazz. Instead we very much get the tried and tested: mid-tempo plodders with top-of-your-lungs choruses. In fairness it’s a formula that works: a rousing Not 19 Forever sees the air fill with flare smoke. But there is a misstep in covering It Must Be Love, a genuinely great song made famous by Madness, that rather shows up the relative meagreness of the Courteeners’ own output.
• This review was amended at 11.31pm on 23 June 2023 to say that the Courteneers filled Heaton Park in Manchester, not Old Trafford
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Foo Fighters have dedicated Everlong to their late drummer Taylor Hawkins. Ben Beaumont-Thomas says: “It’s striking that for all Grohl saying they have only an hour and have to get through songs, they’re doing really long arrangements and the breezy extemporised vibe really works. It’s the opposite of going through the hits - while still playing the hits.”
From the Foos: “Dave Grohl brought on his daughter, Violet, for Show Me How, from the new LP. She acquits herself really well – chews gum and looks supremely unbothered about playing to 100k people.”
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Alexis Petridis says: “Foo Fighters pretty appealingly raw and ragged, lots of songs thus far at hardcore punk tempos, and Dave Grohl just broke into the riff from Paranoid by Black Sabbath. Definite sense of “This is our roots”, ie: “We are still the same band”.
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Surprising absolutely no one, the Foo Fighters are the mysterious Churnups, playing the main stage right now! Sounds invigorating from where we are backstage at least: feedback from the field incoming. Ben Beaumont Thomas says: “It’s almost a showcase for new drummer Josh Freese - long songs with lots of drum fills and beefy guitar wigouts.”
Also, hello, Laura Snapes taking over the next three hours’ liveblogging.
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Unknown Mortal Orchestra reviewed
The Park, 4.45pm
New Zealander Ruban Nielson has quietly amassed one of the best catalogues in alternative music: five albums (and some extraneous, long, meandering offcuts) of lo-fi psych-pop and funk with the faintest sense of a hip-hop beatmaker’s sensibility. It means he essentially has a greatest hits set to roll out at festivals, particularly because the material from new album V – made as ever with bandmate Jacob Portrait – is some of his best. This is the Platonic ideal of a mid-afternoon Glasto set: laidback and three-pints blissful, but also with a bit of pep and bite to keep the head nodding rather than nodding off. The riff of opener The Garden sounds gorgeous rolling around the slope of the Park stage, and Nielson – while not a naturally robust vocalist – makes the most of his melancholic croon on the likes of Nadja. There’s a heady, happy vibe under the baking sun; a positive mindset to launch you into the evening’s big hitters.
Foo Fighters appear to confirm they will play surprise show
Foo Fighters appear to have confirmed they will be playing a surprise show on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury, ending weeks of frenzied speculation.
An hour before a set advertised to be played by a mystery band dubbed The ChurnUps, the American rockers posted a photo of flags in the festival crowd – one with the phrase Churn It Up brandished across it – and tagged the post #Glastonbury2023.
A separate tweet from the account of the ChurnUps was signed off by ‘DG’, the initials of frontman Dave Grohl.
The online posts appeared to confirm weeks of increasingly frenzied speculation about the identity of the Churn Ups, the fake name given to a secret group set to play shortly before headliners Arctic Monkeys.
Short of being spotted at Pilton Tesco, their appearance was as good as confirmed earlier this month when the band posted a tweet to their fans, saying “it feels good to see you, churning up these emotions together”.
Shortly before the band were due on stage, Texas frontwoman Sharleen Spiteri gave further credence to the speculation when she said: “I was chatting earlier to a particular frontman drummer – I wonder who that could be …” – prompting cheers from the tens of thousands in front of the Pyramid stage.
Their performance will come just over a year after Taylor Hawkins, the band’s drummer, was found dead in his hotel room during a tour in South America last March.
The band, who headlined Glastonbury in 2017, are due to begin a world tour in Canada next month.
The world’s biggest greenfield festival has always hosted secret sets, but this one on a Friday evening on the Pyramid stage is by far one of the most high-profile.
Emily Eavis, whose father Michael founded the festival half a century ago, said earlier on Friday that the ChurnUps were a band who could easily headline the festival.
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Louis Cole reviewed
West Holts, 4pm
Decked out in a preposterous pair of leaf-covered parachute pants and backed by a big band clad in skeleton costumes, Louis Cole cements his reputation as the king of what Pitchfork calls New Weird Jazz. This is jazz delivered with a semi-ironic wink, full of strange postmodern inside jokes and a loose, lo-fi vibe. There’s something raw and underperformed about his band’s performance here, their extended funk freakouts just about staying on the right side of sloppy. Everything feels done on the fly. At one point Cole suddenly decides to skip a track because it’s too “soft” for a festival. It turns out to be a smart choice because Cole and his band are at their best when they’re blasting through tracks like his breakout song Bank Account with high energy. He’s backed by an extremely game trio of vocalists, bouncing and dipping and writhing around the stage, barely staying still all set. Cole is scarcely any more sedate, hopping between keys and kit several times during each song. It’s an exuberant Friday afternoon palate cleanser, setting things nicely before the sun goes down and the festival turns feral.
Carly Rae Jepsen reviewed
Other Stage, 3.45pm
OK, I know we are five hours from the headliners but, as far as I’m concerned, the festival has been topped and concluded by Carly Rae Jepsen already. There is a specific joy to a pop star who exists for a niche audience who in turn treat them like a world-beating star, singing along word-perfect, revelling in every move. The faithful have assembled at the Other Stage today. Anyone who wrote off CRJ as a one-hit wonder based on her 2012 smash Call Me Maybe has lost out on a world of joy.
This has been one of Glastonbury’s first – of many – singalong moments to nostalgia-tinged pop with one foot in the 80s. One of the purest pleasures of Jepsen is that she seems to enjoy her music as much as her fans do, giddily bounding around the stage. She reflects their devotion to her catalogue by confidently playing one of her greatest songs, Run Away With Me, as her third number, because she knows there are manifold joys still to come. The song starts with a wistful, expressive saxophone solo, and she faces off with the sax player before the crowd yell along to a chorus that expresses the purest essence of Jeppo: “Take me! To the! Feeling!”
Jepsen’s music is all about that: cutting the small talk and just getting straight to the potent part, with almost serial-killer precision; it’s restraining-order pop. “Who gave you eyes like that, said you could keep them,” she sings on I Really Like You, like a Top 40 Ed Gein. “I didn’t just come here to dance if you know what I mean,” she sings on I Didn’t Just Come Here to Dance, and you slightly worry about exactly what she means. “I’m never getting over it,” on The Loneliest Time. She is fiercely intense, a quality that is reflected in her endearingly rabid performance. There is not one emotion that she doesn’t act out in her brilliantly literal dance moves, nor a moment when she isn’t jumping around as hard as her audience.
Some people have written Jepsen off as a flop because she has not ascended to the world-dominating heights of Call Me Maybe again, but it seems to me that she enjoys a transcendent pop sweet spot, unpressed by commercial pressures and well aware of how to serve the people who love her. And she knows it: the only other pop star in recent memory I can recall enjoying themselves this much is Rosalía, and in an era of trauma-pop, it’s easy to forget what a simple pleasure that is.
There are a few lulls but they are excusable moments in which Jepsen can get her breath back after the moments of euphoria. The universe seemingly agrees: after a welcomely shady afternoon – blessed, à la the Jepsen song, by a Western Wind – the sun comes out for closer Cut to the Feeling, yet another imperative to cut the crap and just enjoy things for what they are.
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Texas reviewed
Pyramid, 4.15pm
At the Cabaret tent earlier this morning, in conversation with the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis, Texas frontwoman Sharleen Spiteri spoke self-effacingly of her band’s remarkable 35-year run and range of hits: “Texas, who are those old bastards? Oh – they did that song?”
It’s true that in 2023, some of the breadth of Texas’ back catalogue may have receded from view, but the hits are instantly recognisable, still potent and impressively varied: Inner Smile, Black Eyed Boy, Halo, I Don’t Want a Lover (the first song Spiteri ever wrote, she said this morning), and Say What You Want, to name the first to come to mind.
As such it’s a packed field when Texas take to the Pyramid stage just after 4pm on Friday, in an inspired choice of programming for the (sizeable!) over-thirties demographic of the audience, at least. Of course the hits play best with the crowd, but what’s most striking about Texas’s set is her inspirational, Jagger-esque energy as a frontwoman – contrasted with her humble gratitude. It’s clear that Spiteri doesn’t take the audience for granted.
“I would just like to say thank you so, so much,” she says. “I know there’s loads of bands on. It’s been 35 years since we started.” (“Oh my god,” says a woman behind me.)
She rewards us with “another chance to dance”, launching into Mr Haze, which samples Donna Summers’ Love Unkind, making it seem more familiar than suggested by the 2021 release date. True to Spiteri’s prediction, a different woman passing behind me says: “I know this song!”
The labels of “adult contemporary “ or “easy listening rock” that might be applied to Texas belie the songwriting and musical nous that is necessary for them to last through decades: the illustrative outro to Black Eyed Boy, received gladly by the crowd, demonstrates Spiteri’s powerful voice.
This is followed up swiftly by Inner Smile – when even Spiteri seems taken aback by the audience’s enthusiasm (“bloody hell!”) – and Say What You Want. The sun comes out for the end of the latter, concluding a rich and rewarding set.
“I just want to say one thing,” says the famously outspoken Spiteri before her final song. “Emily Eavis is a massive supporter of female musicians, not because she’s ticking a fucking box ... She’s putting us on this stage because she thinks we’re fucking amazing.”
It’s testament to Spiteri and Texas’s mild manner and priorities that they choose to conclude their time on Glastonbury’s most prized stage with a cover – indeed, a singalong. “If you don’t know this, fucking go home!” says Spiteri before launching into Suspicious Minds, a song everyone is always happy to hear. It’s a fitting conclusion for a band clearly happy to be here.
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Joe, far right, tells us about this group’s outfits: “We’re in a syndicate of about thirty of us who always try for tickets, and then pick an outfit theme. Last year was Kit Kat Klub Kouture; this year is Denim Divas. Tomorrow we’re doing Barbie and Ken. We love the Guardian liveblog; keep up your good work!”
Flo reviewed
Woodsies, 2pm
Walking out to a fully packed tent at your very first Glastonbury does take some serious nerves, and at first, British R&B sensations Flo do appear to be bricking it. The opening lines of Not My Job are pretty shaky, but when they find their footing and those harmonies pop out, the results are properly impressive, making it clear why they have earned their Destiny’s Grandchildren tag.
As the set goes on, flickers of their personality begin to show, gaining confidence with every sneaky reassuring look at one another or tumbled chat with the crowd. “We didn’t think it would be this big!” marvels Stella, while Reneè adds some nervous state-the-obvious pivotals: “We’re a girl group, we sing”. It falls to Jorja – the group’s most assertive performer – to let us know that they will be singing songs from their debut EP, The Lead.
In a festival set, the samey nature of Flo’s “don’t need no man” approach to songwriting feels a little exposed, but there still are several home runs. Another Guy, is a gorgeous 90s low-key garage ballad in the vein of their idol Brandy, while Losing You – a solid addition to the girlgroup heartbreak ballad ouvre – is elevated by how much they’re clearly enjoying playing vocal gymnastics, prompting several women in the front rows to snap their fingers and holler “Saaaaaang!” in approval of their skyscraper notes. It opens them up for a Y2K-tastic cover of Jamelia’s Superstar, before the big finish of Fly Girl and Cardboard Box.
The logistics are all on point, and the vocals are truly sensational, but Flo’s finishing flourish will be when they find a touch more looseness, a deeper sense of spontaneous joy in their own obvious talents. With the crowd clearly on side though, they’ll likely find their, ahem, flow, soon enough.
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Bru C reviewed
12.45pm, Woodsies
An absolutely massive crowd turned up at the Woodsies stage earlier – FKA John Peel – to see Nottingham rapper Bru-C, a ludicrously energetic MC whose ferocious take on basslines is, surely, jolting awake anyone still trying to sleep off last night’s hangover. I’ve felt profoundly listless all morning, but Bru-C’s aggressive, hyper-melodic rap certainly shakes me out of it – even if the 2010s brostep vibes of his production do occasionally get a little too intense to bear.
Judging by the crowd, I seem to be alone on that front: everyone around me is absolutely losing it. I feel like I’m watching the keynote address at the Glastonbury lad convention – I’m surrounded by lads of all creeds and colours, shapes and sizes. I might be the only man here who’s wearing a shirt; a shirtless child in a bucket hat next to me has been breakdancing for the entirety of the set.
After whipping the crowd into an absolutely insane frenzy with TMO (Turn Me On) – a Luude collab which, despite being released less than two weeks ago, the entire crowd knows – Bru-C takes a second to get real. “I’ve been battling with mental illness for a while,” he says. “I think it’s important to speak about it here when everyone’s having a good time, because it’s real.” The introspective moment doesn’t last long: soon enough, he’s leading the crowd in a sing-a-long of his hit Sunrise. The duality of lad! Closing with his hit You & I, Bru-C matches the sheer euphoria of his crowd, clearly ecstatic about even being here.
The ChurnUps’ Twitter account – which has been sharing terrible puns for days now – has just posted this classic festival query … but the sign-off is what’s interesting here:
Best burger on site?
— The Churnups (@TheChurnups) June 23, 2023
DG
DG? Now who could that be? David Guetta? David Gilmour? Or … Dave Grohl? Guess that’s as good as confirmed the Foos.
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There are more kids than ever at this year’s Glastonbury, apparently, due to a post-Covid influx of rocker/raver babies – and you can certainly see a lot of babies strapped to parents’ torsos, toddlers asleep in wagons, and older kids atop mum’s shoulders so they can see the performances at the bigger stages. Our reporters meet some of the kids at Worthy Farm, and the parents brave enough to bring ’em:
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ADG7 reviewed
West Holts, 2.30pm
Have you ever enjoyed an impromptu Korean lesson in the middle of a Glastonbury set before? No? You’re missing out. Ak Dan Gwang Chil, AKA ADG7, brought their amazingly danceable take on Korean traditional music to the West Holts stage earlier in front of a small but extremely enthusiastic crowd. We had two people playing two different types of zither. We had a flautist in sunglasses absolutely killing it. We had double-percussion keeping an irrepressible rhythm the whole time, soloed over by about six different instruments during different songs. We had three singers, one in a stovepipe hat, chiffon shirt and billowing red trousers, and two wearing colourful paper hats. The audience was totally along for this ride, bouncily swaying from one foot to the other, arms aloft.
Everyone plays with jazz-esque fluidity and precision. The vocals – whether soaring, chanting, or busting out whip-fast lyrics – are perfectly on beat, but annoyingly we can’t actually hear them for the first song and a half, as the mics refused to work. Nonetheless, we could still admire the enviably restrained choreography and brain-blitzingly relentless rhythm. “This next song is about a magic spell that will make all of you happy!”, we’re told when the mics finally start working again, and I’m reminded why it’s always worth going to see a band you’ve never heard of at a festival like this.
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The cloud is coming in here on the farm and honestly, it’s probably just as well – my nose is peeling from the earlier sun, and a Friday heatwave often results in some very unhappy heat-stroked festival-goers on Saturday. I just heard Call Me Maybe wafting across from the Other Stage, where Carly Rae Jepsen is in full flow.
Stefflon Don reviewed
Pyramid Stage, 2.45pm
Those hard seltzers that everyone experimentally rehydrated with this morning are kicking in and the Pyramid crowd is primed for a set of waist-winding, bum-shaking rap and pop from Stefflon Don and her six neon-pink-clad dancers. Said crowd is about as easy to please as they come – the sun is actually out! Cares begone! – which is just as well as while this set has its simple pleasures, it’s not the finest we’ll see this weekend. Steff lets the backing track do the heavy lifting for the singing and even some of the rapping – a possible loss of confidence, and a shame given that her rapid-fire flow at other points is nimble and poised on top of the beat.
Most of the energy spikes come from other people’s tracks that she has a bit part in (Boasty, Best Friend, a fun and twerk-filled Bum Bum Tam Tam) or no part in at all (Lil Uzi Vert’s I Wanna Rock, an excuse for a bit of dancing off mic). Ultimately, she just doesn’t have the songs to match her considerable stage presence and star quality, aside from the closing 16 Shots and Hurtin’ Me, which by this point feel really quite old. She announces her debut album to come later this year, and here’s hoping it can catch up with her calibre.
Folk waiting for The Churnups *cough* Foo Fighters *cough* to set foot on the Pyramid Stage later will be treated to a new digital artwork from David Hockney, going live at 5.30pm, courtesy of the Cultural Institute of Radical Contemporary Arts. Here’s the lowdown:
“Incorporating AI into his practice for the very first time, Hockney collaborated with CIRCA to remove the figures from his acrylic painted series The Dancers (2014), replacing them with an empty, computer generated landscape. Created by the celebrated artist on his iPad in Normandy, France, the new one-minute video titled, I LIVED IN BOHEMIA BOHEMIA IS A TOLERANT PLACE recalls the work of Matisse … Hockney will transform the Glastonbury festival stage to promote ideals of togetherness and Bohemianism.” (Very on-brand for this festival.)
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Hello campers! Keza here, taking over the liveblog from Gwilym. I’ve spent the day so far weaving through the throngs, jumping up and down to the Hives, taking in some Korean jazz-pop, waiting in various long, long queues – and being charged £7.50 for an ice cream and a can of Coke – so, the full Glastonbury experience, in short.
Carly Rae Jepsen has just started her set – look out for a review of that – and in the next few hours we’ve also got Texas on the Pyramid Stage and woozy psychedelic rock from Unknown Mortal Orchestra.
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The Hives reviewed
Other Stage, 12pm
Fresh off a wee stint supporting Arctic Monkeys on tour, the Hives are here to wake us all up with their bouncy, shouty, instantly recognisable garage-rock stompers ahead of their touring mates’ headline set this evening. It is SCORCHING out here, and they come out in black suits embellished with white lighting bolts and and quavers. They must be absolutely roasting alive, but you wouldn’t know it – frontman Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist jump-kicks around the stage flinging his mic around with the confidence and abandon of a yo-yo champion during Main Offender.
Perhaps improbably for a Swede, Amlqvist channels big Southern preacher energy for this entire set, working the crowd up between songs - “140bpm is the tempo of EXCITED HUMAN BEINGS! PUT YOUR HANDS TOGETHER!” he yells, before the band launches into Walk Idiot Walk. Everyone’s really bouncing now, despite the lethargy-inducing heat. You can’t resist riffs this huge, busted out effortlessly by guitarist Nicholaus Arson whilst his brother bigs the band up between songs like a circus ringmaster. “Next up is one of the finest compositions in rock and roll! I can’t believe our luck that we are the band that get to play it. The lyrics are PROFOUND,” he jokes, before kicking into Come On (whose lyrics, you may remember, are in fact comprised entirely of those two words). This is GREAT fun.
It was always gonna be Hate to Say I Told You So from the overgrown indie rock kids in this audience. It’s made even better when Almqvist transforms it into an unlikely a capella number, getting the crowd to sing the riff (more tunefully than normal for a Glastonbury crowd, actually, perhaps because it is not yet 2pm on Friday). They close with their newest song, Countdown to Shutdown, and send us off grinning to enjoy the rest of the festival. “We’re having such a great time in England we might fuckin stay,” Pelle says – with tunes like these, they’ll always be super welcome.
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Alabaster DePlume reviewed
The Park, 12.45pm
“I don’t know anything … but I fucking love that you’re alive … my friends, let’s have some fun playing together”. So opens Alabaster DePlume on the Park stage, inviting both his band and audience to embrace their inner child and “treat the music like a toy”. The Londoner’s careering mix of saxophone, Gregorian chants and spoken word speaks to exactly that – an impish form of jazz which wriggles with the thrill of testing things out, not caring if the results are different each time.
In fact, the risk of potential chaos seems to be what drives his set; regularly revisiting this theme of gratitude for the present moment, he looks utterly delirious to be there, reminding the crowd to appreciate themselves and their preciousness in the face of life’s many challenges. It could feel like hippy Glastonbury nonsense, but when in musical Rome, there’s something deeply intoxicating about such a freewheeling, free-spirited approach – a happy moment of grounding before hurtling straight back into clashfinder chaos.
The sounds of Three Lions are currently wafting over to the Guardian cabin from the Other stage, as the Lightning Seeds bash through the classics. A very loud refrain of “It’s coming home” from the crowd there.
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This is the sort of unsubstantiated gossip that we go wild for here on the Glasto liveblog. If anyone has any pics, please do share!
Chris Martin is currently doing a steward shift @ Gate A #oxfam
— Secretglasto (@secretglasto) June 23, 2023
In the first of the Guardian’s onstage talks with the great and good of the music world, our Alexis Petridis had a good old natter with Texas’s Sharleen Spiteri. Here’s our write up:
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Yaya Bey reviewed
West Holts, 1pm
Swigging from a bottle of water that’s roughly the size of a toddler, genre-skipping New Yorker Yaya Bey is melting along with the rest of us in a real scorcher of an afternoon. Her jazz ballads, though, waft like a warm and welcoming breeze, including a cover of Willy Wonka’s Pure Imagination that feels like a true invitation into wonder. But it’s not all mellow magic – that heat invites a bracing spiel about the climate crisis: “We need to consider eating the rich … The orcas is mad, they’re flipping shit over – we should be flipping shit over. Be angry!”
She gets everyone moving for Pour Up (“If you don’t dance to this get the fuck out”) and singing along for the lilting reggae numbers in her catalogue. Despite complaining that her voice got damaged by the recent wildfire smoke in Toronto, she lilts and cruises around her upper register with mastery, and having soldiered through the heat, has certainly won new fans by the end. There’s a final swig of water: “Someone bring the golf cart, I need to sit my black ass down!”
Will Elton’s performance enter the Glasto pantheon? He’s got some competition, as Alexis Petridis’ ranking of the greatest headline performances shows.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in conversation
Leftfield, 12pm
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has spoken about her experience being incarcerated in Iran at a talk at Glastonbury on Friday afternoon.
“The Iranian government would sacrifice their own citizens to feed their own agenda, to the point that they don’t even care about a young mother and her young child,” she said. “I was used as a political pawn for something that predated me. The debt the British government owed the Iranian government was before I was even born.”
During the talk, she spoke about how seeing a supportive banner at the festival four years ago gave her hope:
“While I was in prison I had very little access to the outside world. So I don’t actually know what was happening, I knew there was a campaign going on, but I didn’t exactly know the details or what was happening.”
She added: “But my parents did take one copy of a very low quality picture smuggled into Evin which was a banner from Glastonbury 2019, we’re all going to cry now, that showed Free Nazanin ... that shows how far your story can get if people care about you.”
While some of us were stumbling out of our tents this morning, the more alert Glasto-goers were squat thrusting away in the Theatre and Circus area as Joe Wicks hosted a live PE session. Our man Jonny Weeks was on hand to photograph it, presumably while doing some burpees.
Adrian has travelled from Mexico to see Arctic Monkeys tonight, and plans to stay on the front row all day, sheltered under a flag reading “I just wanted to be one of the Arctic Monkeys” - a reference to the Alex Turner lyric “I just wanted to be one of the Strokes”.
Why has he come all this way? “Arctic Monkeys are a part of my journey, a part of growing up. The connection I feel with them is incredible.” He cites Alex Turner’s lyrics as the band’s greatest strength, and is a big admirer of their two most recent lounge-lizardy albums, Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino and The Car. Is he on his own, then? “Yes – it’s hard to get Glastonbury tickets!” He proudly waves another flag – this one of his home country.
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The indisputable event at this year’s festival will be Elton John’s farewell set on Sunday evening. There will be tears, there will be boas, there will be audience members sounding like strangled cats as they try and hit the chorus of Tiny Dancer. Ahead of Elt’s set, the Guardian’s Dave Simpson has explained how the Rocket Man has stayed at the centre of pop culture.
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Breaking: Wellies are out!
Star Feminine Band reviewed
West Holts, 11.30am
Star Feminine Band are the platonic ideal of a festival opener. It’s 11.30am, the sun is already perilously high, and these six girls from Benin absolutely exude radiance. In 2016, multi-instrumentalist André Balaguemon started a music workshop for local girls; in 2020, the band of girls and teenagers, including his two daughters (Angélique on drums and Grâce Marina on keys), had formed, and they recorded their self-titled debut album in two days. Their sound brings together highlife, bubu, rumba and local waama rhythms, carrying their messages of optimism and the empowerment of African women.
Their message is one of unity, as is their look. They all wear conch necklaces, red ribbons on their heads and blue and yellow traditional print dresses, with white spots painted on their skin, and often move together, seemingly spontaneously breaking into co-ordinated shimmies.
Angélique plays a traditional drum kit at the back; Urrice Borikapei and Sandrine Ouei drum at the front, using traditional instruments including a bright pink calabash. They give the band its polyrhythmic, shimmying foundations – as well as an array of fantastic dance routines, and at one point flipping from front to back on the ground and kicking joyfully, and, impressively, throwing shakers back and forth between them without dropping a beat. Anchoring them is bassist Julienne Sayi, one of the coolest to ever do it, at one point falling to her knees to bludgeon the living daylights out of her instrument, and concluding their last song playing it on top of her head.
All six girls sing, sometimes in gorgeous close harmonies, others in call-and-response; staccato and then trilling. Coupled with Anne Sayi’s nimble, neon guitar playing, it lends their music its vibrant sense of colour and total unpredictability, the various elements wriggling like lurid caterpillars, tumbling like gems. They are true virtuosos, and so versatile too – going from antic playfulness to deeper synth grooves plied by keyboard player Grâce Marina; battering percussion as they showcase a traditional Benin dance and a jangling song in French. (The musician they most remind me of is the late French great Lizzy Mercier Descloux, particularly her 1981 album Mambo Nassau.)
Throughout, the various members speak about the empowerment of women and vociferously against the exploitation of children. They all live together in the same house and go to school together, they explain, before they all take a fantastic solo on their closing song (Grâce Marina’s fusion playing is especially good). They are living proof of their mission, a gorgeous band in every sense, and the best start to the weekend I can imagine.
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These seagulls, assumedly waiting for their fish-finger sandwich, were very noisy in showing their appreciation for “Michael Davis”. I don’t envy her having to tote him around all day – though I guess he provides some shade?
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I reckon one in six people at Glasto is rocking some sort of vintage football shirt. Just this morning I’ve seen Tranmere, Hearts and West Brom, as well as about 50 Manchester United shirts (boo). In fact there are so many kits here that there’s a Twitter account dedicated to collating them all.
Also the must-have headgear accessory this year is the Wales bucket hat. I’ve seen a tonne of them. Here’s a nice Guardian piece about the bucket hat phenomenon:
The Master Musicians of Joujouka reviewed
Pyramid stage, 12pm
Opening the Pyramid stage – and therefore, spiritually speaking, the whole festival – are The Master Musicians of Joujouka, hailing from a village in the Ahl-Srif mountains in Morocco and playing a style of music that has existed for over a thousand years. Listening to it, you feel caught up in an eternal stream of sound: this is an unbroken performance of drones, fluting melodic patterns and hypnotic drums. Those melodies are played on ghaitas, reed instruments that look and sound like a cross between a clarinet and bagpipe chanter with serpentine and immersive notes that chafe against each other as they surge forward. The drums wouldn’t be out of place in a Hessle Audio techno set elsewhere in the fest: settling into a swaying rhythm that’s then twisted by the arrival of another competing bit.
This being Glasto, people will try and clap along with anything but they quickly give up and get swept into this updraft of cosmic sound. It’s not po-faced though – each master comes out for an occasional shoulder shimmy, and halfway through arrives the village’s septuagenarian cafe owner, who moonlights as pagan goat god Boujeloud, waving olive branches and working the crowd like a pop pro (must be bloody boiling in his goat skins though). We’re suddenly released from the trance and the crowd roars. “Bit of a one hit wonder!” one bloke jokes – yeah, but what a hit.
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Nose flute!
Here’s a lovely piece from the Guardian’s Dave Simpson, where Glasto veterans are paired with first timers for a chinwag. Some great combos here, including Thundercat and Cat Stevens!
All weekend our intrepid reporters are quizzing Glasto’s fashionistas on the motivation behind their fantastic outfits. Here’s Charlie:
“I felt this was the outfit Carly Rae Jepsen deserved; that was my entire thought process when planning it. And it should keep me warm right through till Arctic Monkeys, like a foil blanket at the end of a marathon.”
Glastonbury is surely the world’s most romantic festival – yes, even more so than Download – so it’s no surprise that people want to elope down at Worthy Farm. Famously, Pete Doherty and Kate Moss tied the knot here in 2005 (well, sort of), and I’ve seen numerous proposals in the wee small hours at the stone circle. This morning two lovebirds literally tied the knot in a traditional handfasting ceremony, where partners have their wrists tied together with cloth as a sign of their undying commitment to each other. The pictures are lovely – look how happy they are!
Photographer David Levene was on site early. He met a Michael Eavis flashmob on Wednesday, visited Carhenge for a solstice ceremony and sampled the energy down at the south-east corner.
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The Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner has had a bit of tickle in his throat – well, acute laryngitis – earlier this week, and for a while there it looked like their Pyramid stage set was at risk. But he’s gulped down a load of Strepsils and is good to go, according to Emily Eavis.
Glastonbury has more than 100 stages, so choosing who to see is never easy. Thankfully, the Guardian’s Guide newsletter has made life easier for all of us by asking performers, critics and those in the know who they’re most looking forward to seeing. Nigerian pop, Irish alt-country and some exuberant metal: whatever you’re after, we’ve got you covered!
Our team of photographers were on the ground at Glastonbury from Thursday as the festival sprang to life. Here is a selection of pictures from Jonny Weeks
Thursday may not be part of Glasto proper but it is always a big night in its own right. Last night saw the likes of Mike Skinner, Nia Archives, Sbtrkt and mighty dub-metallers Skindred gracing some of the smaller stages. But that was merely an amuse-bouche. The sun is shining, the halloumi fries are piping hot and the vibes are great.
Glastonbury is GO!
Hello from Worthy Farm, where Glastonbury is finally underway. We’ll be liveblogging all weekend from noon til midnight, bringing you reviews of all the big acts (and a few small ones) as well as loads of great photography and vox pops from some of the many, many punters at the festival. Join us!
