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Sunday at Reading 2024 may go down in history for an unusual first: the only headliner in the festival’s near 70 years who threatens to upstage themselves. On the day that Liam Gallagher arrives to play all of Oasis’s debut album Definitely Maybe in the week of its 30th anniversary, the atmosphere is feverish with rumour that the band are imminently due to announce a reunion.
The mooted comeback is speculated to be a huge run of 2025 reunion shows in London and Manchester, gigs that couldn’t be more hotly anticipated if The Smiths were supporting. Twitter word is that every Premier Inn in London has already been booked out for most of next August, and the buzz on site is just as much for presale details as for Liam’s (somewhat second-best, in the circumstances) show itself.
The rest of the bill has its work cut out to forge more memorable moments today. In the Radio One tent, Good Neighbours arrive on the crystalline tails of Glass Animals with a TikTok hit in the shape of the anthemic “Home”. (The London alt-pop duo both look and sound like Weezer have got heavily into hair bleach, La Roux and The Communards.) And Reneé Rapp’s attempt to steal the day comes catastrophically a cropper in a nightmare set that would make even Lana Del Rey breathe a sigh of relief that she didn’t have such a shocker.
In glamorous truck-stop garb, this Broadway Mean Girls star turned Avril Lavigne-style pop-rock hopeful bounds on stage to find that only her drummer is making any noise. So she bounds straight off again, only to return after 10 minutes of intense technical machinations. Three songs of biting R&B and pop balladry later, high winds empty a reservoir of water from the roof all over her and her equipment, and she’s off for another lengthy rethink.
When she finally returns, loudly clarifying her contract’s insurance clause, she lasts another half a song before another torrent of overspill drowns her again and it’s game over – evidence right there of the fragility of modern Roadshow Reading’s sensibilities. Many are the bands who have soldiered on here through torrential rain, or been soaked in far more urine than this; in 2004, 50 Cent would have battled through if it was a downpour of deckchairs landing on him.
Pendulum, next up, have no issue with a mildly damp stage, and pull out all the rave metal stops; no amount of flood from above could extinguish 21 Savage’s slow-groove smoulder. But many of Liam’s real rivals are lurking on the outskirts. On the BBC Introducing Stage, Leeds’s Venus Grrrls come on like a gothic Elastica with their taut atmos-rock witchery about love spells and hex sex. In the Festival Republic tent, London’s Rachel Chinouriri conjures some bewitching soul-rock and romcom big balladry of her own, on the topics of her self-proclaimed relationship “delusions” and, on the heartbreaking “Robbed”, the death of her six-day-old niece.
She’s followed by fellow Londoner Hak Baker, a tinny-cracking geezer (“Oi oi!”) fronting a band resembling a punky reggae Blockheads. And over on the Radio One stage, grinding around a huge inflatable sci-fi branch, is North Carolina’s “divalicious” Ashnikko, a blue-haired, bikini-clad “working bitch” playing deep-pumping porn pop that’s made her a TikTok star already but will really blow up once OnlyFans sorts out its streaming algorithm. Her idea of a “Slumber Party”, for instance, is less pyjamas and pizza, more graphic sapphism.
You almost feel a touch sorry for Catfish & the Bottlemen. Given the impending Oasis news coming down the pipes, using the weekend to hype their – bless – one itsy-bitsy night at the Tottenham Hotspur ground next year must feel a bit like cruising up in your flash new speedboat to Liam Gallagher’s superyacht party. They also catch a bit of Reneé Rapp’s ill luck. Singer Van McCann – a rock’n’roll vision with his rock-god locks and heroic posturing – finds his guitar malfunctioning two songs into their main stage set, requiring a 15-minute pitstop.
Despite also being hampered by a sludgy mix that makes much of the set sound like Arctic Monkeys in a blustery hurry, they return like a band determined to barge their way over the threshold of glory. They have howling rock rampages and anthemic choruses by the canyon-load, and deploy Biffy Clyro-level bombast on “Outside”. As Catfish ascend to stadium status without any major crossover hits to speak of, there’s a whole book to be written on the atomisation of fandom in the digital era. But if it looks like a stadium band, bellows like a stadium band, and holds its guitar at heroic but difficult-to-play angles like a stadium band...
Besides the numbers 27.08.24 and the time of 8am flashing up in an Oasis logo box on the stageside screens at the end of the show – a puzzle just un-cryptic enough for the average Oasis fan to crack – Reading isn’t given any exclusives on the big reunion tonight. Just one hell of a preview. As a clacker-clock on the screens clicks down from 2024 to 1994, Liam Gallagher appears on a stage bedecked with gigantic renditions of objects from the Definitely Maybe sleeve – a hanging globe, a Bacharach portrait, two giant flamingos.
“Liam vibes in the house, Bonehead vibes in the house,” he says, pointing out the presence of Oasis guitarist Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs on guitar as “Rock’n’Roll Star” begins its traditional hurtle towards greatness. The punkish set that follows – comprising all of the debut album plus a mid-set selection of B-sides and one-off singles – is a dream of a Gallagher show, delivered with just the right frisson of brittle bolshiness, and, after his years of online badgering and button-pushing for an Oasis reunion, a certain satisfied relish. An air of a great reward finally earned.
It both wraps up Gallagher’s anniversary jaunt and warms up wonderfully for a full career flashback in 2025. “Columbia” more than holds its own against the intrusive thumps of Skrillex on the Chevron Stage. “Up in the Sky” is pure Revolver psych, set to visuals of exploding planets. “Digsy’s Dinner”, dedicated to Reading’s vegetarians, is a proper Britpop knees-up, “Supersonic” a superb melding of melody, attitude and nonsense poetry. Even the B-side section, a lumpen interlude at the O2 earlier this year, is clipped and focused here, culminating in a big-sky “Whatever” so Beatledelic that Liam casually drops in some lines from “Octopus’s Garden” at the end.
He seems more wryly altruistic than acerbic tonight, dedicating “D’Yer Wanna Be a Spaceman?” to all the glue-sniffers in the house, “Cigarettes and Alcohol” to all the Oasis haters, and a monstrous “Slide Away” to the flamingos “Felicity and Floella”. During “Live Forever”, he emblazons the screens with pictures of Bolan, Marley, Lennon and rock’s other lost heroes. Most touching, and telling, though, is “Half the World Away”, going out to “Noel f***ing Gallagher” and sounding like 16 years of ice melting away. Wembley 2025? Bring it on down.
