Leftfield and other adventures
Glastonbury 2025
Taking time in between the bands he’s compering on Billy Bragg’s Leftfield stage, John Robb celebrates the stage ‘united through song and voice’ and also does some wandering around the site..
Glastonbury is in a unique position, being so high-profile that it has become the festival around which everyone has an opinion. Like Oasis, the Royal Family and possibly the Eurovision Song Contest, even people who have zero interest in it feel obliged to get onto their Twitter digital high horse and bash out their second hand opinions about ‘music nowadays’, and ticket prices, and perceived cliches of who actually goes, as they watch the BBC coverage of the event that is just one story in a festival of thousands of narratives.
Of course, LTW are not claiming to be anywhere near the core of what this temporary megapolis is all about. But as I wander around, I get the ‘vibe’ from small gigs in far flung tea tents, to the mega madness rave of the Shangri-La all nighter, from the eco politics of the green field debate stages, to the literary talks by the ever captivating Nina Ramirez and Alice Roberts, and then Pauline Black at the ever wonderful Crows Nest, to Goldie’s mind blowing drum and bass DJ set on the all nighter levels stage.
There are headliners, headlines and controversies. Always political to a certain extent, this year’s festival seems to have become a reflection of the battleground for the soul of the nation. The culture wars played out in real time across social media are like a warm-up to the next election, with both sides of the political equation airing their grievances through pop culture and the internet.
There are several defining moments that could be claimed to capture 2025 – the Bob Vylan/Kneecap moment which becomes the worldwide mega story, whilst in pop culture terms it’s maybe Charli XCX’s brat summer 2.0 swamping the second stage with a commanding display of perfect modern pop that annoys the fellow boomers because there is no ‘real band’. Charli toys with pop culture and understands the moment, and for thousands of fans she reflects their fears and desires. There is something magnificent about her owning the stage on her own, strutting around with her anthems like a true pop star. She has come a long way since we first saw her in 2011 supporting the Young Fathers in front of ten people – one of whom I persuaded to manage her!
It could be Pulp and their big return, Neil Young for the old guard, or The Prodigy simply being The Prodigy. But the 2025 event will be remembered for the aforementioned Bob Vylan/Kneecap stance against the war in Palestine, which has seen a new front in the culture war with the BBC, and the festival itself under the cosh, and every tabloid hack typing furiously, far more concerned with a Bob Vylan anti IDF chant than the daily slaughter of the war itself.
Bob Vylan and Kneecap played the West Holt’s stage on a hot Saturday afternoon and created the snapshot of the moment on a stage right next to our own epicentre – the Leftfield, fittingly curated by Billy Bragg and his wife Juliette, and which is ‘united through song and voice’ with its mix of policial debates and, in the evening, bands…
Friday
The Meffs are a feisty two-piece who bring the punk rock to the busy 2000 capacity tent. Their songs surf on a great guitar sound and powerhouse drumming. The Colchester-based band of Lily Hopkins on vocals and guitar and Lewis Copsey on drums and backing vocals know how to work a crowd and have the songs to back it up and have been making a big name for themslves in the current punk scene. The duo are the perfect riot to start the evening off and also yet another example to the social media moaners that Glastonbury is not just ‘pop’.
reaking big, Dublin’s Gurriers are one of the most thrilling bands of the moment, and detonate on the stage with a crash collision of riffs, energy and action. The bass player, who looks like a Virgin Prune in black neo gothic dress and cardie chic, delivers a monster groove for the rest of the moustachioed up crew who look like a 21st century take on the Dexy’s soul boy all nighter crew image. The bass-driven songs have a fantastic heavy-duty groove, and the guitars wring out cool, weird noises and energetic rushes of sound for the vocals to pin down as they make the noise into songs and create a huge mosh pit with their sonic assault.
Antony Szmierek is knocking on the door of a breakthrough with a brilliant set that combines his word play, charismatic presence and a band that owns the groove. This is poetry that you can dance to with words that are embedded into our lives. Antony is a poet who crowd surfs, a live wire, and on fast forward to becoming an iconic presence. The Manchester-based spoken word artist meshes wordplay with his king groove band that underlines his words of love and vulnerability around the mysteries of life and love and the spaces in between. The tent is ecstatic, with 2000 plus people in the palms of the singer’s hands as he brings the party with his infectious joy.
Jasmine.4.T is the stage name of Manchester indie rock singer-songwriter Jasmine Cruikshank, whose deeply personal themes of her life and experience add an emotional fire power to the songs of love and fury. The witty word play and poetic twists and turns detail a life caught between the turmoil of these times but sound like classic guitar/bass/drums pop, with haunting melodies and classic chord changes.
The night closes with your hostess with the mostest, Mr. Billy Bragg, who pops with three of his own time-honoured drop dead classics, with just him and his sparse/minimal guitar. It’s the classic silhouette that defined him in the breakout years and those songs of love and fury echo through the decades. His band join him and colour in his palettes, adding an almost country edge and a melodic backdrop that the audience sing along to, in what has become a Glastonbury institution.
Saturday
Nottingham’s Girl Band! open the evening’s entertainment with their punky crafted songs of alienation, feeling different in a world obsessed with definition. It’s an eternal theme and one they embrace with the same kind of melodic nous as the Pretenders or that kind of taut stripped-down new wave that appeared just after punk. The great songs and sparse punchy arrangements and huge choruses are delivered with impassioned powerful vocals.
The power of music is in its constant reinvention and the power of youth to create new horizons. With an energetic rush, Chloe Slater delivers a set of guitar/bass/drums songs that run the gamut of emotions and melody and delivered with a great vocal. The verses are clipped, taut storytelling that detail the tension and release of modern city life in her home town of Manchester; that everyday battlefield of life, culture and politics that is 2025 delivered in sprechgesang before exploding into huge neo choruses. Somehow straddling the tension of the music underground and the big vistas of pop, Chloe Slater is the middle of the Venn diagram. synthesis of styles that she makes work as her own.
There is always something quite magical about watching a band who are about to break out. The Guest List are currently emerging from under wraps and just beyond the ears the music biz but they already have the buzz, and in their home city of Manchester they are already onto the 1000 cap venues. The rest of the nation is about to discover their delicious, delicate, melodic windowpane tunes that deal in that exquisite melodic slip and slide of the Stone Roses in between their early rock bit and the debut album. Fittingly, for a south Manchester Sale/Altrincham band hailing from the same streets as the Roses , they are immersed in this Mersey Paradise of chiming guitars, exquisite vocals and deceptively light, yet with a big punch, songs that come armed with sugaring-the-pill melodies and already sound like indie classics.
This time next year they will be huge.
Eclectic is the defining word in Glastonbury and in the Left Fields and the Lambrini Girls switch the mood with their anger is an energy 21st century punk rock that deconstructs the form into raucous riot anthems that are musically far more than filthy noise. The bass nails powerful grooves to lock in with the powerhouse drumming, and the guitar adds tension and noise when needed. Lead singer Phoebe Lunny owns the joint and crowd surfs the audience with a commanding interplay that sees her split the pit, toy with the crowd and deliver the powerful message home in a series of songs that are visceral, inventive and thrilling.
Headliner Kate Nash is not someone who holds back, and since this Glastonbury is at some sort of emotional and political fever pitch, she delivers her new single GERM in which she celebrates the trans community and calls out bigotry. She then breaks the set after one song for a long list of heartfelt grievances at Keir Starmer, J.K. Rowling, Rod Stewart and Nigel Farage, before mesmerising with her crafted pop that somehow combines a mystery with punchy riffs and captivating vocals. Her shamanic presence matches the mood and the music.
Nash is the perfect headliner for the Leftfield Saturday stage before the generational battle between festival veteran Neil Young, who first played Woodstock back at the beginning of time and whose plaintive yet corrosive guitars sound beautifully eternal and catch the revolutionary feel of this year’s festival, and the brat pop brilliance of grrrl riot Charli XCX on the second stage. Both acts are equally idiosyncratic genius in their almost opposite performances, captivating and capturing the diversity that is at the core of the festival musically, spiritually and culturally.
Sunday
Sunday opens with the Halfway Kid, whose infectious mix of African rhymes and rhythms combines with the western trad songwriting nous of a Bob Dylan. The music and spirit pour out of singer Saeed Gadir, and they even get a hungover Sunday tent jiving.
Newcastle’s Beth Jeans Houghton is next up as her alter ego Du Blonde, whose wham bam thank you glam looks and sounds like Dolly Parton on steroids. The OTT image is great macabre glam, and the music matches as the creativity pours out of her in a non-stop rush of grunge glam anthems.
Liverpool’s Red Rum Club have been on the ascendancy for a couple of years now and their set of songs from their series of hit albums is joyously received. Singer Fran Doran delivers the songs as the packed crowd sing along with vocal hooks, whilst the band’s USP mariachi trumpet decorates the songs in an exercise of crafted indie at its very best. They have that Liverpool sea shanty thing going on, combined with a classic guitar pop, understanding of the power of melody and that innate cool of Scouse bands.
The most righteous of welcomes surfs through a Reverend And The Makers set that is a major triumph for the much-loved Sheffield band. Fronted by the charismatic Jon Mclure, they are on peak form and have never sounded better, with each song synthesising indie and dancefloor with dollops of dancehall and Motown that makes the whole tent move as one. The band should easily be on the second stage as they are armed with several top ten albums and songs that are clearly anthems. Instead they turn the Leftfield into a seething joyous surge of humanity on and off the stage.
Fuck me, Grandson are a revelation! The USA band have taken Rage Against The Machine’s heavy duty funk crank into a new space that confronts the chaos of the now. The grooves are gigantic and the rhythm section is a beast. The guitar delivers the obligatory noises yet with far more melody than their mentors, leaving charismatic singer Jordan Edward Benjamin to deliver his political sermons with a certainty that is rare in this age of quarrel. There is one powerful/moment when he states that, being Jewish, he too is angry at the genocide in Palestine, in an act of solidarity with Bob Vylan who were going to support Grandson in the USA this summer until their visas were revoked. Grandson are a fitting set ender, with their drilled raucous politics and captivating grooves that get you twicth dancing and head nodding. Brilliant stuff.
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All words by John Robb
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