Julia Bottoms spent four days in Glanusk Park for the latest edition of the Green Man festival. The grass may have been greener in past years, and the ceremonial figure who gives the event its name may have avoided his traditional demise for health and safety reasons, but it all makes this feel like an evermore valuable escape.
A titan of the festival calendar, Green Man has kept the Welsh flame burning for almost 25 years, yet this year’s festival arrives under a cruel irony. Following a summer of heat and drought which has set the valley’s hillsides aflame – and thus stopped this year’s green man from burning on Sunday night – the festival’s sustainability commitments feel pertinent as ever.
The lineup, however, is anything but dry. Across its four days, a rich pool of emerging talent and established stars flowed through the valley, and this year, a strong electronic contingent lent the festival an unexpected party pulse. Still, as the pleasant ring mountainous green encloses the site, and barely a phone held aloft in sunscreen-perfumed crowds, Green Man retains its rare sense of bucolic remove. It’s a festival that seems, for a few days at least, to exist at a curious distance from the rest of the world.
Thursday
Despite a few opening teething problems, ‘wonk pop’ rockers Lime Garden waste little time in finding their stride, their buzzy set gathering momentum as they unveil new single Moving Target. “We think it’s the best one yet,” proclaims lead vocalist Chloe Howard, and indeed it is; written about a long-lost lover who decamped to Iceland, Howard sings from the gut, and the band’s instinct for basic melodic pleasure finds the fun in heartbreak.
CVC, or Church Village Collective, are slick and buoyant – six harmonising Welsh lads crooning about girls, quotidian pleasures and good times. Charming, though their repeated calls for their volume to be turned up makes for a somewhat distracted stage presence. Mogwai, by contrast, play with the kind of volume that makes you feel your own insides, and the crowd stays in spades, transfixed. Directly following is Charlotte Church in her End Times Pop Dungeon which presents an interesting change of pace. True to form, she lets it rip from the first note, but more surprising is an idiosyncratic rendition of Charli XCX’s Sympathy Is A Knife, taking something of a leftfield detour in her setlist.
Friday
Alt-folk Manchester seven-piece The Slow Country are undoubtedly among the festival’s freshest young talents. With no discernible frontperson, the seven-piece collective, who have worked with the likes of Bill Ryder-Jones, operate as more of a musical democracy. From a swirling amalgam of keys, mandolin, yelps and BC,NR-esque strings, the result is a magical, joyously unruly sound.
Next, this year’s Green Man Rising winner Tall Child takes to the Mountain Stage. Lead singer Zha Gandhi packs both precision and power on new single Money, a rallying cry for young artists negotiating the precarities of creative life on universal credit, a cause fittingly supported by the award itself. Over at the Walled Garden stage, the heady folksy jingle of My New Band Believe spills out, with ex-Black Midi frontman Cameron Picton revealing the simpering, tender underbelly of his tenor in songs like ‘Kick Me’.
Westside Cowboy’s hotly anticipated set arrives on the day their new album is released, drawing a heaving crowd to the Mountain Stage despite the heavens opening overhead. For a finale, the Mancunian four-piece ditch their midwest indie rock’n’roll for an acoustic, intimate rendition of In The Morning. Unfortunately, Maria Somerville’s sunken dreampop is mushed to sludge on the Far Out Stage, the basslines drowning out the gauzy intricacies of tracks like Projections.
By contrast, New York duo Ear fill the space with a well of bewildering electronica, and a hyperreal gleam to their performance. Standing in front of the shimmering idyll of what looks like someone’s back garden, Jonah Paz and Yaelle Avtan dance like violently shaking twin mops, and are remarkably awkward but in a good way (“OK… we are gonna sing it now”). Their sound: like hitting QWERTY on the keyboard over spindly flashes of synth and dark, jerky basslines.
Back at the Mountain Stage, Dry Cleaning perform in front of what looks like a giant photograph of Heathrow airport, summoning Jeff Tweedy for a rendition of My Soul/Half Pint. Florence Shaw’s dry, dispassionate question mark of a voice glides cooly over the band’s characteristically danger-tinged right-angle riffs, but some momentum is lost when straying from hits. Stalwart of Copenhagen’s alt-underground ML Buch plays her set as one continuous passage, her vocals sliding magnetically over the glossy contours of bending guitar licks. Tracks like Flames Shards Goo create an uncanny effect, like the meeting of screen and flesh.
What’s sign language for poo? The BSL interpreter rises to the challenge for Getdown Services. So begins another descent into the Bristol duo’s brand of lowbrow brilliance; a faceful of crisps and the occasional dab, and a setlist that is as puerile as it is political. There’s a sincere call to free Palestine, alongside praising the festival’s independent spirit, before back down to dog dribbling and runins with radiators. Back at Mountain, something strange keeps happening in the middle of Wilco’s set. Gut shuddering drum fills interrupt Via Chicago and California Stars, met with bewilderment, then awe. By the closing stretch, they are at their most raucous, although the set’s 90-minute runtime slightly drags. Finally, Adult DVD’s propulsive post punk soundtracks a bumping, abrasive end to the evening. Their sound is like taking a bludgeon to a synthesiser, yet beneath the assault is a pulse that demands movement, and gets it.
Saturday
There’s an avian presence throughout Ana Frango Elétrico’s set, even down to her floofy bucket hat, as she performs tracks from her second album, Little Electric Chicken Heart. Her voice sounds part-trumpet, gliding over mellow syncopated grooves. Making their Green Man debut, young Cardiff-based Casual Smart drew a curious crowd to the Rising Stage. Resembling a charming jumble of art school kids in t-shirts and frocks, they produce a stuffed, homespun sound reminiscent of Belle & Sebastian. Over on the Mountain Stage, Chicagoan three-piece Horsegirl were unfortunately swallowed up by the vastness of the stage despite a technically tight set.
Australian indie outfit The Belair Lip Bombs live up to the intrigue of their name, dealing in a heady, rounded sound, propelled by chugging guitars and top-class vocals from Maisie Everett; their cathartic, friendly strain of rock feels almost purpose-built for Green Man. And luminous as ever, Cate Le Bon seems to levitate above the festival stage. With press photography forbidden and crowd interaction limited aside from the occasional “diolch”, her main medium of communication is physical; casting balletic hand movements as if practicing an incantation.
Over at the Walled Garden, Joanne Robertson, long-term collaborator of the enigmatic Dean Blunt, is just stunning. Murky, folky and with a vocal quality of pure hypnosis, hers is the sound of an artist prising itself up from the underground scene. Mary In The Junkyard follow as a late addition to the lineup; Saya Barbaglia’s strings shine, sometimes a gossamer whisper, at others striking a deep velvety chord. Despite some technical issues, the array of chosen tracks is fantastic, in particular Clari Freeman-Taylor’s performance of Jane, a gooey and gorgeous “love song to [her] period”.
One of the Rising Stage breakthroughs this year is Leeds-based dance-noise ensemble Bathing Suits. For them, the beat is gospel and the crowd a congregation; their dedication to the club is taken to feverish extremes with mangled guitars pushed towards frequencies of pain. Vocalist Freyja Blevins strips down and douses herself in water as some kind of ecstatic baptism before convulsing across the stage, as if she had stuck her hand in the decks and electrified herself. Over on the Mountain Stage, Four Tet expectantly draw a seismic crowd of balmy-evening boppers, doubtless borrowing a few listeners away from Celeste as the set shifts from ambient electronica to full-bodied bass.
Sunday
Gwen – the new solo musical project created by Gwenllian Anthony, bassist and co-founder of Adwaith – opens Sunday at the Walled Garden, with her first ever gig. Muscular bass, roving rhythms and a vocal elasticity reminiscent of Dolores O’Riordan of The Cranberries make for a dynamic debut.
Later, 23-year-old indie wunderkind Dove Ellis takes the Mountain Stage. His debut album, released last winter, shyly glimmered with promise and now, performed in full glare of the sinking sun, seems to have reached full bloom. In its falsetto, Ellis’ vocal resemblance to Jeff Buckley is striking, while its unguarded ache carries shades of Cameron Winter. Even the high notes come barrelling out of him, and live, the album is even more vibrant, glazed with lush strings and smatterings of clarinet, all to a theatrical effect.
North Carolina outfit Wednesday tore into the Far Out stage, with frontwoman Karly Hartzman opening with the howling Reality TV Argument Bleeds before shifting gears into the country swing of Elderberry Wine. New York-based party duo Fcukers follow, bringing their relentless, non-stop party hedonism to a jammed-out crowd. Both Jackson Walker-Lewis and Shanny Wise are just effortlessly cool: “Are you ready to partyy?” Wise purrs in her feather-light lilt. Yes, yes we are, return a rapturous crowd.
Dazzling the stage for the festival’s final act, Wolf Alice bring something for everyone with a perfectly calibrated set. Opening bombastically with Bloom Baby Boom, we veer through the full-throated catharsis of Yuk Foo, before settling into beloved favourites like Don’t Delete The Kisses. Anna Calvi and Dove Ellis join for a rendition of ‘Sunday Light’, while a later cover of Mazzy Star’s Fade Into You draws out the smoky kinship between Ellie Rowsell and Hope Sandoval’s respective vocals. It all makes for a fittingly transcendent finale as the festival closes in a state of well-earned euphoria.
Green Man Festival, Glanusk Park, Crickhowell, Thurs 20-Sun 23 Aug
words JULIA BOTTOMS photos HANNAH NICOLSON-TOTTLE
