Live Review – Wide Awake Festival , London Brockwell Park, 25/05/24
The clue was very much in the name. When the Wide Awake Festival started life in 2021, it was very much the go to festival for the woke generation, with said generation’s stars – Black Midi, Black Country New Road, Goat Girl and Shame – very much flavouring proceedings.
It’s evolved somewhat since then, into what could be seen as a more all-encompassing festival with a wider appeal and an audience with a sprawling age range to match. The 2024 edition blends anicent and modern, although at times it’s the younger acts – see Alice Glass and an large scale adoption of early Cocteaus and mid period Banshees sounds into her goth pop stance – who sound like they’re straight out of 1982 rather than 42 years later.
Many of the highlights of the afternoon’s activities are seasoned pros rather than young whippersnappers – Special Interest and David Holmes deliver sets reeking of their own distinctive flavours over at the Disco Pogo stage, proving that getting audiences moving is possible without compromising on character and personality. And while we’ll skip over the irony of Mozart Estate – the latest project of 80s/90s cult hero and Felt/Denim mainman Lawrence – appearing on the So Young stage, it’s worth noting that his infectious, innocent nonchalence and ability to craft a tune that winds itself around your mind means he’ll be welcome on festival bills as long as he’s around.
The huge crowd drawn by Slowdive, spilling way out of the allocated field for the second stage and leaving many scrambling onto beer tent trestle tables to gain a glimpse is probably the best example of this victory of the well worn. To a background of fractals and spiralling lazers, their hazy shoegaze sound is a comforting blanket of woozy vocals and walls of tastefully distorted and flanged guitars. The retro tag doesn’t apply – the band never achieved much more than a cusory media glance and a small, faithful following when they first appeared in the early 90s, so this is less a revival than a case of a band finally finding their time to shine.
If that’s all a bit too horIzontal – to be fair, Slowdive are much more vertical but swaying than fully flat out – then there’s plenty on offer designed to stick a cattle prod up your sensibilities. Australian trio HTRK offer up expertly executed post-punk spikiness with a touch of The Slits to it and Lambrini Girls cause maximum devastation with their wonderfully sludgy sound, borrowing from hardcore, grunge and classic punk but sounding not quite like any of them. Add a truly derranged but very charismatic singer – in the shape of Phoebe Lunny – who seems happier writhing around on top of the crowd rather than on the stage, and you’ve got a rather special act that’s surely going places.
If Wide Awake 2024 can be defined, it’s possibly as a dry run for the headliners of the festivals of the future. Dry Cleaning, one of a very few who featured in the inaugural line up who are present this year, initially seem a little dwarfed by the massive main stage, Florence Shaw’s inner monologue-style lyrics seeming a little too introspective for an arena more used to big gestures. But they warm to their task and by the close of their set Shaw has found a way to command the stage and Tom Dowse’s Gibson SG is cutting through the mix with a confident majesty, and the crowd take them to their hearts.
There’s no hint of timidity lurking among Young Fathers‘ set, on the other hand. The Scots have had the advantage of legnthy spells on the road with Massive Attack and seem supremely confident from the word go, battering the various drum kits littered around the stage and racing through the material from their most successful (and best) album yet, Heavy Heavy. They’ve always combined a very potent mix of celebration and anger – there are calls between songs to “free Palestine” and for a “ceasefire now” – and with explosive anthems like ‘Holy Moly’ now in their arsenal, they’ve got their act down to an explosive, fine art.
“It’s happening,” declares a man next to us to his girlfriend with an air of disbelief as the lights dim and we prepare for our nominated headliners King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard to take the stage. Cheryl from festival partners KEXP – you know, the Americans who book loads of great acts to play intimate shows online – introduces them and gets a heroes welcome and after a group hug, bang, we’re into opening tune, eco rallying point ‘Planet B’, instantly transforming the front 40 or so rows into a seething moshpit.
For a band often portrayed as teetering on the edge of prog rock, they hit surprisingly hard. Sure, they’re fond of switching time signatures mid-song, but their range is dynamic, switching up from psychedelia to near thrash with little warning, and they execute such complexities with an exquisite musicianship and discipline that would have Captain Beefheart smiling With darkness finally descending over the capital – and from the top of the hill in Brockwell Park, you can see pretty much all of it. a dazzling lightshow joiins the act and we’re left with a genuine spectacle that sees them more than justify the faith put in them to close the evening out.
Something pretty much for everyone, you could almost say. Wide Awake, the youngest big festival in town, has finally come of age.
Ben Willmott