And so to Day 2 at T, where an abundance of suitably banal pop outfits litter the bill, the Main Stage line-up looking more akin to the soulless Party in the Park than Scotland’s Glastonbury. N-Dubz, Ke$ha, Beyonce, The fucking Script… they’re all here to satiate the masses before Chris Martin’s gigantic, two hour egofest, the event organizers perhaps hoping that a dose of populist chart razzmatazz might fare better with the Mondeo drivers and familial types that typically make up 97% of Coldplay’s audience.
They’re probably right, to be fair, but we don’t care enough to find out, preferring instead to sample some of the less well advertised delights on offer, stopping only to catch Slash play the opening 30 seconds of Sweet Child ‘o’ Mine, dampened somewhat by the onset of a torrential downpour, and the Manic Street Preachers go through the motions in a fairly unremarkable 40 minutes, Nicky Wire less animated than usual, reserved behind unnecessary sunglasses and James Dean Bradfield struggling with a rather hoarse voice. The set’s passable, sure, and all the relevant hits are present, but given that this is the group who were banned from this festival twelve years ago for going batshit crazy during an invigoratingly aggressive headline show, smashing everything to pieces and calling Billy Bragg and Kelly Jones every name under the sun, it feels a little disappointing.
Still, there’s plenty of merit if you look hard enough; case in point, Glasgow’s bloody excellent indie folksters Three Blind Wolves, who draw an impressive crowd to their lunchtime BBC Introducing set, wooing everyone with their luscious vocals and huge choruses. Over in the cavernous King Tut’s Wah Wah Tent - later the site of Ocean Colour Scene’s largest crowd since Britpop collapsed on its arse, all thanks to the rain - Everything Everything finally make their wonderfully intricate, blissfully unique sound translate within an environment larger than the back room of your local, Photoshop Handsome and MY KZ YR BF becoming the indie pop anthems they were always destined to be. And then there’s local heroes Woodenbox whose gritty folk punk stylings are reminiscent of early Against Me!, and the bustling T-Break audience love it.
For ultra victorious, potentially career-changing moments, however, look no further than The Xcerts’ BBC Introducing slot, which sees a visibly stunned Murray, Jordan and Tom drawing quite probably the stage’s largest, most vocal and downright bonkers crowd of the entire weekend. In twenty-five all too short minutes, the Aberdeenians unleash a thrillingly loud, cataclysmically erratic ball of unrelenting, white-hot energy on a dazed, confused and downright delirious crowd, Murray’s primal, gutteral vocals making filthy, aggressive, DANGEROUS love to Jordan and Tom’s distorted guitars and crashing drums. Crowdsurfers fly this way and that, Murray gets in amongst it, Crisis In The Slow Lane elicits a heartfelt singalong… and then the plug’s pulled, the misers backstage complaining that the band have overran, cutting an astonishing set in its prime and eliciting a chorus of embittered boos from a disgruntled, yet probably spent, audience. It’s terrible judgment, although there’s still no doubt in anyone’s minds that they’ve just borne witness to the performance of the weekend.
Thankfully, no such fate befalls New Yorkers The Head and the Heart during their T in the Park debut. They are permitted to deliver their deliciously textured alt-folk-country-indie-whatever amalgam in its entirety and it sounds epic, even within the limited confines of the T-Break Stage. Closer Rivers and Roads is particularly magical and elicits a rapturous response from a crowd notably unfamiliar with their material. Jimmy Eat World, on the other hand, find themselves faced with several thousand devotees during their hour long NME Stage showcase, boisterous singalongs accompanying the hit-heavy set as it careers along at breakneck speed, powering through Bleed American and A Praise Chorus, pummeling seven shades of shit out of Pain, Futures and Big Casino and prompting body-slamming and human pyramids during the gigantic closing salvo of The Middle and Sweetness. Expertly crafted and perfectly pitched, this is the work of a band at the very top of their game, absolute masters of their craft. And 23 sounds bloody heartbreaking in the early evening sun.
Heartbreaking is very much the name of the game over on the Red Bull Stage, meanwhile, as Villagers set about making the hundred or so ardent fans and drunken stragglers cry into each other’s drinks with a set heavy on the crushing introspection of Becoming a Jackal. Sadly, they’re pitted against The Strokes and Beyonce and as a result, don’t attract anywhere near the numbers that they deserve but the few who are in attendance are well aware that their choice is undoubtedly the right one, even if the ridiculous decision to pitch the tent next to the Dance Stage results in a thumping beat constantly intruding on the delicacy of the band’s sound. Fortunately, an amping up of the instrumentation by the rest of the band sees them through, and by the end, those present are buzzing with excitement, reminded of exactly why Villagers were the band on everyone’s lips around this time last year.
And so, finally, it’s down to Bright Eyes to round off the day for us, the execrable Swedish House Mafia, dull-as-dishwater Coldplay and frankly past it Primal Scream paling in comparison. From the moment Conor Oberst strolls nonchalantly onto the stage, dressed in wellies and rain-mack, swigging from a bottle of wine and sporting delightfully painted nails (“they’re the same colour as Beyonce’s!”, he notes), it’s apparent that we’re in for something of a treat. Oberst is in fine spirits, lively and talkative, witty and invective. He throws shapes, gets down in the front row, ‘enacts’ his lyrics and fires barbs at his rivals, adding an out-of-tune, sarcastic snippet of Sex on Fire to a sprawling, electrifying Road to Joy because Beyonce did it earlier and dedicating a tremendous Lover I Don’t Have to Love to “the time Chris Martin tried to suck my dick”, all the while remarking that he’s scoring “double points” for this evening’s performance… and he’s not wrong. As headline shows go, this is an absolute blinder, sounding massive and intimate in equal measure and far surpassing anything any of the other stage closers could even dream of. And yes, that definitely does include Coldplay covering Travis. Obviously.
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