After an entire day chock full of seeing your favourite artists (and finding some new favourites), you deserve some relaxation in the form of a late-night movie. Take the weight off your feet and settle down in at the Film Oxford Cinema Tent, where we’ll be showing some of the biggest and best movies late into the night.
What’s on the schedule for Saturday night? A series of shorts starting at midnight, immediately followed by the box office smash ‘Avengers: End Game’.
Royal Blood, if you pardon the pun, showed that they were the kings of the Leeds Festival Main Stage on Saturday. The Brighton duo shook the stage to its very foundations with a deafening set that proved you don’t need a huge band to make a massive racket.
‘Hook, Line & Sinker’ set the tone for what was to be a blistering hour-long performance from Royal Blood, and the cacophony that followed was full of rip-roaring crowd favorites. ‘Little Monster’, ‘Ten Tonne Skeleton’, and ‘How Did We Get So Dark?’ were just three of the selected tracks. In truth, though, it mattered not what was played as the audience moshed, jumped, and sang their hearts out for Mike Kerr and Ben Thatcher.
The pair debuted a new song called ‘Boiler Maker’ that is certain to feature on their third LP. If it was anything to go by, the next album from Royal Blood will be full of more blues-rock, drum, and bass for fans to plug into their ears.
The reception that Kerr and Thatcher received as they closed out their set with the stunning ‘Out of the Black’ was more than merited for a gig full of passion, heart, and enthusiasm. One that will linger in the memory for a long time.
The sound of the strapline-character-limit-challenging Laura Jane Grace and the Devouring Mothers blended elements of Americana-influenced rock with the characteristic punk rock grit which Laura Jane Grace has become so noted for as the vocalist of Against Me!.
Lyrically, the songs were dark and introspective, yet outwardly, the thundering guitar lines and potent screams were wildly infectious! From the dulcet melancholy of ‘The Hotel Song’, which built into a stonkingly huge wall of sound, to ‘Born in Black’, where anger and pain seemed to seep through the air, almost like a cathartic exorcism that the crowd certainly felt too.
Perhaps most mesmerising of all was the wizard-like drumming talents of Atom Willard – energy radiated from him like noxious fumes throughout every minute of the set!
The vocals seemed to barely trouble the limits of Laura Jane Grace’s range, and her persona embodied the levels of effortless cool we all aspire to. Through her lyrics, she gave her audience a window into her deeply personal psyche, forging a connection with those watching her like no other.
As fiery and defiant a challenge to internal and external oppression as there could be. This is what true rock stars look like!
It may still be sweltering outside, but those who ventured under the cover of the Pit Stage found encroaching darkness – not only in the form of some welcome shade but also in the melodies of London metallers Puppy.
The dark, heavy, almost treacle-like melodies of ‘Entombed’ and the gut-punching ‘Demons’ with its powerful grumbling bassline went down a storm with the reliably head-banging crowd. The other tracks from their recently released debut LP, ‘The Goat’, were received with equal fervour – in particular, opening track ‘Black Hole’. Each was packed with frontman Jock’s idiosyncratic vocals and enough bite to make them wickedly edgy without straying into the realm of the abrasive.
Not that Puppy were at all impenetrable to the lost raver who happened upon them – the sense of danceable vitality injected into the grungily groovy bass lines meant a fist-pumping dance was in no way off the cards!
While the (thankfully artificial!) flames that backed them were hardly necessary on this scorcher of a day, they certainly mirrored the white-hot energies of Puppy to a ‘T’.
It was their final gig until their fifth album is complete, and The Wombats couldn’t have picked a better place than Leeds Festival to (temporarily) say goodbye. The Liverpool trio was in fine form as they lavished the Main Stage crowd with a number of hits – a couple of which caused stage invasions from human-sized wombats.
Blasting through an array of well-known songs, The Wombats gave the audience what they’d come to see. Namely, banging tunes that they could dance to. ‘Techno Fan’, ‘Lemon to a Knife Fight’, and ‘Leaving for New York’ induced mass singalongs and plenty of bouncing. Slower numbers like ‘Just Give Me a Try’ were well received too, but it was their breakout hit that was to cause the biggest cheer of the evening.
‘Let’s Dance to Joy Division’ had everyone, from the very front to the very back, bopping and singing the lyrics back to The Wombats, and it was appreciated by the lads from Merseyside once the song had drawn to a close.
With no potential release date for their next LP confirmed, it could be a long time before we see The Wombats again. This, then, was a fitting way to end things for the time being.
A thunderous roar greeted Joji’s arrival on the Radio 1 Stage.
The multi-talented Japanese singer-songwriter’s music might be on the mellower side than it was under his former pseudonym Filthy Frank, but it was just as well-received (if not more so) by the packed crowd on Saturday afternoon.
Tune after tune was applauded with vigor, and chants of “Joji! Joji!” regularly broke out to his amusement. ‘Will He’, ‘Attention’, and ‘Can’t Get Over You’ were just three such numbers that evoked mass singalongs. It was Joji’s most recognizable song, however, that brought the house down at the climax of his set.
Such is its popularity, ‘Slow Dancing in the Dark’, from debut album ‘Ballads 1’, was given two run-outs to close out Joji’s performance. Acoustic and more bombastic editions were lapped up by the crowd and left Joji speechless at the end.
There was even time for a quick cover of classic Toy Story song ‘You’ve Got a Friend in Me’ that, as expected, went down a treat too. A fitting song for the togetherness on show from everyone inside the Radio 1 Stage tent.
