Leeds Festival 2012

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Boggy fields, endless cans of dry shampoo, a sea of happily gurning faces and getting sporadically showered with pints of piss. Ahh yes, the UK music festival is a national treasure with its own very distinct foibles and Leeds Festival has by now been established as one of the veterans. But just because it’s time-honoured doesn’t mean it’s part of the old guard and the ambitious line up attests to a festival that still keeps its ear very much to the ground.

Pulled Apart By Horses are the local boys blasting open the main stage on Friday and prove that if a band like PABH can shine through Simon Cowell’s music industry monopolies, the hideous genre incest that has resulted in homogenised pop by-products and the cracks of the mainstream then there must be some hope left for such fiercely independent outfits.

SCUM at Reading. Photograph by Burak Cingi.

Over on the Festival Republic stage, Deap Vally must’ve caused a bit of a stir judging by their very healthy turn out. Playing spirited blues against the unmatched yelping and hollering of Lindsey Troy, they pick up an incredibly warm reception from the crowd. Follically endowed Brisbane pups DZ Deathrays play their pumped up DFA 1979-lite to a curious crowd at the Radio 1 tent. It might not fire us up but at least they play with utter gusto, which can’t exactly be said for SCUM. Their gloomy atmospherics sound potentially enjoyable but fall flat in an afternoon set while frontman Thomas Cohen’s flailing wiry limbs and studied characteristics are without any of the desired intensity.

Colette Thurlow of 2:54 similarly dallies with stage moves that seem totally unnatural and the 2 men padding out the sound onstage seem entirely disengaged but thankfully this doesn’t much effect what is a beautiful set, played with charisma and dark focus. Tall Ships round off the day on the BBC Introducing stage, overcoming sound issues with a tightly wound, sharp set played with as much passion as precision and gaining even more momentum alongside cementing their flawless live reputation. We slink off to the main stage for a nostalgic and indulgent glimpse of the Foo Fighters’ show which, yeah, is deeply uncool and yeah, almost entirely predictable, but at least they play like their lives depend on it.

Savages at Reading. Photograph by Burak Cingi.

Saturday sees Future Of The Left open the Radio 1 stage with a thrilling assault that shows scant regard for the fragile hangover; aggressive as a punch in the brain but an entirely welcome one. Afterwards we head to the main stage where the equally boisterous Cancer Bats play a hairy, sweaty, throat-shredding set and win us over with their sort of adorable determination. Savages’ mid afternoon slot on the Festival Republic stage however blows everything else out the water effortlessly and with enviable style. Fast paced, ferocious and unforgiving, it is genuinely exhilarating to watch the four piece in action, raising the bar so high it’s a near impossibility for JEFF The Brotherhood’s minimal blues to reach it. Over on the BBC Introducing stage, Wet Nuns are another bluesy two piece, their singer Rob adopting a growl which doesn’t detract from the fact their music is pretty standard but their affable brand of rowdiness and the fact they’re clearly having a ball makes them a more than watchable prospect.

The Cure at Reading. Photograph by Burak Cingi.

We head over to the Radio 1 stage for everyone’s favourite ambling ex-Britpopper, Graham Coxon, who wisely relies on the livelier moments of his sizeable back catalogue for a punchy set. Battling through the swarms at the main stage who are gathered for the truly woeful Paramore we take our place for The Cure. They come on in a cloud of panto goth smoke and kick things off with an understated ‘Open’ which sounds utterly dreamy. However the crowd jam packed at the front is inexplicable in its desire to be there as it displays a level of apathy we find alarming towards a band that’ve been around for over 30 years and we have to battle our way out through sheer frustration. Standing at the back, whether deemed by volume limits or not, the feel and sound from the stage is distinctly muted. Though the band play a mammoth set that encompasses their singles as well as rarer treasures in note perfect fashion, it appears almost half hearted, especially when compared with the real magic of their slot at Bestival last year.

With our hearts a little broken we figure we may as well break our eardrums too and head over to the Festival Republic stage for Sleigh Bells’ headline set, delivering their reign of terror to an insanely youthful crowd. Blistering, robust and with the energy whirlwind that is Alexis Krauss it is near impossible to not love them. Come 11pm we head back to our tent in a shocking display of composure, fondly recalling our formative teenage Leeds festival experiences of daring our friend to put her head down the trough toilet for a pint of cider (she did), queuing for the signing tent in a fit of quivering hysteria at meeting –really not that famous or legitimately hysteria inducing- indie boys and drinking so much we passed out in the middle of the day. In your mid twenties you really do feel you are not the main target audience of a festival like Leeds and as we sit gingerly sipping our hot chocolate and tending to our sore backs, we’re okay with that.

Grimes at Reading. Photograph by Burak Cingi.

Getting over our quarter-life crisis we head over to the Festival Republic stage on Sunday morning. Now, bands on the last day of a festival have a pretty raw deal, contending as they are with collected exhaustion, a curious vinegar-tainted stench and probably thousands of fermenting organs in what will prove to be the tentative first stages of liver disease for a crowd that has largely survived on tepid beer for the weekend. With that in mind, our patience is a little stretched at this point and both Theme Park and Citizens are so bland and uninspiring that we give them a pretty short shrift. Grimes sound beautiful in the Dance Tent but her eerie beats would be much better suited to the night time and, standing behind a deck, there’s visually not much to engage with.

Santigold at Reading. Photograph by Burak Cingi.

Santigold does a far better job of pulling us from our Sunday funk on the Radio 1 stage, backed by 2 impossibly straight faced dancers, armed with glittering stage attire, oodles of charisma and an orchestrated stage invasion that inspires a dance-off of sorts with Santi at the heart of it. Next up is Azealia Banks in a rammed tent for the Dance Stage who draws on her modest arsenal of songs to an increasingly wild and enraptured audience. We end our day at the opposite end of the musical spectrum with The Cribs at the Radio 1 stage, who, along with Savages are our weekend’s highlight. They’re a sheer delight to watch; their strangely beautiful melancholy permeating the narrative crises in masculinity that set them far apart from generic indie peers. The Jarmans play with guts and real passion and are greeted with the kind of frenzy that convinces us they technically should be headlining.

At The Drive-In at Reading. Photograph by Burak Cingi.

However At The Drive In have been gifted top billing and everyone is poised to have them prove their place. The post hardcore band are met with a sparsely populated tent and despite the best efforts of frontman, Cedric, throwing himself around the stage, the rest of the band are defined by pure despondency. They sound unbelievably fresh and as relevant as ever but the palpable tone is one of lacklustre necessity rather than a true desire to be there and unfortunately the whole thing is marred by it.

2:54 at Reading. Photograph by Burak Cingi.

As Leeds Festival 2012 draws to a close it becomes obvious that a large amount of the palpable excitement has stemmed from the female artists on stage, from Savages and 2:54 to the likes of Florence Welch herself and thus it becomes impossible to ignore that the women on stage are met with certain depressing levels of chauvinist lechery from several Missing Links in the crowd. Meanwhile the ennui and despair that washes over the soul with the interjections of the “Tittycam” (this is what it is really, actually referred to as) displayed next to the stage is palpable, as girls, with dogged faithfulness to the traditions of generation Nuts unveil their breasts to the camera. Nobody is enjoying it, because nobody knows what enjoyment is anymore. It calls to mind a near future dystopia where all cameras and all reflective surfaces are “Tittycams” and all girls the joyless breast flashers to men who still try to stimulate their desensitised nerve endings and have forgotten what happiness is.

One girl in the crowd has had enough and, as the camera pans over her, lifts up her top to reveal “Fuck the patriarchy and your skewed, castrated perceptions of masculinity” and suddenly, the atmosphere changes. The whirring cogs of transforming minds spin around and she’s held aloft regally as the ape men in the crowd begin to apologise for years of subjugation and objectification. “HAIL FEMINISM” they cheer. A boy with a crudely fashioned cardboard sign that says “Get ur tits out” even rips it up in disgust and pledges his allegiance to Betty Friedan. And for one moment, all seems right with the world. But soon everyone remembers that it’s just top bants and the regime of the topless Emmeline Pankhursts continue. However we’re hopeful that soon not only the women on stage but the women off it will soon be regarded as fully formed humans who might be regarded with respect, judged on their ability rather than appearance and not necessarily greeted with demands of tit flashing. One day, eh

On the whole though, Leeds was ace. There’s still a sense of campsite community and still a real focus on music in between everything else. It would definitely benefit from more post-band activities- in the same vein as Glastonbury- and also from more cuisine options for vegetarians as we had to spend most of the time eating cereal bars and crisps and looking longingly at the whole mess of pig and cow meat flying around. After a long weekend we’ve got some amazing memories and new bands to fawn over too. The rest of the details are a little hazy, as of course we left a part of our brain somewhere, somewhere in a field in Wetherby.