Festival Preview: Leeds Festival 2011

August bank holiday is a special time. It traditionally marks the end of the festival season and it opens up the future of da Yoof as GCSE results are revealed. It’s a period of joyful reflection and intellectual enthusiasm. I remember receiving my results sat on the bank of the Thames via a, then rarely owned, mobile phone call from my then girlfriend: “I passed Latin? No way, I actively tried to fail Latin.” These were sedate times; Reading Festival had only just got a third music stage and the posters were still a ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive’ snapshot of excitement.

In 2011 it’s a different state of affairs. As the dust settles on the shameful mob mentality and socially offensive behaviour seen at sites across the country – namely V festival, it is time to brace ourselves for yet more groups of marauding teenagers, loose, at Reading and its 12-year-old evil twin Leeds Festival. Leeds was meant to be in the past, my denied history, but a carelessly entered competition prize meant one last trip ooop north was due.

I already had my weekend planned. I was going to look at Twitter, listen to The Weeknd’s Thursday, maybe pop to Rough Trade East and not watch BBC3 festival coverage at all. Generally go ‘Meh’ and practice shaping my dapper new quiff. But now I had to look at the garish yellow line up the festivals have been using since losing the hipster cowboy look, and work out who I could possibly want to see. After all, I’m a cynical, youngish urbanite North Londoner, not an ‘emo’ from the provinces.

A first look at the headliners and their supports has the ring of indifference not felt since Jo Wiley moved to Radio 2. Muse are just one long strangled cat, Elbow are good-but I’m not my Dad, My Chemical Romance and 30 Seconds to Mars – firstly I’m a grown up and secondly who? Pulp­­ – ok Jarvis is god and they are the best band ever but I’ve seen them many times since they played my first Reading in ’94, and finally The Strokes who we all know they’re just going to embarrass themselves, aren’t they?

Admittedly, the line up isn’t for my demographic. For me there’s the quirky bunting and jollity of Field Day, the folk whimsy of Green Man, and the back to my roots indulgence of The Bangface Weekender. Leeds, as hair metal icons Skid Row may say, is for the youth gone wild: a weekend of bottles of 20-20, Portaloo burning and glow-stick wristbands. But surely there must be something for the name dropping hipster to admit to seeing while queuing for an espresso, rather than being a mardy cynic.

Luckily Friday at Leeds Festival’s has an early appearance by Canadian Punks Fucked Up (aka, not Les Savy Fav but will do in the meantime) whose PA clambering shenanigans could destroy the NME/Radio 1 tent before it even gets going. Later on the same stage the dreamy LA quartet Warpaint will ease in the evening with their sensual and meandering harmonies. The already legendary Death From Above 1979 will relive those heady halcyon days of 2006 later still, with a set reminding us how they brought raging angst back into electronica. For the ultimate in unknown name dropping, Manchester’s Murkage on the Introducing stage will, despite being nothing more than local boys done good, bring some welcome much needed dub-step grime to proceedings. Jive Bunny and the Master Mixers will round off Friday when their Macs do that Peaches into Velvet Underground mix from 10 years ago.

Saturday gifts us a dance stage garlanded with afternoon appearances from D/R/U/G/S and Mount Kimbie, pounding our rotting festival gizzards in preparation for SBTRKT’s maniacally bashful beats later in the day. Elsewhere A Genuine Freakshow bring some experimental pop civility and Frankie and the Heartstrings will execute precision indie-pop worthy of a much higher billing. The most exciting thing all festival is The Antlers’ late afternoon show. Expect a beautifully Warp-esque bar room sexuality, plotting to drown you in stumbling drones.

A must see are Metronomy, a Mercury validated album, a slew of summer festival appearances and constant radio airplay has given this London quartet the recognition and billing they deserve and should project them greater still. A special trip should be taken to see Henry Rollins. Just watching the way that man stands still is inspiration enough, let alone his wise words. Saturday night will be The Horrors’ night and with the acclaim deservedly surrounding Skying, this epic set will surely cement them as the ‘nu-gaze Simple Minds’ for good.

On Sunday, we’ll deserve a medal, and we can nearly come home, but not before Saul Williams’ political zeitgeist rhymes entertain the lunch time kiddies and She Keeps Bees turn the site into a beautiful soft-focus bandstand with bunting and homemade fairy cakes. There is a band called The Coopers opening the Festival Republic stage – I’ve checked on t’interweb (as it’s called in Leeds) and they’re nothing to do with those Coopers, but I still wouldn’t bother. With extra dollar in their pockets from advertising fizzy booze with added D’n’B remixes, Cults come to prize us a glimpse into life as a Kindle wielding hipster in Willimasberg with battered guitars, drum machines and xylophones.

Glassjaw are the archetypal band where it could have been so very different. They had the records and the major deal, they could have reached the dizzy heights of, say, Incubus, but illness and internal turmoil caused it all to implode. And I’m glad, it meant they attained a cult status, as did At The Drive In and Refused. Angry, visceral bands protected from the MTV2 apathy of the early noughties. Sunday’s show could obliterate even Crystal Castles’ no doubt bludgeoning set. Leeds’ unofficial headliner is The National, a band who are epic without any cliché, yet worldly introspective. Mat Berninger’s laconic drones and shuddering realisation of surroundings will drive tumultuous percussion and precise orchestration across the inevitable acrid stench of beer cup bonfires that typify Leeds.

Having said all that, you know and I know deep down that come Saturday night I’ll be shouting “You gotta keep ‘em separated” to The Offspring, and spending Sunday doing a cockney knees up ‘Baggy Trousers’ dance to Madness after too many ciders and tequilas. But I’ll have Twitter turned off so no one need ever know.