Glastonbury – with the exception of the naughty late night areas that we can’t bring you coverage of in a family newspaper – is over for another year. And what a year it has been. There were huge headliners, rising stars, fascinating curios and Louis Tomlinson lugging an Argos telly on to the site.
Although this liveblog is winding up, the Guardian’s coverage of Glasto will continue tomorrow morning with Alexis Petridis’s annual round up, our big picture essay of the final day and 24 things we learned from this year’s festival. So do check back in for those.
But from us it’s so long – see you next year for Glastonbury 2025!
On 6 May 2010, the National played the Royal Albert Hall in London. During the encore, news came through that the Conservatives had won the election. This week, the Cincinnati-formed band are, coincidentally, back in Britain to hopefully bookend that diabolical era (they’re playing Manchester on Thursday’s election night). Obviously, this is a fact that only extreme heads know – the RAH show was my third ever National gig; tonight is my 38th and on Friday I’ll reach 40. (Yes, take it as read that I have little critical objectivity here: before the set starts, Guardian journalist Dorian Lynskey jokes that I love the National more than he loves his own children.) Nevertheless, it’s one of many layers of poignancy nestled in the five-piece’s masterful Other stage headline set tonight.
“Getting pretty dark out there isn’t it,” says frontman Matt Berninger as the sky dims. “Getting pretty dark out there in America … I’ll talk about that later.” Then follows The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness, a song about political dysfunction and misinformation spliced with a beaten piano that resounds like a warning shot, and an impossibly groovy guitar solo by Aaron Dessner. Later, they do a one-two of Fake Empire, a song about political disaffection that Berninger introduces as one that “keeps getting more and more appropriate, and that’s really depressing”, and then Mr November, a raging, triumphal song about a presidential candidate high on hope and hubris that hits painfully hard given Biden’s faltering debate performance earlier in the week.
The National perform on the Other stage. Photograph: Jonny Weeks/The Guardian
In the past year, the National have been delving deep into their catalogue to laden their setlists with rarities. Tonight, their first Glastonbury stage headline slot, isn’t one of those, though we do get an incredible rendition of Abel, from 2005’s Alligator, Berninger shredding his voice on the screams of “my mind’s not right”. Instead, it’s a run through the classics that also makes a convincing case from some newer songs – from the highly underrated pair of albums they put out last year, Last Two Pages of Frankenstein and Laugh Track – as classics in the making. Eucalyptus is low and rumbling, Berninger furiously gesticulating and petulant as he plays the self-sabotaging party in a relationship. Tropic Morning News frets at losing a connection with the person you thought understood you best, though ends in a wickedly loose riff from the Dessners. Drummer Bryan Devendorf has been the best player of his kind in indie rock for years, but he’s on another level this evening, sounding fleet and filigreed.
Two years ago, I saw the National play at Primavera festival in Barcelona, during a now well-publicised period of mental ill-health for Berninger. He was so clearly ill at ease that it was upsetting to watch. So much has changed in the intervening period: tonight, he’s a perfect combination of Morrissey-influenced showman and the crushed embodiment of his dejected, fretful lyricism. A photographer’s dream, with his Jarvis-worthy shapes – he dances and contorts himself so much that the elbows of his suit are worn threadbare – he spends a good amount of the set running up and down the pit, shaking hands and clutching audience members by the head. For penultimate song Terrible Love, he runs into the field and performs much of it screaming by a metal green fence as fans throng around – a thrilling moment for a band often unfairly dismissed as buttoned up.
It’s a stark contrast to the final song, the hushed, fearful ballad About Today, from the 2004 Cherry Tree EP. (I far prefer them closing with this to the a capella version of Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks, which they’ve been doing for years.) It plays as another elegy: “How close am I / To losing you?” Berninger sings as the Dessners’ hesitant guitar loops brim into full-blown noise – a song about a relationship that also serves as a reminder of how easily the status quo can slip through your fingers. The National came back from the brink just in time to soundtrack ours.
The National performing on the Other stage at Glastonbury Festival. Photograph: Jonny Weeks/The Guardian
Also just finished on West Holts are the dapperest of dauphins, French duo Justice. Their set is being replayed on the Glastonbury channel on iPlayer though, for anyone who wants to catch it again. They’re just stomping through Genesis at the moment, and it sounds BASSY.
The National’s Matt Berninger tightrope-walked the barrier during Mr November, which came after Fake Empire, a song he said “keeps getting more and more appropriate – it’s really depressing”. The former touches on hubris and hope in politics (and was used in a video by the Obama campaign); the latter abandonment by it. In the week of Joe Biden’s worrying debate performance, the pair take on a new poignancy.
The National at Other stage. Photograph: Jonny Weeks/The Guardian
And that’s that. A brisk Sunday night set, perhaps understandable given SZA only has two albums to choose from. But she managed to cram in two costume changes, a giant ant, a shimmy up a tree trunk and a sizeable number of hits in that time. Alexis Petridis’s review will be with you shortly.
SZA, sensing her crowd might not exactly be ancient, dedicates 20 Something to the twentysomethings in the crowd, hopping off the stage to serenade the phone-waving front row. “I was so nervous about this”, she says, echoing, oddly, the Zutons earlier in the day.
SZA has been teasing her next album Lana since September last year – although it’s unlikely to be with us for some time (she notoriously takes ages honing her albums – it was five years between Ctrl and its followup SOS). But here’s a taster in the form of recent single Saturn, a twinkly, gentle number about escaping planet Earth.
Another costume change: SZA has now sprouted wings and is clambering up a tree stump for Nobody Gets Me. The average age for this Pyramid crowd is extremely young, and extremely keen – making up for the slightly low numbers in the field with sheer noise.
This is fantastically camp at points: SZA is currently wielding a pair of cutlasses and seems to be either lapdancing on or swordfighting a robot in a chair.
SZA is already a costume change down, swapping out a gilded cavewoman outfit for a futuristic catsuit. She’s just playfully segued back and forth between Kiss Me More, her collab with Doja Cat, and Prince’s Kiss.
There seems to be an issue with SZA’s audio. It seems fine to me on broadcast, but out in the field Alexis Petridis says that it sounds like “someone’s locked her in a wardrobe”.
SZA is currently sat on a giant ant performing her ballad Drew Barrymore, as you do. Perhaps she’s a bit bug-obsessed at the moment: she also plays an insect-human hybrid in the video for her new single.
SZA on a giant ant for Drew Barrymore. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA
SZA is tearing up the Pyramid with a set so far leaning heavily on her 2016 breakthrough Ctrl. Really there are few things in live music better than R&B getting the full band treatment: session musicians with chops make songs that are featherlight on record sound so big and booming live.
Comments (…)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion