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While high winds lash the beleaguered Leeds leg, a refreshing wind of change is blowing at Reading Festival 2024. The post-pandemic two-main-stage concept that allowed bands only 30-minute sets for most of the day and made the incessant race between the two stages far more Olympic than breakdancing has largely disappeared. Now that second venue has been transformed into the Chevron Stage, fronted by a canopy of dot-matrix lights that will potentially become the world’s largest rave cage when night falls.
Also axed are most of the TikTok superstars who have repeatedly proven unable to hold a festival audience’s attention beyond their six seconds of “trending” fame. It turns out that large-scale performances are a lot harder than mumbling a gimmicky lyric online. What’s left has far less of a roadshow feel, as R&L – a pop festival in name only for the past decade – rediscovers some of its raw alternative side.
And there’s nothing more sinister than Belfast’s Kneecap. This Irish hip-hop trio, who describe themselves as “back to annoy the assholes who hate us,” storm the main stage on Friday with deckmaster, DJ Provai, in a tri-colour balaclava and a whirlwind of hype and controversy at their backs.
Named after the IRA’s infamous torture method and occasionally rapping about republican themes in Irish, Kneecap rose to notoriety through an acclaimed fictional biopic starring Michael Fassbender, which is currently in the running for an Oscar.
They are enjoying the tension to the fullest. “It’s not the English people we hate, it’s the English government,” Moglai Bap clarifies, while fellow rapper Mo Chara tries to convince the BBC cameras to film the balaclava-clad moshers in the crowd.
The slogan “The British government is enabling genocide in Gaza” flashes repeatedly across the screen at the back of the stage as Bap strips down to a football T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Refugees Welcome” and DJ Provai cues up “Guilty Conscience,” a thumping, pop-friendly track about meditation, masturbation and being the first to loot Lush when the revolution comes.
Politics is the order of the day all afternoon. Neck Deep singer Ben Barlow takes a few minutes before their polemic “We Need More Bricks” to rail against the recent “far-right uprising,” state exploitation, misinformation and wage slavery, and throws in a “free Palestine” for good measure. The internet says this Welsh punk-pop band has released five albums in the last decade, but who trusts the internet anymore? Their silly power pop is so 1998 through and through that you’d think they formed this morning in the hope of garnering an instant following at Blink-182 Day in Reading.
With Canada’s Spiritbox delivering brutal pop-metal in outfits so black they seem to soak up the light, it’s all reminiscent of the old Reading rock days until Kenya Grace takes to the Chevron stage. The South African-British singer, who topped the charts last year with ‘Strangers’, is part of a new wave of DJ-singer-performers (see also: Nia Archives) out to prove there’s more to superstar DJs than memory sticks and fancy face masks. From an LCD DJ podium, she mixes Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ ‘Heads Will Roll’ into a jangly ambient rave, then grabs the mic and sings as it evolves into the angelic dance-pop of ‘Paris’; also ‘Renegade Master’ and her own ‘Stay’. Let’s hope Chris Moyles doesn’t get any silly ideas.
Back on the main stage, its screens filled with pink art deco hallways and palm fronds, the Two Door Cinema Club rub the balmy temperatures in the faces of our Yorkshire cousins. Alex Trimble – I say, Ladies – now a moustachioed, dapper fox of a singer, and guitarist Sam Halliday his Hawaiian shirt-wearing, beach-ready counterpart. Every song in their set is a frothy alt-pop classic that slides down like one pina colada after another. The creamy dream-rock of ‘This Is the Life’ segues into the stuttering hook of ‘I Can Talk’; a gorgeous ‘Next Year’, as devastating and uplifting as the best pop music, melts into the spectacular three-part harmonies of ‘Do You Want It All?’. They were the founders of modern indie pop, and still no one can match the sheer tenderness of their touch.
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It’s the kind of rousing, party-inducing set we’d expect from Gerry Cinnamon, who certainly has plenty of chutzpah to go with it. His set is that of a 1960s variety show, complete with retro TV cameras and sing-along lyrics. The Gerry Cinnamon Show even has a theme tune: KC and the Sunshine Band’s “Give It Up,” with the title replaced by his name.
But the Scot doesn’t quite deliver the celebratory and unifying experience his elevated program demands. His jaunty folk reels, stomping hoedowns and pop-rock charges seem muted when tucked between bands with real drummers – “Ghost” in particular has Springsteen ambitions but no E Street punch. And his emotional roundhouses don’t quite land: “I guess I’d rather have holes in my shoes than drown in gold,” he sings on a serious “Fortune Favours the Bold,” only to then look out at thousands of Reading pranksters pumping their Reeboks in the air for fun. Things liven up when he starts singing about the benefits of marijuana on “Discoland” and rants really loudly about being “a little bit less of an ass” on “Canter.” But he is so close to being swept off the scene that he might as well be playing at Leeds.
The sound clash between the two headliners, The Prodigy at one end of the field and Blink-182 at the other, is nothing short of seismic. On the Chevron Stage, The Prodigy, having lost their totemic rave goblin Keith Flint to suicide in 2019, double down on the intensity to make up for it. Skulls and mysterious symbols flash above the canopy, laser nets fill the arena, and beats so hard they could break tectonic plates, intent on searing eyeballs and shattering spines. Maxim now runs the show like a techno sergeant major—”Where are my warriors?” he barks repeatedly—but the beat is the star. “Roadblox” and “Voodoo People” are monstrous rave beasts, and Flint, depicted on screen as a demonic silhouette, seems to have possessed the spirit of “Firestarter,” delivered voiceless but in a wild, hyperactive frenzy.
Blink, meanwhile, take to the main stage with their middle fingers raised and plenty of stories to tell about the special times they spent with Reading’s mother. “We really like girls and their bodies,” guitarist Tom DeLonge helpfully clarifies, as their stage banter drifts into jokes about greased throats and a misdefinition of “fingers.”
That their youthful childishness remains intact at nearly fifty is quite reassuring after the band’s very adult crises, including bassist Mark Hoppus’ battle with cancer, drummer Travis Barker’s plane crash in 2008 and the repeated departures of guitarist Tom Delonge. His return for last year’s One more time… The album allows for this foray into a kind of reunion, but Blink’s longevity owes more to Barker’s powerful drumming and the band’s masterful handling of multi-harmonic punk-pop melodies.
They have evolved over their 32 years of existence, offering epic, thoughtful, emotional rock. “Bored to Death” deals with the fading of youthful exuberance into tortured adulthood. “I Miss You” and “One More Time” are touching moments of loss and grief: “Do I have to die to hear you say goodbye?” Hoppus sings on the latter, partly to his bandmates. “Stay Together for the Kids” is a brutal depiction of a broken home, especially since Hoppus introduces it by telling all the children of divorce in the audience, “That shit was your fault.”
But it’s their latest run of punk-pop bangers, including “What’s My Age Again?” and “All the Small Things,” that justify their self-proclaimed hype – “The Beatles can give us a blow job,” screams DeLonge, claiming to be quoting from the Bible. After all the Post Malone, Imagine Dragons and The 1975 of Reading’s recent past, the festival equivalent of a midlife crisis, it finally seems to be regaining some bite.
