Alt-rock, pop and audiences mix at this festival with an identity crisis
Alternative festivals like Leeds and Reading used to attract alternative crowds. You wouldn’t find the cool kids moshing in the mud between Strongbow swigs, and the mainstream lot certainly couldn’t be bothered attending. However, somewhere over the past few years, festivals changed. Instead of a sea of black hoodies and greasy hair, typical alt-festival crowds now boast one of three looks. There’s the shirtless, shades-wearing lad, complete with shorn hair and something scribbled on his skin with neon facepaint; his scantily-clad female counterpart, equally painted and destined to be freezing as soon as night arrives, and the older folks; veterans left wondering if it’s them that have changed or festivals in general.
The answer is somewhere in the middle. Over the past decade, the festival scene has changed and line-ups have adapted to keep up. Reading and Leeds has long been people’s introduction to festival life; somewhere to get your first taste of adult-free liberation and test your limits with booze, drugs, camping grime and sunburn. As such, it’s this frontline of festival goers that have dictated what a modern-day Leeds Festival looks like, and by serving its core audience so well, it’s become an ever-evolving beast. That said, this conversation about what the festival is compared to what the festival was still managed to fizz subconsciously through the weekend, making the whole thing feel, at times, like an event with an identity crisis.
Perhaps this is best personified by the controversy caused by Friday night headliner Rage Against The Machine pulling out at the eleventh hour only to be replaced by alt-poppers The 1975. Fans online wasted no time voicing their anger at the disparity of this switch-out, while others seemed overjoyed at the last-minute addition. Things were exasperated further following frontman Matthew Healy’s comments during the band’s headlining set that seemed to take aim at Rage themselves, despite the band remaining silent on the situation. However, Healy’s misplaced comments at Zack de la Rocha and co instead of the fans that were actually making a fuss aside, the overall issue at play felt weirdly apt. This split-mindset sort of encapsulates the bigger problem: a festival in flux hellbent on pleasing tomorrow’s fans while trying to keep yesterday’s happy too.
For the most part, Leeds Festival still succeeds in being the leading pop festival going, even if it leaves its rock roots in the dust and certain moments feel a bit jarring. For starters, the absence of politically-charged rockers Rage left a noticeable gap on Friday’s attendance. Combine this with the event’s dual-mainstage/zero-clash scheduling that sees one act start on one stage right as another wraps on a second, and a certain level of audience dilution starts happening. Where some might sit through an unfamiliar act while waiting for their faves to arrive afterwards in the old way of doing things, those same extra crowd-fillers now disappear elsewhere, making some mid-day sets feel startlingly sparse with other stages still not at full capacity. This was particularly noticeable when hip-hop duo Run The Jewels arrived for what should’ve been a triumphant (and long-delayed) main stage slot on Friday afternoon only to be met with a spotty field that felt more than a bit awkward for both them and us.
The alternative acts that used to dominate the festival’s bill have now been relegated to the Festival Republic stage, making it your best bet for finding something new, unexpected, exciting and loud. While the same stage-split issues also made this tent rarely full to capacity, there was plenty of great stuff to be found. Irish folk-rockers The Scratch stomped and screamed their way through a lively Saturday afternoon riot before Manchester grunge-rockers Witch Fever whipped things into a frenzy and Brighton’s Tigercub deliver some slick Queens of the Stone Age vibes. As Saturday neared its end, Fever 333 served up some rap-metal rock in Rage’s absence, while Glass Animals wrapped up a busy summer on the festival circuit by getting a scorching Bramham Park bouncing to their many pineapple-powered viral hits.
After Saturday’s mainstage headline appearances from Houston’s Megan Thee Stallion and Brixton’s Dave, Sunday continued the festival’s attempt at juggling alt-rock and break-out rap. London’s AJ Tracey pulled one of the biggest crowds of the weekend for a mid-afternoon mainstage show before the countdown to the weekend’s final headliner began. Wolf Alice kicked off the evening with their bag of solid bangers before Sheffield’s own Bring Me The Horizon turned dusk into nighttime with a visually stunning, neon-clad performance that would’ve raised the roof if the show wasn’t outdoors. Leeds Fest kept things local for their big weekend closer, as Yorkshire’s-own Arctic Monkeys delivered a set that seemed to please them as much as it did audiences, splicing deeper cuts and some brand new tracks off their just-announced new record The Car with the stone-cold crowd pleasers many had tried – and failed – to stay sober enough to fully enjoy.
As the weekend came to a close, it ultimately proved to be fun if a slightly-imperfect celebration of the mish-mash that is the current musical zeitgeist. If you’re young and reading this wondering whether to you should go to Leeds Festival next year, you should. With its target demographic skewed to those with freshly opened GCSE and A-Level envelopes looking for a cheap lads’ or ladies’ weekend away, you’ll find little not to love at what the festival has become. With plenty of opportunities to let off steam via booze, unsupervised irresponsibility and plenty of drugs, this is a festival that’s specifically designed with the youth of today firmly in mind. If you’re a Leeds Festival veteran pondering whether it’s worth taking a nostalgic trip down memory lane to relive your youth once more, there’s still plenty for you to enjoy too thanks to the event’s forward-facing but yesterday-leaning line-up mix. Just remember: this one’s no longer aimed entirely at you. Now you’ll have to share it with the cool kids.
Photography by Vanessa Bland.
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