Every August, a remote location tucked away in the mountains of South Wales is transformed into a magical artistic paradise.
One of the few remaining large-scale independent festivals left standing in the UK, Green Man’s emphasis, as always, is firmly fixed on promoting environmental sustainability, inclusivity, and opening minds. With the backdrop of political turmoil – the ongoing atrocities in Palestine and the recent far-right riots – not going unmentioned by many of the performers – this sense of community, unity and togetherness engendered by the festival is a deeply cathartic one. A festival appreciated and loved by all-ages – that is as equally welcome to young families as it is to hardcore gig goers – is also a great place to witness British people being very silly, where you’re never longer than 5 minutes away from a bubble flying in your direction.
Aside from the colourful catalogues of film, art, comedy, dance and cabaret bedecking the festival’s fringes, Green Man also stands as one of the UK’s great havens for alternative music. Always with a boldly eclectic selection of headliners – ranging this year from the infernal techno of Jon Hopkins to the lachrymose indie-folk genius of Big Thief – it’s the festival’s masterfully curated undercard where our attention chiefly lies across the weekend. Our radar is often honed in on the Rising Stage – newly enlarged for 2024 (perhaps after The Last Dinner Party packed it out beyond comprehension last year) – which plays host to many So Young favourites, new and old.
The Orchestra (For Now)
And speaking of ‘new’, it’s a pretty big occasion for The Orchestra (For Now). As a crisp blue paints the skies, and a particularly scorching sun beckons the milieu for the Friday’s full day of action, these winners of the Green Man rising competition are opening up the picturesque Mountain Stage – resembling as much an Ancient Greek amphitheatre as a festival main stage. “We’re very used to tiny dingy rooms” confesses lead vocalist Joe, appropriately sporting his Brixton windmill tee as a tacit reference to said ‘rooms’. More used to smaller stages they may be, but their lyrical piano ballads, their cascades of swash-buckling strings, their grandiose and awkward emotional crusades are more than a fitting soundtrack for such epic surroundings.
Following a hop and a skip across the site to the Far Out tent to indulge in Opus Kink’s dark and deliciously rotten jazz-punk carousels – a shot in arm to anyone needing an uncompromising shove into wakefulness – a whole new level of suave is reached meanwhile by TTSSFU on our debut visit to the Rising Stage. A fit check: vocalist/guitarist Tasmin Stephens rocks wrap-around shades and crimson-coloured heart-shaped guitar, flanked by a vanguard of musicians in starched white shirts and black ties. Compared to the gossamer introversions of recent EP ‘Me, Jed and Andy’, its live renditions pack in a whole extra heap of barbed, wrangling fuzz. With a set of driving dream-pop cutting smoothly through the midday sun, the four-piece transmogrify these songs of loneliness and despair into tear-swept anthems of sullen triumph.
TTSSFU
With a much-anticipated new album due next month, Mermaid Chunky glam up the main stage with a showy wardrobe of mycologically-inspired salmon pink outfits. Looping their keyboards, percussion swishes and sultry saxophones live on the stage amidst absurdist spoken-word narratives, the duo conjure the strangest and most endearing oddball-dance odysseys. Next, Blue Bendy‘s soaring tendernesses spill out into the Walled Garden like a bag of confessions. Years of grafting away at their oblique, meticulously woven, art-rock abstractions has seen them build an immaculate world entirely of their own. Set closer ‘Cloudy’ rams shivers up our collective spine; “That was cathartic” were singer Arthur Nolan’s thankful, and decidedly astute parting words.
Lime Garden are sounding grungy and proud next in the big blue Far Out tent. With Chloe Howard playing every bit the ‘pop star’ that her t-shirt claims her to be, the band rip through one water-tight guitar-pop gem after the next: ‘Fears’ packs a sinister punch, ‘Mother’’s chorus is one for the ages, while ‘Sick and Tired’ is already all too relatable at just three in the afternoon.
Mermaid Chunky
Blue Bendy
Lime Garden
“What time are Man/Woman/Chainsaw on?” is the question on more than a few people’s lips as the afternoon bounces along. The Rising Stage is teeming with anticipation as the six-piece arrive in glittering plastic trilbys and lift-off with see-sawing violins and gung-ho accelerations. Despite their (intimidatingly) young age, theirs is a visible, crash-bang determination to burrow into the fecund earth and sprout some punked-up jewels for us all to savour. Unreleased tune ‘Adam and Steve’ hints at poppier, more polished futures and latest single “Ode To Clio”‘s stands as a pillar of their set.
A special treat to set the fires burning for Friday night are Getdown Services. Delivering sweaty, fist-pumping electro-disco humourism to the grinning throng, their crowd is a sea of ear-to-ear smiles that laps up every booty shake and dance cue with ever-more enthusiastic cheers. Equal parts sublime and ridiculous, their 45 minute set – complete with ‘Soulja Boy’ drop and an emotional ‘Dancing Queen’ cover – is recalled in excitedly hushed tones by many across the weekend as a festival highlight and a genuine life-affirming joy.
Man/Woman/Chainsaw
Getdown Services
As Saturday all too quickly moves into view, a noontime tonic for those ever-wearying heads is Brighton’s ladylike. Unfurling enigmatic charms of folkish, dream-soaked introspections, the band’s main virtue is their level-headed patience. Like a curiously dazzling light obscured by frosted glass, their songs never reveal their best hands too early, preferring to lay down their motifs and dynamic switches with all the precision of a canny croupier.
Seemingly extracting the folklorish energies of the landscape, and translating it into guttural cello shreds, pumping drums, violin streaks and grinding noise-guitar solos, The New Eves‘ unique brand of garage-folk feels at home in these crags, rocks and rivers of Monmouthshire. The quartet incant lyrics about the creation of the earth, and the Gates of Thebes with mesmerising vocal harmonies and the juiciest cuts of bass.
ladylike
The New Eves
Bee-lining post-haste to the Walled Garden, Tapir! greet us with open arms and a particularly bulky rendition of ‘Swallow’. With intricate guitar lines and keyboards interweaving like schools of fish in the ocean – and with regal streams of trumpet setting it all down onto a golden throne – here is a band steadily breaking free from the red-helmeted high-concept frameworks of their debut album and growing ever more confident with the masks firmly off. The six-piece air a brace of new tracks too, including recently released ‘Hallelujah, Bruv’, which adds another of the sweetest entries into an already succulent oeuvre.
Following the delights of a buoyant Porridge Radio secret set at the Walled Garden, If anyone was looking to catch four Manchester lads inciting you over and over to “fucking come on!” while playing their absolute heart out, then Maruja’s crepuscular set is the place for you. It’s an ever-tightening squeeze at the front as the band’s jazzy, cosmic excursions erupt into cataclysmic rock assaults. With frontman Harry Wilkinson gesturing manically like a preacher prophesying the coming Doom, and saxophonist Joe Carroll patrolling the stage casting fireballs to burn us all alive – all above a rhythm section muscular enough to pull down the Rising Stage’s very foundations – it doesn’t take long for the mosh-pits to exponentially expand, and for the crowd-surf count to get ridiculously high.
Maruja
Right before festival headliners Big Thief went on to spellbind with a set packed with unreleased material, Ugly closed the Rising Stage by doing much the same. Opening up with firmly established live favourites ‘Shepherd’s Carol’ and ‘Sha’, the lion’s share of their set sees the band air sizzling new cuts. Booming bright and loud with soul-stirring 4 part harmonies and intricate arrangements, it’s an impressive display, proving that Ugly are not here to rest on their laurels, but instead to keep their sights locked firmly ahead towards a doubtlessly exciting future.
If there was barely anything left to scrape from the bottom of the barrel as Sunday’s strung-out head reared into view, then Hastings Trio Borough Council were more than happy to help refuel those energy levels for one last hurrah. Strolling onto the rising stage in some rather formal collared shirts – while the clothes are smart-casual, their set is anything but. Grinding out a gritty dustwind of gloomy jewels, their grooves wend around and around in magnetic circulations; a crawling, gothic feast.
Ugly
Borough Council
Next up, one of the most eagerly anticipated sets of the weekend was that of Black Country, New Road. Coming on to the jubilant waltz of Tom Jones’s Delilah, the mood soon elevates onto ever prettier planes. Their rotating lead vocalists gush out melodies so achingly beautiful that they hang on the Golden Hour’s rays. Delivering their singular take on baroque pop and musical theatre, the seven piece amount to something close to full orchestra – we count accordions, flute, violins, saxophones, bowed electric basses; something that looks like a tiny lute; a recorder big enough to be played by each member simultaneously. That long awaited next studio album, whenever that might be – set to arrive in an era where the thirst for such grandiloquent folk-leaning arrangements seems greater than ever – could not come sooner and will probably be quite a huge deal.
Black Country, New Road
Crowd for Black Country, New Road
Closing the festival with perhaps the biggest bang of them all – and I’m not talking about the fireworks, or the closing ceremony of burning the Green Man – are New York renegades Model/Actriz. Coated in mean, suffocating red lighting – aside from the band’s astonishingly powerful industrial-punk electricity – all eyes are intently focused on the insane cabarets of vocalist Cole Foster Haden. Coming across like a perverse screamo drag act – his catalogue of antics are too numerous to mention: there’s as much time spent singing in the pogo’ing crowd than from the stage; there’s plucking cigarettes from a glittery grab bag and lighting them on stage in the most bad-ass way possible times ten. There’s ballerina twirls, roly-poly’ing onto the stage; swigging salaciously from a bottle of white; all as our dishevelled minds are pummelled mercilessly into a hopeless, soupy mess. Shouting out Borough Council’s and Black Country, New Road’s earlier sets for a sunday-full-circle moment, Model/Actriz provide the scandalous cherry on top of a sweaty, desperately unhealthy, glorious cake of weekend in the Welsh hills.
Model/Actriz
All photos by Hazel Blacher
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