Glastonbury 2023

Hi there! Maybe Glastonbury is not what it once was and maybe not the best place to discover music or even watch really good one, but during my time in London I made it a habit to follow the BBC coverage of it.

So here's a few remarks about stuff I have seen so far.

I've got to say that nothing yet was really great but some enjoyable enough. Two of the bands of most interest to PA folks are Black Country New Road (playing right now, I'll see it later) and The Comet Is Coming (I decided to not watch their set before seeing them live in Bologna next week).

And then, Sparks! Sparks were quite good; they certainly know how to handle a festival crowd, Cate Blanchett did a guest dance performance which certainly was a crowd pleaser, and generally they have lots of good material that was presented very well. When they play they still seem at the top of their game. The only thing is that all their newer songs could've been done already in the seventies and eighties; their set was so organic that one may wonder whether they ever developed.

Warpaint are a very good band, I really like most of their songs, and as Sparks they performed them very well. They didn't make that much of their festival performance in terms of communication with the crowd or playing exciting different versions of their songs (in fact I didn't know that many of them so I may be wrong); they just turned up to play their stuff. Seeing a bit more I actually appreciate a set without an organised singalong and "Are you feelin good Glastonbury?" after every other song.

I was curious of Unknown Mortal Orchestra, good music there but they suffer from the "we want vocals but none of us can really sing" complex. I tried The Murder Capital for some post punk but same issue there, I couldn't make peace with their vocals. Ezra Collective couldn't go wrong in this way as they do instrumental nu-jazz that works very well on a festival like this, certainly they left people happy but over the full length of the set their music wasn't that interesting to me. Gabriels do gospel/soul, which normally doesn't interest me that much, but their vocal performance was excellent and they put together an electrifying set. I'm not going to buy their albums probably but this was fun to watch.

While much of non-anglophone Europe was not represented (as last year; except the inevitable Maneskin, and of course probably some others that I haven't seen yet), there were some acts from farther away who would even sing in their own language, and largely stick to their own musical tradition. Both Tinariwen (Mali) and ADG7 (Korea) were good to watch and listen to. ADG7 put up quite a show with lots of costumes, interaction and smiles, and I loved a number of their tracks (not so much toward the end though); Tinariwen did their desert music seemingly nicely unimpressed by the occasion - during the hottest time of the day wuth the audience needing their energy for later bigger shows such a chill out approach is probably not inappropriate.

I checked out a few more but wasn't so impressed (it's still going on and more videos are added). I think I had only heard some three tracks or so before of Friday's headliners Arctic Monkeys so I watched some of their set - supposedly they're one of the greats? Well they were competent enough with good singing, and I respect the variety in their sound but their compositions largely passed me by

Any further experiences and opinions?

Elton John: His music isn't necessarily my cup of tea but of course he has a huge number of great songs and playing all of them with great energy will make people happy. I've read that Elton John got right what McCartney got wrong last year by playing some less known songs that weren't crowd favourites, but my vote would still go to Macca's approach.

Black Country New Road: Strikingly different from their first album, now an art folk band. Not quite sure what I think of it. I like the approach and a good number of songs, also it was bold to do this at Glastonbury, but (my favourite issue with many bands) the singing was very important and not of top standard (OK I've heard worse).

Weyes Blood: Well performed and some surprisingly ironic and bold communication with the audience. Not bad, although many of her songs don't really get me.

Foo Fighters: Yeah, forgot to mention them yesterday. Reliable 100% power, can't go wrong with them.

Speakers Corner Quartet: I liked them a lot when they started, a good and interesting sound, but ultimately it was too much about the lyrics to me and the music was driven too much in the background.

Nova Twins: If you want energy look here. Chances are this kind of heavy metal rap won't be too popular around here but they surely do well what they're doing.

Seems that now pretty much everyone who played is up on iplayer for listening, so I'll probably check a few more out.