Glastonbury 2010: Sunday - Other Stage Roundup
For those camping on the west of the site, Sunday morning's wake-up call came via the sound of North Wales trio, The Joy Formidable, who deliver a swift set of expansive, grungy anthems to a small, sun-soaked crowd. They're due to release their first proper album later this year, and today's performance of new single Popinjay suggests a furious, feedback-heavy debut is on the way. Their show also re-confirms the Other Stage as the place to experience the festival's finest sound - a fact Scottish rockers Frightened Rabbit also exploit to full effect. Primarily drawing on material from this year's The Winter Of Mixed Drinks, they play their Highland indie epics under a scorching midday sun that seems intent on roasting each and every one of us. Not that it stops head Rabbit Scott Hutchison leading his band through a run of triumphant offerings (Swim Until You Can't See Land and Living In Colour are highlights) that make the band's first Glastonbury appearance one they'll never forget.
Having conquered a muddy John Peel tent in 2007, The Hold Steady graduate to blue-sky adulation with ease. Now a six-piece, America's premier existential bar band are more nuanced, as shown by The Sweet Part Of The City's widescreen ache and the power-pop harmonies that illuminate Hurricane J The Swish and Your Little Hoodrat Friend marry arena-sized dynamics to punk drive, equal parts grace and grit. Towering anthem Southtown Girls gains a jazzy piano break. The Clash-meets-Hüsker Dü surge of Constructive Summer is especially charged, animated frontman Craig Finn imbuing the lines "Raise a toast to Saint Joe Strummer/I think he might have been our only decent teacher" with a poignancy that befits the setting. The Temper Trap's generic rock-lite draws a large, understandably lethargic crowd. Dougy Mandagi emotes in that distressed eunuch voice modern singers use to express a vague sense of alienation, while his Melbourne cohorts construct vast swathes of tune-free wallpaper out of discarded U2 intros.
Competing with the football is, of course, no easy gig, but Brooklyn's Grizzly Bear plough gamely on. Even though they've been touring their soaraway third album Veckatimest for over a year now, there's little evidence that they're in danger of flagging, with the barnstorming, polyrhythmic Southern Point stirring the masses, before Ed Droste coaxes them into helping him out with the choirboy chorus of Two Weeks.
We Are Scientists appear to be undecided whether they're a comedy troupe or piledriving indie rockers. Cue much mirthful between-song banter that ultimately only serves to distract from their frequently storming art-rock, with the rollicking Rules Don't Stop particularly fitting in these surroundings.
Words: RB, MA, TD
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6:43 PM | 27/06/2010
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