An ominous cloud threatened the capital as the gates opened for Field Day. Unpeturbed, psych-folker Cate Le Bon took to the Adventures in a Beetroot Field stage with moody guitars and echoing, swooping vocals.
Never quite bursting out into a full-on caterwaul, the crowd’s curiosity and enthusiasm was piqued. Pathetic fallacy in all of its GCSE English glory seemed to be on the cards.
A stroll around the festival site provided some light entertainment – of particular note was an imitation cow that could be milked and Jack Barnett ghosting through the masses as if either a) nobody recognised him or b) everybody was just too cool to give a damn.
Mount Kimbie in the Bloggers’ Delight tent promised much but in the end didn’t quite deliver. This may well have been down to the shabby onstage setup. At times fiddling with guitars, at times hovering over synths, at times even singing into a handheld microphone, it just looked plain wrong.
Thankfully, the next band proved to be the success of the day. Esben and the Witch deal in a shimmering, swelling electronic wash which works brilliantly live. The portable snare drum onstage took a brutish pounding as glacial vocals looped and 1950’s sci-fi samples fought for the audience’s attention. Stick your machine up your arse Florence, this is how to do Kate Bush in 2010.
No Age then applied the spark plugs to East London’s naughty bits. After a shaky start with vocals too low in the mix, once that had been remedied the LA twosome’s punk provided dumb fun for a crowd starting to loosen up.
The age-old band vs. security team conflict emerged, but never erupted. It was also entertaining watching a completely powerless security man point out people and tell them to calm down, when it was patently obvious that given the chance, he’d ditch the hi-vis and get in there himself and wild out.
A smattering of poppish dubstep from Hudson Mohawke kept the energy levels up and showed that it can translate well as a live PA. Rolling over to the main stage, there was a DJ playing some killer reggae and dancehall before Caribou (if anyone out there knows who it was, please comment below!).
Surprisingly, Caribou was a damp squib. Sure, the tunes sounded fresh but perhaps the band would have been better playing an earlier slot when the crowd wasn’t so fired up. However, it was nice to see what looked like Dan Snaith’s Mum on the side of the stage getting into it.
Phoenix came onstage to a hero’s welcome. Fizzpop scamps in deck-shoes have never sounded so good, and the crowd spilled out into the London night well-sated. These events are always going to involve a degree of hit or miss. But with a low ticket price and a bill bursting at the seams with eclecticism for such a relatively small event, Field Day was an out and out winner.