Friday at Glastonbury with Moist Leg, CMAT, Lorde, secret units and extra – comply with it dwell! | Glastonbury 2025

The Glastonbury schedulers get given a number of grief, for reserving the flawed artist on the flawed stage, or on the flawed time, or on the flawed part of the complete moon, and so forth – so it’s vital to offer them credit score the place it’s due: Paris Paloma, on the Avalon stage, at simply after 3pm may be very nicely judged. That mid-afternoon slot generally is a difficult one to fill, significantly when the temperature is excessive and individuals are wanting to save lots of their energy for the headliners to return. Paloma’s crowd fills the Avalon tent however comfortably so, with out packing it, and her model of upbeat, writerly rock provides a welcome injection of vitality with out demanding an excessive amount of of us.

Paloma’s happy too: “This stage is a good bit greater than the one I performed final 12 months.” She’s nonetheless solely comparatively early into her profession, having gained consideration with single Labour in 2023. Since her debut album Cacophony was launched final 12 months, Paloma has shortly progressed to greater phases, headlining the O2 Shepherds Bush earlier this month. There Emma Thompson was outed as a fan, caught singing alongside to Labour in a video posted to TikTok.

At the moment when she takes the stage, together with her guitar strapped throughout her long-sleeve, full-length, flowing white gown, towards a backdrop of folkloric imagery, the uninitiated would possibly count on to be eased in with some light guitar, however Paloma clearly units out to subvert these expectations, opening her set with driving, even considerably heavy guitar. It’s harking back to a folksier, much less theatrical Florence + the Machine.

Equally Paloma doesn’t pull her punches, introducing a music as being concerning the radical energy of “loving your self when there are such a lot of folks benefiting from the whole lot you hate about your physique”. Within the absence of real self-love, Paloma suggests, “spite is pretty much as good a purpose” to attempt to foster it.

She is extra explicitly political in a brand new, as-yet unreleased music, Good Boy, written in response to “frustrations concerning the present state of patriarchy on the earth”, within the UK and the US. The title refers to males in energy, saved chasing their tails and every others’ approval beneath a system that oppressed them as a lot because it does everybody else.

“I’ve a number of ideas about what a submissive and self-contradictory perception system patriarchy is; there may be nothing extra submissive I can consider than… being so painfully terrified of being seen as female or queer and residing your life in worry,” says Paloma. She goes on to eviscerate the “false guarantees of patriarchy” and the way younger males “are being radicalised, whether or not it’s the incels who hang-out my remark sections or the fucking loser billionaires who occur to be in energy in the meanwhile … I’ve by no means seen submission embodied so nicely.”

It’s an eloquent speech, and a refreshing injection of the larger world by the usually sluggish a part of the day. The funding from the gang is clear from the regular sprinkling of arms all through Paloma’s music The Heat, plus the rallying sing alongside closing her set with Labour.

However an early standout is Knitting Music, concerning the legacy of her grandmother and the way she’s recognized it not solely in the remainder of her household but additionally her feminine friendships. I’m reminded in her easygoing however thought of and detailed storytelling of Olivia Dean’s afternoon Pyramid stage set final 12 months – maybe that’s Paloma’s subsequent slot.