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David Levene going full Andreas Gursky with this shot of the boomer hordes for Rod Stewart. Bravo!
Jorja Smith reviewed
Jason Okundaye
Woodsies
Jorja Smith is welcomed on with an orchestral flourish – rhythmic percussion and escalating strings because the visuals conjure a stage on fireplace. Final month, the singer started her first UK tour since 2018. Again then she was 21, and driving excessive off her debut album’s Brit awards gong, Mercury nomination and Grammy nomination for greatest new artist. However she has switched down the gears in direction of a slower tempo of life, transferring from London again to her birthplace Walsall in 2023. Right here, at one of many final units of Glastonbury, she will be able to flex how she’s developed and progressed away from the flashing lights.
Smith has received followers for a smoky, honeyed voice that has remained agile, elegant and restrained – although generally that restraint is to a fault. On the opening quantity, Strive Me, she is drowned out by her band and, with a vocal type which is commonly legato, it may be arduous to listen to what she’s saying. There’s a superb line, in spite of everything, between vocal magnificence and repression.
But this difficulty rapidly melts away, notably when the acquainted hits come out – Blue Lights and Addicted are such phenomenal tracks, attractive and delicate and bringing out beautiful moments of vocal layering along with her backing singer which give extra lyrical readability and a becoming sense of ensemble. Her male backing singer comes out for a duet on Emotions – Smith is so adoring of him they usually sound improbable collectively, however it additionally seems like a humble and mature embrace of how introducing completely different, distinct vocal tones can intensify a efficiency.
Initially, you do surprise if this set would possibly turn out to be boring, and the way she will be able to preserve the viewers for an hour and fifteen minutes of slower, mellow tones which may not be the vibe for a Sunday late-night billing. But Smith is adaptable. Go Go Go reaches for Afropop, whereas Popcaan collaboration Come Over embraces dancehall. This scope is complemented by her band who’re actually improbable – her bassist can present mellow moments of cool R&B, however equally they’ll ascend into rollicking crescendos and grundy indie rock sort segments.
This set actually reaches its peak throughout the extra enjoyable, funky and decidedly unrelaxed segments. She brings out AJ Tracey for each a canopy of his hit Ladbroke Grove and their current collaboration, Crush. I’ve to say, Tracey performs a lot better right here than he had simply two hours in the past on the identical stage. Maybe it’s because there isn’t any backing monitor to depend on, and there’s a great, virtually sibling-like fondness between the 2 artists.
Nevertheless it’s when the basslines and syncopated rhythms of UK storage emerge that you just actually see Smith as a nationwide darling, one equally able to leaping on new sounds whereas resurrecting previous genres with finesse; in fact, funky digital storage monitor Little Issues, which reintroduced Smith to the world in 2023, performs that half. However there’s additionally The Means I Love You and Preditah collaboration On My Thoughts, which really feel extra befitting of the darkish Woodsies stage and the late-night billing. You possibly can think about it going off at Glastonbury’s varied nightlife venues; hopefully I’ll hear a few of this set, the pitch faders mixing up the association at Block9 later.
The Maccabees reviewed

Safi Bugel
At one level, the Maccabees had a technology of individuals in a chokehold. The London indie band have been so prolific they’ll’t even bear in mind precisely what number of instances they’ve performed at Glastonbury earlier than. However after 14 years and 4 albums, they introduced their hiatus in 2016, with a farewell tour the next yr.
Again in October, they teased their comeback; tonight’s present is considered one of their first public performances in eight years. It’s a high-energy, emotion-heavy expertise on either side of the barrier as they shuttle again via time through all of their greatest hits. At one level, the band acknowledge that they – and sure most of tonight’s viewers – are actually a decade older, in order that they ask them to leap alongside, however provided that they need to. In fact, they do. The boisterous pleasure from the gang of thirtysomethings doesn’t waver, via the pressing, full-bodied finish of their discography (Latchmere, X-Ray, Marks to Show It, and so on) to the extra quaint moments, like the lover ditty Toothpaste Kisses, which is met with a rapturous singalong.
As with all reunion, it’s a shamelessly indulgent journey down reminiscence lane – to the band’s heyday, sure, but additionally to a big time in British indie music extra typically. Particular visitor Florence Welch joins them on stage for Love You Higher and a rowdy efficiency of Canine Days Are Over. After closing with the punchy fan favorite Pelican, the band hug each other on stage. After they say that this present means the world to them, you may inform they imply it.

Ben Beaumont-Thomas
To courtroom us just a little extra, Olivia’s cracked out her Union Jack pants for – paradoxically – All-American Bitch. She’s additionally carried out the Flaming Lips factor of chucking out a great deal of large white balls into the viewers. Then it’s into the second-best Olivia track: Good 4 U. This track options such a very good actorly efficiency: the right bunny boiler urgent her face towards the double glazing to inform her ex about how she’s actually completely superb about their breakup. It’s cartoonishly heightened and foolish – but additionally there’s actual venom, and it is a positively a narrative with two sides: what’s this man carried out?
Then it’s Get Him Again! and a ton of fireworks crackling over a splendidly overwrought guitar solo. “This can be a dream come true,” she tells this jubilant crowd. “Goodnight!”
Nevertheless it’s not goodnight from us simply but – stick round for a lot more evaluations, pics and extra.
Our photographer Alicia Canter has been down within the pit for Olivia Rodrigo and are available again with some killer photographs.

Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Ooh, it’s my fave Olivia track, Deja Vu. It sits proper within the coronary heart of the Venn diagram of her songwriting – little bit of bruised heartbreak, little bit of guitar chew, little bit of dream-pop – and it’s about such a particular horrifying state of affairs: seeing your ex taking part in via the identical cute stuff you did collectively, this time with a brand new associate. Which has the impact of retroactively cancelling them out for you and making you assume: wait, who had they already carried out them with earlier than me? And it’s a dilemma that you just may not have come throughout pre social media, however now romances are performed out in public, these new bizarre horrors seep into tradition. It’s an instance of how Rodrigo, not even out of her teenagers when she recorded this, is so perceptive about affairs of the center.

Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Jorja Smith is raving up a storm and doing a little oo-a oo-a’s, whereas Overmono have hit a comparatively decrease tempo zone, working via some tech-y reggaeton. And the Prodigy are protecting every thing 100. “We’re the noise makers,” Maxim guarantees. “Anybody brings as a lot noise as this? I’ll retire … We’re waking up the entire of England!” They construct up Smack My Bitch Up from its constituent elements, including gigantic cock-rock riffs on the way in which to that gleefully obnoxious vocal hook – demurely lined over for the BBC however with the gang emphatically filling in. Extra pics from our Jonny right here:

Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Like Noah Kahan earlier than her, Olivia is doing a little shameless courting of us Brits. “I really like England so fucking a lot,” she says. “It’s bands just like the Remedy that first obtained me acquainted with England … I’ve so many issues I really like about England, I really like popular culture, I really like how no one judges you for having a pint at midday, it’s the very best. I really like English sweets, all of the sweets from M&S, Colin the Caterpillar particularly.” Invoking Colin genuinely makes English individuals giddy. Pray proceed. “True story: I’ve had three sticky toffee puddings since coming to Glastonbury. And as luck would have it, I really like English boys.” It’s all teeing up So American, produced from the within jokes she had with an English lover.
The Remedy’s Robert Smith joins Olivia Rodrigo

Ben Beaumont-Thomas
The particular friends are popping out. With the Maccabees up on the Park – which I’m mainly ignoring as a result of life is just too quick – it’s Florence Welch. AJ Tracey has come again out to hitch Jorja Smith. And with Olivia Rodrigo, it’s Robert Smith from the Remedy.
“He’s maybe the very best songwriter to come back out of England, he’s a Glastonbury legend and a private hero of mine,” she says. They launch right into a sweet-natured and extra-melancholy duet of Friday I’m in Love, buying and selling traces forwards and backwards. Then they be a part of collectively in an exquisite pairing for the climactic refrain, their voices so completely completely different and but chiming collectively. “The dads chaperoning 13 yr outdated daughters correctly doing their nut close to us hahahaha”, Alexis Petridis texts to me.
Robert sticks round for an additional one: Simply Like Heaven, wherein he takes the lead on verse one, with Olivia taking verse two – she’s extra doleful and cautious than the extra romantic and caution-throwing Robert. The way in which they convey out new and completely different shades to those songs is without doubt one of the best treats of this yr’s pageant.

Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Olivia Rodrigo is simply 22 years outdated, by the way in which – which places her approach up the league desk of youngest headliners. Billie Eilish was simply 20 when she did her personal set in 2022, although as Ash reminded us throughout their set this weekend, truly it was them who have been the very youngest after they have been drafted in to switch Steve Winwood in 1997.