2024 will go down in Leeds pageant historical past because the 12 months of Storm Lilian. Excessive winds imply the Friday opening is marred by three stage closures, cancelled buses, big queues to get in and the surreal spectacle of punters’ airborne tents touchdown in different folks’s again gardens. With a decimated musical line-up, an unlimited crowd types for headliner Liam Gallagher, who turns up dressed for a deep sea fishing expedition and drily quips “this one’s for the tents” to introduce Oasis’s Up within the Sky. Within the thirtieth anniversary 12 months of Positively Perhaps, a setlist consisting totally of his former band’s early classics unites the sector with epic singalongs, the right tonic after a taxing day.
The TikTok stars’ Aux stage and the Radio 1 tent (with a gaping gap within the roof) stay closed all weekend however Saturday brings sunshine and one thing approaching regular service. This 12 months’s eclectic invoice stretches from nightingale-voiced Rachel Chinouriri’s appeal and vulnerability within the Competition Republic tent to Spiritbox’s gothic metalcore or Raye’s jazzy soul, string part and ballgowns on the primary stage.
World occasions additionally convey a political undercurrent to the standard post-GCSE celebration vibe. Fiery Lambrini Women singer Phoebe Lunny crops a Palestinian flag excessive up the tent scaffolding and Welsh pop-punks Neck Deep urge “it gained’t all the time be like this”. Belfast (largely) Irish language rappers Kneecap have been known as essentially the most controversial band for the reason that Intercourse Pistols however are as humorous as they’re provocative. They pull off the surreal feat of getting a subject in Yorkshire to rap together with Get Your Brits Out, though there’s no signal but of their DJ’s tricolour balaclava amongst pageant merch.
A returning breeze means Fontaines DC’s Sunday teatime set initially suffers sound points, however the Dubliners instantly erupt with a killer double whammy of Boys within the Higher Land and the good Within the Trendy World, from new album Romance. With no eye-popping visuals and nothing greater than a mumbled “How ya doin?” from singer Grian Chatten, it’s a efficiency which, like their profession, delivers totally on their very own phrases.
Lana Del Rey’s British pageant appearances have been marred by late arrivals, prematurely stopped units and sound issues, however there aren’t any such difficulties right here. With the one extraneous noise coming from the hordes of teenage women singing each phrase, the American delivers an beautiful efficiency worthy of certainly one of our best up to date singer-songwriters. Summertime Unhappiness, Younger and Stunning and the remaining converse to an indefinable longing, sounding hauntingly elegiac underneath the fading solar.
Regardless of opening 24 hours late, the high-tech new Chevron stage displays the rising imprint of dance and digital music on what was (like its older counterpart, Studying) a staunchly rock occasion. This makes for an epic dance v pop-punk face-off as simultaneous Saturday night time veteran headliners the Prodigy and Blink-182 knock seven bells out of one another at reverse ends of the pageant with, respectively, tunefully juvenile anthems/penis jokes and demonic grooves/cranium visuals. The Prodigy stay a fearsome stay act, and a pointedly vocal-less Firestarter – with late singer Keith Flint showing on display screen in silhouette – is unquestionably the weekend’s most powerfully touching second.
Lastly, on Sunday night time, breakout producer Fred Once more makes historical past when he turns into the primary digital act to headline the primary stage, delivering a laser-enhanced nearer that hurtles between showmanship, crowd-pleasing grooves and heartfelt emotion. “You’re the largest set of troopers we’ve ever performed to at a pageant” he cries as even a torrential downpour doesn’t cease the dancing, and a pageant that began in catastrophe ends in drenched however defiant model.
