Anticipation for Shania Twain’s ‘legends slot’ is in the air from the minute gates open on Wednesday. Clothing stalls are offering two for one deals on cowboy hats and leopard print coats; every tenth festivalgoer’s shirt seems to bear a variation of ‘let’s go girls’ written across the front. When the time arrives, the Pyramid’s as busy as it gets. Following rumours that she was trying to persuade Emily Eavis to let her enter riding a horse, it appears a compromise has been reached. In an endearing clash of the Somerset pastoral, Twain’s country roots and her status as a queer icon, she instead leads a procession of hobby horses carried by dancers and drag queens. Garbed in a rhinestone-studded cowboy hat, she begins with ‘That Don’t Impress Me Much’, and this enormous audience surges with joy. She’s full of gratitude, endearingly green as to a British festival’s quirks – taken aback by the flags, and by fans wearing masks of her face, for instance – and gestures to a sea of leopard print and thanks the audience for their support. The energy dips somewhat when she performs lesser known songs, but when the set comes alive it’s hard not to be sucked in.
A brief sojourn to The Glade finds an altogether stranger affair in the form of Henge’s alien-themed cosplay-cum-rock show. Frontman Zpor (or Matthew Whitaker when he’s on Earth) wears a plasma ball mounted on a pyramid above his head, and scuttles gleefully across the stage. Flanking him are dancers dressed, at different times, as tardigrades and sentient mushrooms as they summon characters from distant planets through the medium of manic psychedelic electronica. Their self-described “Cosmic Dross” is hardly Sun Ra levels of cosmic, but its absolute commitment to daftness is endearing to say the least.
Journeying back to The Pyramid for Janelle Monáe, it’s disappointing to find the field relatively empty, evidently the victim of both Avril Lavigne’s show at The Other Stage drawing in hordes of nostalgia-seeking millennials, and England’s Euro 2024 match against Slovakia, both of which begin at around the same time. Not that Monáe – a force of nature onstage – is the kind of artist to be all that bothered. She presents herself, after all, as a champion of outsiders. Multiple references are made to it being Pride Month, and there are direct tributes to queer pioneers who paved her way like Marsha P. Johnson, Freddie Mercury and Little Richard. “We have the best community, and it’s because of the way we protect other people,” Monáe says in an impassioned speech towards the set’s close. “I’m looking at all these flags and now, more than ever, it’s clear that we are going to have to protect us. I am proud during this pride month to stand with you as you fight back against genocide, as you fight back against the criminalisation of homeless people.” She expresses solidarity to those in Gaza, Sudan, Darfur and Congo, and “stand[s] with our Jewish brothers and sisters against antisemitism, and with our Muslim brothers and sisters against Islamophobia. We know injustice, so when we see it we’ve got to keep calling it out.”
Monáe is one of pop’s greatest orators, but she’s just as impressive a performer. “The world could end outside our window, hurry up and live”, reads one of many quotes projected on the screen behind her as she launches through a dazzlingly glamorous, bombastically camp performance presented in three acts: ‘A Thousand Versions Of The Self’, ‘Now Or Never’, and ‘Paradise Found’. She begins with ‘Float’ in a technicolour floral coat, sheds it to reveal an elegant black outfit as she toasts a glass for ‘Champagne Shit’. A second floral gown, this time black and white, is followed by the iconic vagina trousers from the music video for ‘Pynk’. She’s in full flow even as the curfew looms – “It’s Pride Month! I’m taking my time!” she proclaims, evidently being harried by someone behind the scenes, during a relentless final rendition of ‘Tightrope’. Both she, and we few who watch, wish that she could stay on a little longer.
A rapid hike up to Woodsies gives us time to catch the second half of Kim Gordon, who, it’s clear, has had her own audience rapt for some time. She moves across the stage with slow, effortless cool as a young three-piece band behind her deliver driving slabs of noise. Amid this thick, blistering sound, what might otherwise be awkward seams between her noise rock roots and her trap-influenced new work become a single swirling blend. It’s a great shame that more experimental and noisy music like this is largely lacking from the Glastonbury lineup; it’s only when the force of Gordon’s music hits me square in the face that I realise how much I’ve missed this kind of live experience over the last few days.
James Blake’s set on the same stage later in the night has its own moments of clout. The shimmering gut-punch bassline on ‘Limit To Your Love’, for instance, or a magnetic guest appearance from Dave for ‘Both Sides Of A Smile’. The final show on the stage this year, at times momentum lags during his more meandering moments; ultimately it has the feeling of a final push tempered by the melancholy of the festival’s impending end.
The Pyramid, meanwhile, is closed by SZA. It’s hard not to be struck by how thin the crowd is, particularly for a Pyramid headline set. As with Monáe earlier in the evening, however, it doesn’t detract from the performance itself, which is as finely crafted a pop show as they come. The set design is a thing of psychotropic magnificence, an enchanted woodland cave on an alien planet where stalactites drop from the ceiling. A fallen tree trunk lays diagonally across the stage, lights shimmering and changing colour. Choreography swings wildly between extremes, moving from a primeval flurry of bodies to SZA slowly dancing with a sword within viral hit ‘Kill Bill’ alone, donning shimmering fairy wings at the end as she clambers the central tree. It all helps to bring out the strange and psychedelic side to SZA’s music that coexists with the directness and relatability of her lyrics. It might not have the momentous feel of a true Glastonbury classic, but there’s still plenty of brilliance to be found in 2024’s closer.
