Saturday is hotter than forecast, Worthy Farm baking and dusty, everyone diving for shade. One good place to find it is the Woodsies stage, where Nashville indie rocker Soccer Mommy has the pleasure of a packed tent of punters reclining away from the beating early-afternoon sun. Hooky and gently emotive, her songs bring a burnt-out beauty from the heat.
Enter Fat White Family. Following Soccer Mommy on the same stage, in their hands the heat suddenly becomes cloying. Lias Saoudi is already dripping with sweat before he starts singing. Dressed in only tights and a harness, both flesh coloured, there are misshapen bulges around his crotch that – it soon becomes apparent – are sandwiches that he pulls out, bites, spits and throws into the crowd at regular intervals. The rest of the band jump around like demons, their sound thicker and heavier than usual as they launch straight into opener ‘Wet Hot Beef’, while Saoudi embraces total debasement. He flitters between over-the-top macho swagger – beating his chest, flexing and shoving the microphone down his tights – and total patheticness – crying in the foetal position rolling around on the floor, doubling over as if trying to suck his own cock. It’s theatrical, surreal – not least where Saoudi’s brother Tamlan comes onstage in a pink shirt reading ‘ACCIDENT’ and wide trousers with Bob Marley’s face on, playing with the diablo circus instrument while the band race through ‘Today You Become Man’, a babbling beat poem about Tamlan’s circumcision – and confrontational. “More! More!” Saoudi growls during the applause after each track, bug eyed and gesturing towards his gurning mouth. It’s an ugly, messy expulsion of masculinity and ego, and it’s completely brilliant.
Pushing our way out through a horde of confused looking lads enduring the Fat Whites to get a good spot for a secret Kasabian set that follows, we head up to The Park where Lankum deliver one of the weekend’s highlights. Here, such concerns as the weather feel like anathema as ‘The Wild Rover’ opens, Radie Peat’s voice casting a thick gloom that intensifies with every word. Then ‘The New York Trader’ ramps up the energy with its Mephistophelean second act. The group have been more vocal than most in their condemnation of the invasion of Gaza, and they express their gratitude that many of the audience are flying Palestinian flags, with another draped across one of their amps, before a stark, intensely moving a capella rendition of ‘The Rocks Of Palestine’. “Good luck to the BBC for editing that one out,” says Peat.
Lankum’s real brilliance is not just their ability for drawing out intense doom, but also their ability to switch gears and draw out a joy that’s of equal magnitude. So goes ‘Bear Creek’, which builds and builds in layers, each extra kick of drums and melody igniting more and more euphoria until it reaches a point of all out rapture.
After a quick mosey uphill to The Crow’s Nest, where we stumble across an exuberant set from wonky left-field dance crew Porij, it’s a schlep all the way across site for Little Simz on The Pyramid. By the time we arrive she’s a few songs in, and in full flow as she manoeuvres through the ambitious ebbs and flows of ‘Introvert’. When she’s rapping, she’s as assured as they come, whether settling into the louche flow of new track ‘The Code’, the rapid staccato of ‘Venom, the tender melancholy of ‘Selfish’ or the springiness of closer ‘Gorilla’. She knows when to skip across the stage with insouciant glee, and when to stay perfectly still as elaborately choreographed dancers whirl around her.
Between songs, however, she’s not afraid to soak in every second. “This is so mad for me, I’ve been doing music since I was knee high, this is by far the most people I’ve ever performed in front of, it really is a dream,” she beams, her glee totally infectious. She’ll be back in a couple of hours for a guest spot with headliners Coldplay, but after a set like this, it’s clear that tonight the Pyramid belongs to her alone.
Not too fussed about ending our evening in the company of Chris Martin and co, it’s a trek back in the opposite direction, and back to The Park where Orbital are marking the thirtieth anniversary of their era-defining set that’s often credited with bringing dance music into the Glastonbury fold. Tilda Swinton emerges first, however, leading the crowd through a brief guided meditation to set the mood, before the Hartnoll brothers embark on a set that, though it rests heavily on nostalgia (not least when, in the festival’s most 90s moment so far, Mel C appears to deliver live vocals for Orbital’s Spice Girls-sampling ‘Spicy’), is hard to resist.
Swinton returns at the end to lead us through a wind down, and then it’s onto Scissors, a new queer venue that replaces the old Alice In Wonderland-themed Rabbit Hole, for an impromptu line-dancing lesson, then a brief detour via Arcadia where Barry Can’t Swim commands a newly revamped stage – a giant dragonfly made out of an old chinook in the place of the iconic spider of years past – and finally a trip to The Hive, a small stage tucked away to the side of one of the central thoroughfares. There, DJs JayU and Kyle Parsely from Type One Community, a collective of type one diabetics immersed in the UK dance scene, go B2B for a joyous set, their crowd swelling as they lure in more and more of those streaming out from the headliners. As ever, some of the festival’s greatest moments are to be found in its smallest spaces.
