It’s a scorching day on Worthy Farm. Every scant patch of shade is packed with punters, squashed in like red-faced sardines. Clambering uphill to The Park at the peak of the early afternoon heat, we’re drenched in sweat by the time we arrive for the second half of The Japanese Breakfast’s set. The lush and languid baroque sweep of the material from her most recent album For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women) proves perfect in such conditions, however washing its way through the listener’s spaced-out and exhausted mind like seawater into a cove. When it comes to the glistening uptempo pop of older songs, the sunlight makes them sparkle that little bit more.
The big story today, meanwhile, is Kneecap, with the BBC confirming they won’t be broadcasting any of the Belfast rappers’ set live. Almost two hours before they’re even set to begin, the West Holts Stage is at capacity and walled-off to prevent overcrowding. Unable to get anywhere close, we instead take shelter in a patch of precious shade offered by The Glade tent, where Tunng’s whacked out, psychy folktronica veers only occasionally onto the wrong side of twee. Once again, It’s a suitable soundtrack to the heat, contributing to a sense of Saturday as a sluggish slow-burner. That is, until Amyl And The Sniffers maraud their way onto The Other Stage. Frontwoman Amy Taylor, already bristling with wide-eyed, manic energy, barks some brief orders – “If someone falls down pick ‘em up, don’t touch anyone who doesn’t wanna be touched, get rowdy!” – and they launch straight into the manic stone age chug of ‘Balaclava Lover Boogie’. “I’ve got plenty of energy!” Taylor shouts later on, the refrain of the relentless ‘Guided By Angels’ – by the end of their set, through The Sniffers’ sheer force, so do we.
We carry that energy with us to The Pyramid, muscling down towards the front for Patchwork – the pseudonym for a not-so-secret set by Pulp. They emerge from behind a wall of poncho-wearing extras for an opening ‘Sorted For E’s And Whizz’, PULP SUMMER flashing on the screen behind them in a wry nod to tonight’s Other Stage headliner Charli xcx. “How did you know it was us?” Jarvis Cocker deadpans. The mass singalong for ‘Disco 2000’ that comes next is impossible to resist. Today, Cocker points out, is 30 years and 4 days exactly since the band performed one of the all-time Glastonbury sets, filling in last-minute for The Stone Roses, where both those songs received their live debut. It was the gig, he acknowledges, that sent them stratospheric.
It’d be temping, then, to dismiss the whole thing as a bit of nostalgic fun. And yet, as with everything surrounding Pulp’s comeback campaign for new album More, it’s not quite so simple – Cocker placing ideas of ageing and insecurity at the centre of his lyrics, rather than using imitations of the good old days as a shield. He throws the same angular shapes as before, but with a new kind of defiance, pushing back against the ageing process that gradually robs most other performers of their vibrancy. New tracks ‘Spike Island’ and ‘Got To Have Love’ ring out with equal power to the classics, while the classics are performed by a band who are clearly still dedicated to every word. Yes, we are in the same field, listening to the same songs, as another crowd were three decades ago, but rather than a sense that we’re merely imitating, desperately seeking to re-enact an event whose magic has now passed, it has its own unique energy. At the end of the set, Cocker pulls out a piece of paper on which he says he’s written the same remarks he closed the 1995 set with. Then, pointedly, he rips them up.
After seeing Skepta pack a headline’s worth of energy into a brief half-hour set on the Other Stage, filling in last minute for Deftones who have cancelled due to illness, as the sun sets, a dilemma arises. We are faced with one of the worst set clashes in recent Glastonbury memory, with Neil Young’s Pyramid set up against perhaps the biggest pop star on the planet Charli xcx, the beloved Scissor Sisters at Woodsies (so popular that the whole stage is at full capacity), and much-hyped rapper Doechii on West Holts. The effects are felt starkly when surveying the modest size of Young’s crowd at The Pyramid – especially compared to the hordes that welcome Charli – and yet the veteran rocker eases onstage as if such concerns are just anathema. Veering back and forth between spellbinding acoustic and a rugged wall of old school rock & roll with his band The Chrome Hearts, the show is straightforward and by-the-book. There are no visuals, no special guests, barely any addresses to the crowd between songs aside from the occasional ‘how you doing out there?’. The closest thing to a flourish is Chrome Hearts guitarist Micah Nelson briefly throwing his guitar into the air after a particularly potent bit of rockin’ out. And yet, it is frequently incredible – thanks mainly to the sheer quality of Young’s songbook. A triple sucker punch of ‘Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)’, ‘The Needle And The Damage Done’ and ‘Harvest Moon’ is among the most beautiful moments of the entire weekend. Though Charli’s set – music from the very heart of the zeitgeist – is the one that will doubtless go down in Glastonbury lore, Young’s feels, in its own way, deeply special.
