Say what you like about End Of The Road, but it’s surely the only festival where a comedian can venture a bit of ad-hoc new material about The Blue Orchids. This is Stewart Lee, of course, down on the Talking Heads stage, attempting to “establish a liberal consensus that dissolves on contact with the outside world”. It’s strictly one-in-one-out to hear him wring ever more nuanced laughs from some of his greatest hits (“These days, you say you’re English…”), even if he contends that most people are only there to watch him die trying to get back up the...
When Yo La Tengo are having a shocker of a show, they don’t smash up their gear, abuse the audience or storm offstage to trash the dressing room. They simply, and very quietly, keep playing. In extremis. JIMI HENDRIX, A BIG STAR CD, GILLIAN WELCH, FONTAINES D.C. AND MORE – ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW UNCUT HERE! “We were at loggerheads with this club all night, and they turned the lights on on us with 40 minutes before the bar time,” frontman Ira Kaplan told Uncut reviews editor Tom Pinnock during the final Uncut Q&A of End Of...
Semi-famous musicians passing through the Garden Stage area being thoroughly ignored in favour of End Of The Road’s real rockstars – the peacocks… Blue Lake on the Boat stage managing to tune into the same key as the nearby ferris wheel… The brilliant Song Gallery: a one-person listening cabin where you could immerse yourself in an uplifting new anthem by The Golden Dregs… Advertisement The reality-warping Alice Through The Looking Glass pub game arena, featuring boomerang skittles, a very long pool table and the six way ‘ping-pong thunderdome’… Click here for all our End Of The Road coverage A...
Saturday starts with a surprise: an unannounced midday solo set from Julia Jacklin on End Of The Road‘s Garden Stage. Her stark confessionals can be almost uncomfortably intimate, especially at this early hour, but Jacklin is a winning presence, especially when ambushed with a birthday cake (she turns 34 today). “So much attention all at once!” she blushes. JIMI HENDRIX, A BIG STAR CD, GILLIAN WELCH, FONTAINES D.C. AND MORE – ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW UNCUT HERE! It’s Brown Horse’s first time on a big festival stage, but they instantly feel like they belong, their rich accordion-and-pedal-steel-assisted...
If End Of The Road can sometimes be a sonic whiskey sour – fiery but rewarding – Saturday brings some welcome froth. “Let’s rock this psych track!” yell The Lemon Twigs from the Woods stage. “I hope nobody gets a bad trip from this one.” Little knowing perhaps that their Rubber Soul version of psychedelia is significantly breezier than the sort of head-crushing sounds the peacocks of Larmer Tree Gardens have grown to love over the years. JIMI HENDRIX, A BIG STAR CD, GILLIAN WELCH, FONTAINES D.C. AND MORE – ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW UNCUT HERE! Here to shamelessly...
Samantha Morton started singing young, and singing for her life. “I remember once singing for someone called Irene Scott to try and get her to foster me,” she told End Of The Road’s gripped Talking Heads stage at Uncut’s second Q&A of the festival. “She ended up becoming my foster mum. So I literally was singing for my supper.” JIMI HENDRIX, A BIG STAR CD, GILLIAN WELCH, FONTAINES D.C. AND MORE – ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW UNCUT HERE! The discussion with Uncut reviews editor Tom Pinnock – like Morton’s debut album alongside producer and XL chief Richard Russell, Daffodils &...
Idles’ Joe Talbot is determined to find End Of The Road’s inner punk. “Part the crowd into two halves,” he insists, envisioning a wall of death. “Come on, move your picnic chairs and wine racks…” It may be comfortably appointed, but EOTR can still rock out. A balmy Friday begins in understandably muted tones, with Arizona-via-Portland singer Kassi Valazza delivering beautifully vaporous country songs about sunken galleons and rising rivers; even “Rapture”, about a friend with “a fascination for lighting things on fire” smoulders sweetly. And out on the Piano Stage in the psychedelic woodlands, Gruff Rhys and Bill...
Just like a jazz musician, any great festival like End Of The Road needs to be able to improvise. Sometimes the results can improve upon the original scheduling. When Militarie Gun pull out of their Big Top slot, James Holden steps into the breach with his elemental and uplifting psychedelic rave salvo. And with Mdou Moctar sadly waylaid, a saviour is quickly installed in the form of Alabaster DePlume. He may not bring the noise in quite the same way as Moctar, but his twilight Garden Stage set certainly doesn’t lack intensity. DePlume reveals that he’s just come off...
If it feels odd for Lankum, at End Of The Road 2024’s first Uncut Q&A session, to face down a stacked terrace of wooden pews packed with several hundred festival-goers expecting sparkling banter – but at least it’s not the Leeds Irish Centre circa 2015. The night when, at their worst (and best) ever gig, they played to a crowd of nine-year-old Irish dancers, surrounded by a gang of hardcore crusties on Ecstasy. JIMI HENDRIX, A BIG STAR CD, GILLIAN WELCH, FONTAINES D.C. AND MORE – ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW UNCUT HERE! “We didn’t know how to...
The Cure will release live versions of two two new songs as a double A-Side 12″ for climate charity Earth Percent. Find details on how to get “And Nothing Is Forever” and “I Can Never Say Goodbye” below. AAA Released via Naked Record Club – a record label that releases limited edition records on sustainable vinyl – The Cure – Novembre: Live in France 2022 was recorded during the band’s Shows Of A Lost World tour. Advertisement “And Nothing Is Forever” was recorded live in Montpellier at the Sud de France Arena on November 8, 2022, while “I Can Never...