The Big Review: Green Man Festival 2021

The best festival in the world…

Festivals, aye? Christ, I’ve missed them. If one day at Tramlines back in July served as a delicious starter, Green Man was a chance to get serious. A main course of some standing. Let’s dive in…

Thursday

We didn’t catch much in terms of music due to various logistical issues, so allow me to use this section to include some general comments on the festival as a whole. Green Man Festival began as a 300 capacity event back in 2003. Now in it’s 19th year, it has expanded into a 25,00 capacity four-day event deep in the beautiful Brecon Beacons in the heart of Wales. Yes, there is a big Green Man onsite, and yes he is ritualistically burnt to the ground on the final night. More on that later. Also on site is a genuinely fantastic beer festival featuring guest ales from a number of independent Welsh breweries, a spoken word/comedy tent (that didn’t just feel like an afterthought as it does at some other festivals), a relaxed view on taking beer into the main arena and just generally loads of lovely people ambling around good naturedly whilst speaking in an endearing Welsh lilt. Beautiful.

Friday

Despite further logistical problems (we stayed up until 4am drinking rum, you know it, I know it, let’s not speak of it again), our party of four (shout out to Auntie Phillie, Sam Green and my wife whatshername) made it to the arena pretty damn early on the Friday. And by pretty damn early I mean 12pm. Earlier in the morning, a man in a campervan across from ours had fired up a generator that seemingly had the power of a thousand suns and thus sounded like a huge pneumatic drill boring into our skulls. Upon arrival at the Mountain Stage, the biggest stage at the festival, we were horrified to find that this generator was in fact on the stage delivering a performance. As the clanging and droning began to vaguely take the shape of a song however, it became clear that this terrible sound was actually coming from Nuha Ruby Ra, an opening act who sounds suspiciously like a competition winner (it turns out that she was, quite literally, a competition winner). Recovering from this affront via various cold drinks and ice cream cones, we made our way over to the Far Out Stage for a second aural assault in the shape of John (timestwo). Whilst their brand of noise was at least passionate, it was still too loud for four old guys of a Friday morning. An inauspicious start.

Things improved with the introduction of a second ice cream for your brave writer and the addition of The Surfing Magazines on the Mountain Stage. Made up of Charles Watson (previously of Slow Club), David Tattsall and Franic Rozycki (also of The Wave Pictures), the supergroup of sorts play the kind of breezy garage rock perfect for a mid afternoon festival set. Indeed, their song Pink Ice Cream almost persuades me to consume a third ice cream of the day, but I manage to stay strong.

And then… to the first real moment of the festival. Stephen Fretwell. Back after a 13 year hiatus, the best thing to ever come out of Scunthorpe, is on incredible form, both musically and as a performer more generally. His songs, particularly those from his recently released third album Busy Guy are hypnotic and ethereally beautiful. Fretwell sings and plays guitar as if every note and every chord have to be dug out from somewhere deep within his soul. The sizeable crowd at the beautiful Walled Garden stage are in awe throughout and old favourites such as Run and Emily have the audience transfixed. And then he goes off on a hilarious tangent about the Proclaimers giving him advice on how to be a rockstar… a beautifully raw and human performance. And one that would take some beating across the whole festival.

With Fretwell’s rapturously received cover of Take That’s Back for Good still ringing in my ears, I hotfoot it (as much as any overweight man in his mid-thirties can ‘hotfoot’ anywhere) back to the Mountain Stage for the final thirty minutes of Boy Azooga. A band who still haven’t received the credit they deserve for their eclectic take on psychedelica and crunching guitars. The Welsh outfit hadn’t played a single show since 2019 and they put everything into Loner Boogie here – a song that deserved to be the one to take Davey Newington and his band into the mainstream.

Goat Girl deliver a perfectly competent set over at the Far Out Stage but I’ll be damned if I can remember any of it. I am writing this three days after the event and all the ale has taken its toll at this point. This precedes our first visit to the Babbling Tongues Stage for a spell of comedy. Kiri Pritchard Mclean has appeared on a bunch of panel shows and Frankie Boyle’s New World Order and a packed tent greets her arrival with raucous applause. She is a Welsh girl after all. Her 45 minute set is entertaining rather than laugh-out-loud funny but she is a likeable performer and her final bit about catching sight of herself in the mirror whilst making the beast with two backs with her husband is pretty visceral and utterly hilarious.

Shame, the final band of the night, tear into their set with a gusto and desire that justifies comparisons with Idles and fellow Green Man headliners Fontaines DC. Indeed, my wife spotted Fontaines frontman Grian Chatten stood behind us about halfway through Shame’s set and then preceded to stare at him and giggle every few seconds or so. In unrelated news, he moved away from our area shortly afterwards…

But back to Shame. The South London band have picked up an army of followers with their recent sophomore album Drunk Tank Pink and the crowd go mad for Charlie Steen and his aggressive onstage performance. The new songs sound great but it is old classic One Rizla that sparks the night’s best moment. Steen dives into the crowd and sings the chorus whilst standing on the shoulders of an adoring fan. A lovely way for the evening to end.

Saturday

Ahh Saturday. The day that God smiled upon us. It rained all morning. Non stop. For hours. Luckily, we are not teenagers anymore. The days of arriving at a festival with a pop up tent, a sleeping bag and a six pack of sausage rolls are thankfully over. So instead, we sat under our expertly erected marquee, cracked open a cider and listened to the heady sound of rain on tent.

The rain had stopped completely by the time we returned to the Babbling Tongues Stage to witness writer and music journalist Pete Paphides being interviewed by his wife Caitlin Moran (very much a legend in her own right) for his latest book Talking Greek. Paphides has a lot to say about music and his clear passion for the subject ensures a compelling and captivating set, particularly when viewed through the lens of immigration and identity.

Richard Dawson is an artist I have only recently encountered but his Mountain Stage performance here provides confirmation that I will be checking out much more of his work in the future. Anyone who can open a festival slot by singing a 12 minute acapella ballad about the 1826 murder of a quiltmaker is someone who deserves respect. Dawson follows this with acoustic performances of Jogging and Two Halves – a pair of songs that are touching and hilarious in equal measure – in between constantly checking the time with the front row and dolefully intoning that his next song is ‘very boring’.

BC Camplight takes a different tact, swapping out endearing self deprecation for drinking straight from a bottle of gin and occasionally holding his piano stool aloft like a drunk cowboy who has just been told he’s not allowed to play Willy Nelson anymore in his local bar. While his band is permanent, BC Camplight is Brian Christinzio’s baby and the warmth and invention of his material works great when transposed to a live setting. Tracks such as Back to Work and Cemetery Lifestyle (both unfortunately titled considering they were released during a global pandemic) sound incredible and by the time Christinzio delivers a crunching take on I’m Desperate the crowd are his.

This is a lot of excitement for our old bones so it’s back to the tent. Happily, the tent is flanked by a wise, old tree who provides me with many moments of wonderful companionship when I awake early and everyone else is still asleep. Admittedly, this kinship could also be linked to the amount of rum I was consuming but that is by the by. And once again as soon as the four of us are safely under a marquee, the rain starts up again. This sadly puts paid to seeing Gruff Rhys, but we do make it back to the arena in time for Mogwai who deliver an imposing and arresting performance to a field packed full of people who are just fucking delighted to be anywhere at all surrounded by the people that they hold dear.

Sunday

The final day of any festival is always tinged with sadness, but this one is particularly sad as we lose half of our party halfway through (they haven’t passed on, they just went home, I made that sound more dramatic than I had intended…) but not before we have all watched and enjoyed a talk from Horatio Clare about his breakdown and subsequent sectioning at the Babbling Tongues Stage. Clare is an engaging and utterly honest speaker and his views on mental health are both insightful and inspiring.

Porridge Radio deliver an impassioned performance at the Far Out Stage, with their hopefully soon to be released new material sounding particularly great and then… then something special happens. First, we see Self Esteem (the stage name of multi instrumentalist singer/songwriter Rebecca Lucy Taylor) play a short acoustic set in a tiny tent that also serves as a pop up record store. This short but sweet set features a run through of Self Esteem’s smash hit single I Do This All the Time. The next time I hear this song will be quite literally the moment of the festival.

A few things happen next. A really long wait in a queue to buy a cocktail. An excited dash to the Walled Garden to see a band listed in the programme as Special Guests only to find that it is a distinctly average post punk group called Squid. Seemingly 38 trips to the toilet. But then it is time, time for Self Esteem’s proper set at the Far Out Stage. And it is here where something quite amazing happens.

Rebecca Lucy Taylor. Formerly of Slow Club. Currently of Self Esteem. Always a fellow resident of South Yorkshire… delivers one of the greatest festival sets I have ever seen. A 45 minute firework display that features incredible dance routines, some of the best pop music that anyone will hear anywhere in 2021 and a voice that could melt the heart of millions. By the time the crowd is screaming every word of I Do This All the Time back to her, it is clear that this is one of those festival moments that I will remember forever. A moment when everything that has happened in the last 18 months is forgotten. Everything outside of that tent is irrelevant. This is no longer a performer on a stage and a crowd behind a barrier. We are all united in our love for the music, in our love for this time and this place. Only music can do that to you, you know. Cherish it. And cherish Self Esteem.

And that leaves one last band. If you’re gonna close out an incredible festival, you might as well get the best guitar band in the UK to do it. Fontaines DC have had to wait for this moment. They should have been headlining festivals for 18 months now but that opportunity has been robbed from them. You better believe that they won’t pass it up now that it is within their grasp. The band take to the stage to the ominous sound of Tom Waits singing Dirt in the Ground and from the first notes of Televised Mind right through to the final chords of Roy’s Tune, Grian Chatton and his band show that you all you really need to headline a festival is the music. Chatton barely interacts with the crowd, instead preferring to prowl the stage as if he can’t decide whether he is terrified or excited, totally lost in the moment as the notes bend and fold around him. The band sound incredible, bringing an extra charge to tracks like Liberty Belle and Too Real whilst ensuring that they do justice to the songs from their second album A Hero’s Death – the songs that made them festival headliners in the first place.

The crowd go ape shit for Sha Sha Sha and I Was Not Born and it is clear when watching Fontaines DC, as it was the first time I saw Idles live, that this is a special band. A band that really fucking mean it.

And just like that, Chatton and his band of poets leave the stage and the vast crowd ambles over to the Green Man himself, that vast behemoth surveying his spoils. A girl sings an opera song in Welsh. The crowd go wild. The flame is lit. And as I stand there and watch the Green Man burn, and I think about the rum, Phil & Sam, my wife, wise old tree, Rebecca Taylor crying with happiness, Grian Chatton twitching and stomping his way through an already legendary set, I realise just how lucky we are to have all of this and to have each other.

Green Man 2021, I’ll never, ever forget you. See you next year.

All pics courtesy of @GreenManFest unless stated