Friday 25th July 2025
Ladies and gentleman. The time is now. This is not a drill. Pulp. Jarvis bloody Cocker. In Sheffield. Hold me. It can only be Tramlines 2025. But first, there are several other matters to attend to. What will I eat? What will I eat a second time? What will I have for pudding? Or second pudding, for that matter? The big questions…
We arrive at Hillsborough Park bewildered and blinking in the midday sunshine. Sunshine? At Tramlines? What sorcery is this? The dulcet tones of John Cooper Clarke kicks us off at the T’Other Stage and despite being all of 76 years old, and looking like a gnarled old tree that has come to life and put a suit on, he still knows how to entertain a crowd. It’s as much a stand up show as a poetry recital with Clarke reeling off one liners like a more erudite and less racist Bernard Manning. Old favourites like ‘Beasley Street’ and ‘Twat’ still pack a punch, and Clarke’s inimitable rat-a-tat-tat delivery remains utterly unique. The old devil even treats the sizable South Yorkshire crowd to a spot of crooning when he sings his ode to Sheffield (imaginatively titled ‘Sheffield’) acapella – much to the delight of all involved. He closes up with ‘I Wanna Be Yours’ (with thanks to Sheffield native Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys) and ‘Evidently Chickentown’ – the latter delivered at 100mph and following a confusing pause when Clarke erroneously believes himself to be out of time. This all adds to the charm, however, as does a glorious and hilarious rendition of ‘Get Back on Drugs You Fat Fuck’. Wonderful.
From there, the sunshine and my own inertia (Stop Buying Food You Fat Fuck) derail all of my best laid plans, and so instead of watching all the bands I had planned on seeing, I just sat down in the sunshine, drank beer, ate food and chatted to the litany of family members and companions that I kept on magically bumping into the whole time. We see Oracle Sisters on the Main Stage. They play nicely and competently, but they are the epitome of background music. Sheffield’s own I Monster provide an engaging visual spectacle and ‘Daydream in Blue’ sounds incredible, but I always find electronic music a little underwhelming at a music festival. There isn’t much craftsmanship to it (says the man who can barely play a chord).
Spiritualized are the biggest disappointment of the day. Despite having an incredible back catalogue to draw from they leave much of it on the bench in what is a workmanlike and forgettable set. Their performance here feels more like a soundcheck than a Main Stage set at a big festival. There is no attempt to engage with the crowd. No acknowledgement of the occasion. They’ve let me down. They’ve let Jarvis down. And more importantly they’ve let themselves down. Still, I console myself with a Yorkshire pudding wrap and find a good spot for Pulp. PULP! IN SHEFFIELD!
After what feels like an age, the lights finally go down, the crowd goes silent, and he’s there. In all of his ramshackle glory. Jarv. The band begin with ‘Spike Island’, a track that has become the song of the summer through the backdoor. It snuck up on me after I was indifferent to it at first, but here, now, in Sheffield, on this stage, it sounds utterly incredible. A couple of other new tracks follow in the shape of ‘Grown Ups’ and ‘Slow Jam’ before the unmistakable stuttering keyboard intro to ‘Sorted for E’s & Wizz’ sees the crowd collectively lose its shit. The sun is still shining when the riff to ‘Disco 2000’ kicks in, providing the first real ‘moment’ of the set, before ‘Sheffield: Sex City’ gets its first airing since 2012. And what a song it is. Sultry. Stifling. Drenched in sweat and Henderson’s Relish. Sex city, indeed. ‘This is Hardcore’ is the centrepiece of the set, and it rivals almost everything else they’ve ever written. It’s a timeless, cinematic song that takes on a whole new power when performed live.
The second half of the set sees an incredible rendition of ‘Sunrise’, complete with freak-out outro and Sheffield legend Richard Hawley on guitar; the first ever live performance of ‘Last Day of the Miner’s Strike’; and then the knock-out one-two of ‘Do You Remember the First Time?’ and ‘Mis-Shapes’ – the latter being perhaps the best song of the whole set, for my money.
Pulp close out with ‘Babies’ and a raptorously received ‘Common People’, the former with Jarv providing the opening guitar riff (and looking like the coolest man who’s ever lived while doing so), and the latter almost akin to a religious experience. ‘A Sunset’ serves as an unlikely, but successful set closer. And just like that… it’s all over. While five tracks combined from Different Class and This is Hardcore is perhaps a little disappointing, this will still go down as one of the all time great Tramlines headline sets – a proper ‘I was there’ set. I already miss it.
I agree with this review, however I don’t think you have given Spiritualized enough criticism. They were absolutely dreadful!
It was such a weird performance. It was like they actively didn’t want to be there, which is particularly frustrating as they were handpicked by Jarv.