Dave Simpson 

Leeds festival review – guitar bands triumph at youthful rite of passage

Genuinely big names are in short supply, but Queens of the Stone Age, Blink-182 and Paramore provide plenty of thrills and singalongs, writes Dave Simpson
  
  

Hayley Williams of Paramore on stage at Leeds festival 2014
Pop showmanship … Hayley Williams of Paramore, headliners at Leeds festival. Photograph: Gary Wolstenholme/Redferns via Getty Images Photograph: Gary Wolstenholme/Redferns via Getty Images

It has almost become a tradition at Leeds festival that it will start raining on Thursday, the site will be a quagmire by Saturday but people will be hugging each other in the sunshine by Sunday like survivors of a natural disaster.

This year, the script was thrown into the air. Friday's acts basked in glorious Mediterranean sunshine, which rather did for US hip-hopper Macklemore's clearly pre-written eulogy to the joys of frolicking in the (non-existent) mud. But the heavens opened on Saturday just as Queens of the Stone Age launched into Fairweather Friends, leaving frontman Josh Homme rocking to a field of waders and galoshes.

However, nothing can quite dampen the atmosphere of a festival that has become something of a rite of passage for a younger crowd, many of whom were celebrating their GCSE results by experiencing the thrill of live music, painting themselves brightly and dressing up as animals for the first time.

Thus, Friday headliners Blink-182 might not be everyone's cup of tea but they were perfect for this environment. The American pop punks' juvenile but rowdy songs had the entire field singing about pee and poo, although the teen whose bared breasts were flashed up on the video screens will doubtless be in hot water when she gets home.

Arctic Monkeys are an undeniably heavyweight Sunday headline. Playing what they have suggested will be their last gig for some time, their career-spanning, hit-packing 90-minute set is as well-oiled as Alex Turner's hair. The sometimes taciturn Sheffield singer was in unusually chatty fettle, promising "a reet laugh", peppering his banter and lyrics with cheeky references to Yorkshire and even putting on a comical pub singer-type slur.

Otherwise,, genuinely big names were thin on the ground and it was only two years since their Saturday counterparts Paramore appeared much lower down the lineup. set was a triumph of showmanship as well as a landmark for Williams, who – shockingly – is the first female to headline this festival since Shirley Manson's Garbage rocked the Reading site on a Sunday night in 1998.

With the likes of drum'n'bass heavyweight Wilkinson and Chicago-born British deep-house producer Secondcity also stuffing tents way past bursting, it's surely a matter of time until euphoric electronic dance music joins the regular array of hair and riffs on the main stage.

Nonetheless, the story of the weekend was the return of affection for big singalong guitar bands.

Llandudno's Catfish and the Bottlemen look like archetypal floppy-haired indie types, but their combination of ready-made anthems and hurled beach balls had the crowd abandoning all decorum to clamber on each other's shoulders. There was a similar triumph for Scots rockers Twin Atlantic, whose arm-waving mix of Biffy Clyro and Bon Jovi – Biffy Jovi, perhaps? – is earnestly stomping towards festival ubiquity.

Anyone skipping dinner on Saturday would have seen the under-the-radar but epic solo debut of My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way. With his electric blue suit and flame red hair, he looks like a fusion of David Bowie and early Elvis, with cheeky charm to spare.

"I'm sorry you don't know any of these songs, but you're still going to love them," he giggled, as the combination of his Bowie-meets-Britpop swaggering tunes, perfectly timed jacket removal and theatrical falls to his knees brought widespread swooning.

This festival isn't known for curveballs, but it threw a whopper with the mighty Skints. The multiracial, male and female ska-punks played what they call "east London reggae" protest music in the Lock-Up tent – usually the most metal of them all – and brought the house down. Who would have expected that?

 

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