Near End of the Road’s second stage is a billboard with an “extremely sophisticated, algorithmic” flow chart asking very specific questions to determine which artist you should see this weekend. Since I dislike snakes but like rodents, it offers me Danish musician Astrid Sonne, who has sadly had to cancel ahead of the weekend. Nonetheless, the Top Tipper, by artists Mikesian Studio, is characteristic of the Wiltshire festival: playful, charming, with curation by an obviously human rather than algorithmic hand.
The 13,500 people at this year’s EOTR are generous and enthusiastic listeners. Texan guitarist Hayden Pedigo seems bowled over by how many people turn up to watch him open the glade-like Garden stage on Friday lunchtime. He only started playing live a couple of years ago and professes to have terrible stage fright – though you wouldn’t know in the least from his delightful stage presence, telling us about how his Amarillo home is so flat that locals joke about being able to see your dog run away for three days. His widescreen, open-tuned instrumentals contain multitudes: proggy drama, nimble scurrying, Earth-like doom country and plenty of space.
Cornish folk singer Daisy Rickman is a great complement, evoking craggier vistas from closer to home in her weighty, self-possessed songs, backed by a full band. A cover of the Velvet Underground’s All Tomorrow’s Parties makes a virtue of her stunningly deep voice and brings out the drone folk DNA in the original. For the last couple of songs, she hops on drums and sings, closing on a couple of numbers that almost have a Balearic heat in the sax. Her solo records are great, but she needs to make a full band record to capture their intuitive magic.
On the low-roofed Boat stage later on, Mandy, Indiana make bucolic rambles a distant memory with their dystopian industrial racket, fuelled by grinding guitar and whippet-nimble drums, and Caribou closes the main stage with the sort of lethally efficient good vibes that you suspect Dan Snaith can parlay with his eyes closed.
By Saturday, it becomes apparent that Friday was the last time the festivalgoers would ever know peace, ie remain dry. The New Eves cut through the torpor with their Raincoats and Velvets-influenced battle cries, while Lily Seabird leaves a quieter, deeper impression to a packed tent of people who discover magic while dodging the rain. The Vermont songwriter has some of Big Thief to her brawny, easy rockers, coupled with a gorgeously open-hearted voice that recalls Lucinda Williams and Frances Quinlan of Hop Along. She plays one new song solo: a stunning, rangy reverie that suggests an indie star in the making.
But if EOTR has a true breakout talent, it’s Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti. On Saturday, Titanic, her duo with romantic partner and guitarist Hector Tosta, rework their new album – which isn’t even out for a week. That drive to reinvent speaks to a profound shared musical language, clear from the way the band visually communicate almost to the point of egging each other on to push things further. Just the opening bars of tectonic interplay between Fratti, Tosta, drummer Friso van Wijck and saxophonist Nat Philipps is stunning; Van Wijck can shift from blastbeats to chattering woodblocks in seconds; they evoke the squall of a charged city on the brink of collapse.
Fratti’s melodies are so pristine they could be produced as traditional chanson, but Titanic never do anything so predictable: at one point, the best comparison for what they’re doing is Maria Callas were she produced by Sunn O))), operatic desolation backed up by cliff faces of noise. Fratti’s voice is usually the piercingly calm centre of the music, but by the last song she’s starting to come apart vocally, and the raggedness of her singing is a thrill. Titanic is her maximalist side; her solo performance on Sunday with Tosta and Gibrán Andrade on drums is more minimalist and plaintive, making a virtue of space, always keeping you guessing and only breaking their immaculate tension with a sludge metal cataclysm right at the end.
No one is doing it like these Mexico City musicians, though Moin are almost as exciting, an exercise in controlled collapse – with shades of Slint’s doominess – as drummer Valentina Magaletti creates a striking sense of space in her playing. And certainly the only artist who could bring the sunshine – figuratively, at least – is Sofia Kourtesis, whose wistful, songwriterly house feels particularly heartfelt today, as does her shoutout to mentor Caribou, who comes on and gives her a huge hug. (Later, during his secret set as Daphni on the Boat stage, he plays their collaboration Unidos amid a set of heaters that thrive on being played under a low tarpaulin roof, unlike his big-tent hits.)
That sort of warmth is missing from Self Esteem’s headline set, which feels too choreographed and stern to charm this festival crowd, not to mention bum-clenchingly basic in its Handmaid’s Tale-evoking vision of feminism. It feels like nature healing itself to leave to see Viagra Boys, a group of men literally singing a song called Sports, as is right and proper. The Swedish punks are not quite as riotous as expected – there’s almost a shocking maturity to their sax-dappled sound – but we later learn that they’ve donated their entire fee to Doctors Without Borders, one of several shows of support for Palestine at the festival. They loosen the night up again, as does Syrian dabke producer Rizan Said, whose set is relentless fun.
No such thing can be said for the weather on Sunday. At lunchtime, a small girl is wailing to her parents that she just can’t walk any more, a tearful refusal that I think many here five times her age would also like to scream at the filthy sky. But walk on we do: to Jake Xerxes Fussell’s plucky folk rambles, which bounce along with the verve of Richard Scarry characters; Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band’s amiable picaresque Americana; folk group Shovel Dance Collective, whose hungry remit quests from casting celestial spells to traditional fiddle-de-de. Blawan offers bracing blasts of bathhouse techno, laced with fun, demonic vocal samples, screaming fizz and industrial lockstep, and Squid bring back memories of one-album wonders Clor with their funhouse take on post-punk.
And to these jaded ears at least, EOTR works some of its magic in getting me to enjoy some of Father John Misty’s headline set, having never been a fan. The clever lounge lizard stuff is still a bit offputtingly pleased with itself, but Screamland is disarming in its unvarnished desperation, a cosmic epic that hits like Coldplay having an existential crisis. Josh Tillman’s set is loose-limbed, ludic and romantic, and his old troll energy seems well and truly consigned to the dustbin of history; he’s ardently sincere, telling EOTR’s faithful “they don’t make ’em like you”. He’s right: in its capacity to surprise and delight, it’s a special place.
