There is a celebratory feeling in the air at End of the Road festival this year as it turns 20. The piano stage has been turned into a giant birthday cake with candles on top, one man is dressed as a toilet to commemorate the porcelain anniversary, and Jarvis Cocker leads a spirited singalong of Happy Birthday while wishing for 20 more years.
Retaining a core identity while also expanding and evolving has been key to that longevity. While early days were centred more on alt-folk and Americana, EOTR is now a genre-hopping powerhouse, blending everything from pop fun to noisy experimentation via global grooves, and with an equal focus on the familiar and the unknown.
Representing the former, Geese manage to pull in record audience attendance levels for their Thursday headliner show, while Pulp use theirs to announce a hiatus and they bow out with a set of deep, deep cuts and B-sides (including a beautifully sprawling and pulsing live debut of Deep Fried in Kelvin). It could have backfired spectacularly – with not even a nod to a hit song until almost an hour in – but while it was steadfastly uncompromising it was also a joyous rummage through the archive of true art-pop pioneers.
CMAT also announces she won’t be playing the UK for two years during her headline set, which wraps up with the singer shirtless and deep in the audience for some collective cathartic screaming to say goodbye. Angine de Poitrine’s microtonal math-rock, as though styled by Alejandro Jodorowsky on a B-movie budget, may be still firmly in the leftfield camp but they are on the main stage after their huge breakthrough year, turning their frantic and frenetic instrumental workouts into an oddly big-crowd-friendly routine.
Beyond the heavy hitters, the lineup has a deeply impressive wingspan. Factory Floor are in phenomenal form as they knock out a pummeling set of industrial electro-techno. Experimental electronic duo Another Country $$$ span everything from drum’n’bass to post-rock, while Cleo Reed’s queer country-soul (cuntry, as she calls it) is playful and sweet but also angry and impassioned. James K creates swirling electronic sounds that are so richly layered, dynamic and immersive, it’s like being pulled in and out of a dream state. Model/Actriz unleash a ferocious noise that manages to be as heavy as it is groove-locked – almost recalling a sweet spot between Perfume Genius and Gilla Band – as well as theatrical, with vocalist Cole Haden either doing endless ballet twirls or down in the audience whipping them into a frenzied state. But what’s especially infectious and energising at End of the Road is how everything, big or small, weird or poppy, is proportionally and enthusiastically attended. Everything is lapped up with the same appetite and gusto.
Twenty years on from its inception, the festival may be hitting a major milestone and delivering a vintage year, but it exists as a crowning achievement in a wider context. A medium-sized event (15,000 capacity) free of big corporate sponsors as money from brands and multinationals pours into identity-less festivals elsewhere, this is a rare yet deserved success story, testament to the enduring power and beauty of independent music.
