With a lineup of bands that’s almost as long as the list of people Paris Hilton has propositioned, deciding who to see at this week’s Glastonbury festival can be a challenge.
Granted, you could limit yourself to the Pyramid Stage and still get your face rocked by the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Blur, Lily Allen and recent schedule additions N.E.R.D., but your rubber boots are made for walking, right?
Here’s a quick rundown of five groups worth hiking across Worthy Farm to see.
1) The Low Anthem
I had my first Low Anthem exposure at Bonnaroo and these Brown-educated folkies made a serious impression with their intertwining harmonies and erudite lyrics. With the hushed sound of their haunting new release Oh My God Charles Darwin, they’ll draw the inevitable comparison to Fleet Foxes or Bon Iver...but that’s not exactly a bad thing.
Singer Ben Knox more than proved that he can rock, whether with the bluesy stomp of “The Horizon is a Beltway” or when he does his best Tom Waits-y growl on the, um, Tom Waits-by-way-of-Jack-Kerouac cover “Home I’ll Never Be.”
You can catch The Low Anthem and their variety of turn-of-the-20th century instruments on the Queens Head Stage (Friday) and on the Park Stage (Saturday)
The Low Anthem: “To Ohio”
2) The Gaslight Anthem:
I swear, I like bands that don’t have the word “Anthem” in their names. These dudes from the Jersey shore have described their sound as “like Bruce Springsteen singing for a Cure cover band, with a tinge more aggression.” That’s appropriate, since many of the tracks on The ’59 Sound pulse with the kind of “baby, we’ve gotta get out of this place” urgency that Bruce used to have back when Gerald Ford was in the White House.
“Great Expectations”, the album opener, has the driving refrain “We were always waiting for something to happen.” When the Gaslight Anthem strap on their guitars and take the John Peel stage on Saturday, you know it definitely will.
The Gaslight Anthem: “Great Expectations”
3) Hockey
Another Bonnaroo discovery, this energetic foursome gave one of the best performances of the entire weekend and I wouldn’t continue to force them on you if I didn’t think they were gonna bring it to the John Peel stage on Saturday. Hockey’s sound is equal parts Strokes guitar fuzz and Talking Heads funk and it’ll get your ass up and moving faster than a middle-of-the-night fire alarm. They’ve already grabbed Zane Lowe’s attention--which got ‘em some early UK buzz--and an unfortunate number of headlines involving puck-related puns.
Regardless, I don’t recall the last time I looked forward to an album release the way I’m counting days until the August appearance of Mind Chaos.
Hockey: “Learn to Lose”
4) The Soft Pack
As this San Diego foursome quickly learned, naming your band The Muslims will get people talking, but unfortunately, they don’t really want to chat about your tunes. After re-christening themselves as The Soft Pack, it’s been easier for critics and fans to look past the name that was written on the liner notes and start digging their brand of garage rock. They’re fresh off a spring tour with Franz Ferdinand and have gained a solid following based on three-chord blasts like “Parasites” and “Extinction” that drag your ears back to the early days of CBGB, Richard Hell, and wearing leather pants in public.
The Soft Pack will rock the John Peel stage on Saturday.
The Soft Pack: “Extinction”
5) Bombay Bicycle Club
Not only are these North Londoners festival veterans, their career essentially kicked off at the 2006 V Festival. They won that summer’s Road to V competition--beating The Holloways and the Young Knives--for the right to rock the Channel 4 Stage. Since then, the often-abbreviated BBC have released a pair of well-received EPs and their hotly-anticipated debut album, I Had the Blues But I Shook Them Loose, will drop on July 6. (Plus, you can also win a private gig with them and LadyHawke through Cancer Research UK's Skindividual competition!)
The BBC will be hard to miss as they shake their blues all over Worthy Farm this weekend. You can catch ‘em early on Thursday in the Guardian Lounge, on Saturday on the Park Stage, and a day later on the Queen’s Head Stage.
Bombay Bicycle Club “Always Like This”