Red Arrows and Wrestling are the unlikely stars of Sunday on the Isle of Wight

Isle of Wight Festival 2014

Thursday 12th to Sunday 15th June 2014
Seaclose Park, Newport, Isle of Wight, PO30 2DN, England MAP
£190

Daily capacity: 90,000

After three days of high temperatures, sun (and a little rain) Sunday was noticeably cooler, with clouds covering the site, fortunately they didn't bring the rain with them again. Also noticeable on site today was how much quieter it was across the site. I think there were two reasons for this - Firstly, last night saw the first match in England's World Cup campaign, which I'm sure I won't be spoiling by letting you know that they lost (again). As such there were several people still sleeping having drowned their sorrows! Secondly, and probably more significantly, a lot of people had bought day tickets yesterday for the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and there was maybe 10,000 less people which allowed the site to breathe a little - one criticism regularly levelled at the site is that everything is focussed on the main stage and big top, causing those areas to get very busy. Over the last couple of years the festival has expanded it's other areas to try to move people around the site, but because the two stages are almost adjacent, it still causes the larger group to congregate at one end of the site.

Undeterred by the quiet site, festival veterans Delays took to the main stage. This is their fourth time at the festival, and according to organiser John Giddings in a recent interview "probably their last time on the main stage". Despite his apparent lack of faith in the band, they still gave it their all and their summery upbeat sound soon drew a small but appreciative crowd to the front. This momentum was carried by The Move, a band whose place in music history is assured by dint of being the first band Radio One ever played, and the song 'Flowers in the Rain' was well received, as was the rest of their set. Sadly the two most famous members of this band (Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne prior to forming ELO) were missing, but then if they were there the band would no doubt be a lot higher up the bill.

Taking a break from the main stage gives opportunity to see what was happening further down the site as well as a chance to track down some more cherry beer (see the Friday review), also gave us a chance to see one of the more unique performances of the weekend. In the Hipshaker tent were a vocal group called The Three Belles, whose performance of 1940s swing music came as a nice counterpoint to the modern music round the site. Their performance drew out of the audience a group of dancers who performed Lindy-Hop and jive routines to the music.

At the furthest most point from main stage, heading back out through the barriers to the start of the campsite, was a new venue for this year - the Butlin's Ballroom, offering all that you would expect to see at a Butlin's holiday camp. Taking the chance to catch up with family and friends with younger children we were treated to the delight of the wrestling. Growing up with the household names of Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks the standard was pretty poor but most of the men seemed to enjoy the mixed tag teams, but the children were able to look past the poor acting and enjoy the entertainment in its own merit. We were told that some of the other features such as Titan the amazing 10" Robot were really good and worth the long walk. But I expect many of those not camping wouldn't of been aware of the tent unless children asked to go and find it.

When a musician has access to a large stage there can be a temptation to try to fill it with something - extra musicians, elaborate stage sets or even dancers. However sometimes simplicity is the best route, especially when your music is strong enough to stand on it's own. The latter route was taken by Passenger (singer/songwriter Micheal Rosenberg). Arriving on an empty stage he looked visibly shaken by the crowd that had gathered to see him mouthing 'Fuck me!' On first seeing the view. He soon admitted that this was the largest stage he had performed on, and that the last time he was at the IW he performed on the acoustic stage to 19 people. Whatever fears he had soon dissipated as he performed a set of beautiful songs with his slightly broken plaintive voice soaring above what was a big sound from an acoustic guitar. Several times through the set he stopped the crowd dead with a song, particularly 'All the Little Lights' and a spellbinding cover of Simon and Garfunkel's 'Sound of Silence'.

Not long after Passenger left the stage the sound of silence was shattered by the arrival on site of The Red Arrows, flying up from behind the stage, for the next half hour they performed above the site a series of barrel rolls, and other acrobatic stunts. Sadly because of the cloud some of their signature moves such as loop the loops were absent from the show, but nonetheless they transfixed the crowd. Less excited by their arrival were some of the bands performing who saw their audiences disappear outside to watch.

Equally determined to shatter the quiet of the Sunday afternoon were Fall Out Boy whose bombastic pop-rock capitalised on the buzz created by the Red Arrows. I have to confess to have never been a great fan of theirs, but couldn't knock the strength of their performance and found myself re-evaluating my opinion of them.

Suede are one of the few bands that survived the Brit-Pop era and had a career beyond that, and in the 20 or so years they've been around, lead singer Brett Anderson seems hardly to have aged in that time, looking almost the same as he did when I first saw them back in the early '90s. His energy hasn't diminished in that time either and he still snarls and poses his way through the set. One of the things it's easy to forget about Suede is how many hits they actually had, and watching the crowd you could see many times the "Oh, I'd forgotten about this one" factor happening from song to song. It didn't seem like they played for over an hour and left the crowd wanting more with what was probably the standout act of the day.

Riding on the back of powerful performances of Fall Out Boy and Suede, in theory the Kings of Leon should have had an easy job of closing the main stage, and the whole festival. All they needed to do was turn up, play a few hits, let the crowd sing along and then go home, job done. Yet somehow, in the space of the first few songs they managed to lose an entire audience, I don't know whether it was the lack of interaction with the crowd, the dark stage lighting that was barely enough to see the band - only frontman Caleb Followill had any form of lighting on him, or the way they seemed to perform on autopilot a lot of the time. But you were left with a sense that they weren't really that happy to be there, and would have preferred to sit in a room and perform to themselves instead - disappointing for the headline act.

Hopefully, though unlikely, the Kings of Leon should have taken some time to go and watch the Big Top headliners Travis perform - in stark contrast to the introverted show on the main stage, here was a band who, despite not troubling the mainstream for almost a decade now still know how to put on a show - Fran Healey's natural way with a crowd soon had them lapping up even the more obscure tracks - at one point disappearing into the crowd to laugh and joke with them, returning to the barrier to comment "this is a good spot isn't it" to the girl next to him, who almost wet herself in response. If they got a good response for the later songs, the big hits caused the crowd to explode with excitement, and even the firework display or Fran's dubious beard couldn't distract the crowd from the show. I remember in 2006 Travis stepped into the breach when Morrisey threw his sunflowers out of the pram and pulled out a couple of weeks before. It's a shame that Kings of Leon didn't pull out, as on the evidence of tonight I'm sure Travis would have been more than up to the task of closing the weekend.

While not a classic weekend that previous years have given us, this was nonetheless a solid weekend for the festival, hopefully the organisers will take on and build the festival for the future.

review by: Steve Collins / Marie Magowan

photos by: Steve Collins