Review - Day 4

Choppy guitars, dapper threads and well maintained side-partings. Sounds a bit Franz Ferdinand? Maybe, but who cares when The Rakes play songs every bit as good as their Glaswegian mentors. Of all the four days, this is the first time the opening band have been a cause for celebration and even though rainfall has returned to make its presence felt, the atmosphere on the final flourish of Wireless’s de-flowering is orgasmic.

Rushing over to the Xfm tent reveals the latest hopefuls in-line for bigger things, as El Presidente bash-out a roof-raising half-hour of soon-to-be anthems. Their lead singer looks like a hotfooted member of the FBI and he sounds like Axl Rose if he’d grown up in Scotland listening to the bagpipes, a concoction pleasing to the eye and ear. Meanwhile The Ceasars played on the main stage... although whether they managed anything other than the one song, ‘Jerk It Out’, repeated over and over again, remains unconfirmed.

Perhaps The Other’s dire set on the main stage sent out bad vibes for the rest of the event, but around this point things started to go wrong. After a half hour delay, Cut Chemist left a crowd dismayed as we were informed ‘major technical faults’ had forced him to cancel his set. A switch around of bands and stages left some people confused as to where Soulwax were performing, although the majority who did catch them on the main stage were treated to a fantastic set, even if the lead singer does look a bit like your old geography teacher.

Back over to the Xfm stage to be faced with another lengthy delay, but as Ladytron still haven’t taken the stage ten minutes after they were supposed to have finished, most people are bored of hanging about watching nothing, so rush back to the main stage to witness the mythical Babyshambles.

Well at least all the running back and forth to watch precisely nothing burnt off a few calories – but is it really any surprise that Pete Doherty and his vagabond entourage stumbled onstage forty minutes late? A pastiche of his own tabloid caricature, one song in and the ex-Libertine is stumbling about the back of the stage trying to pour himself a vodka as the band shout at him to get back to the microphone. Then he brings out a man by the name of ‘The General’, a Rastafarian who sings reggae to us when all we really want to hear is Pete play the hits. A joke too far and a set all too brief, at least they pull themselves together for unifying rendition of ‘Killimangiro’ before grand finale ‘Fuck Forever’.

Because of the continual delays and cock-ups in the Xfm tent and the late arrival of Babyshambles on the main stage, there isn’t even time to see if 2 Many Dj’s managed to perform their headline set. With everything up in the air, it’s left to festival closers Kasabian to stamp success on the day, and they do so with confidence and swagger. ‘Club Foot’, ‘Processed Beats’ and ‘L.S.F.’ lead the way for thousands of fans to dance like apes, swinging their arms about like an army of youthful Ian Brown aficionados. Yet for every triumphant single there’s obvious filler, so the set swings from high to low every three or four minutes. Regardless, it’s a suitable ending, reflective of the varied nature of this strange festival.

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