End of the Road 2024 - The Review

If you are lucky enough to be in a position to attend a number of festivals - if your summer, in fact, is largely defined by them - the last one you go to has an extra significance. End of the Road, and not just in its name, quietly acknowledges this. Focusing on the little known, the up and coming and the straightforwardly eccentric, it cleverly avoids the disadvantage of being on so late in the season. While there some familiar names on the bill - Norfolk's Brown Horse seemed to have played everywhere this year - for the most part the offering was pleasingly unfamiliar.

A Thursday night at a festival can be tricky to navigate. Everyone's turned up but there isn't enough on for them to see. Struggling through crowds looking for entertainment in the few minor venues open can be challenging to the point of dispiriting. EOTR's eminently sensible solution is to open up the half of the site that includes the main stage. If you have the patience of Job you can queue up for the tented Folly and eventually get in. For the rest of us, the open air Woods Stage, the festival's main arena, provided more than enough elbow room to keep those inclined to get the party started. Admittedly, the acts on offer were largely low key, acoustic affairs - in sharp contrast to 2023 when the Last Dinner Party opened the stage - but I rather like the feeling the festival was just warming up. Having driven half way across the country to get there, a bloke strumming a guitar was about all I could handle.

The bloke in question was Richard Dawson, who not only strummed but squealed and grunted and squawked his way through a set that bewildered me. I thought it a terrible racket, but folk whose opinion I respect saw something in him that utterly passed me by. By way of contrast, Bonny Prince Billy had a better voice, with which he sang more melodic songs, occasionally accompanied by a mellifluous oboe. I’m aware he’s a master of his craft and a coup for the festival. Any yet, half an hour in, I felt I had the measure of a tuneful but curiously unmemorable performer. Dawson, it turned out, was oddly compelling, with something about him that kept me there until the end, while William was merely very good.

By early Friday morning, the site was already buzzing with activity. Poke about and you could find folk doing yoga stretching, kids amusing themselves with marble shoots, pirates telling stories, and even a cinema that's been on the go since first thing. In a change from the previous year, the cinema was housed in one of the permanent Larmer Tree Gardens buildings, rather than the rather lovely deck chair filled tent of 2023, and that was a great pity. I'd popped in the previous night and watched a few minutes of The Climb, just one of a whole series of cycling films on that night. A more niche offering it would be hard to imagine, but the room was full, so horses for courses, I suppose.

As the weekend went on, word must have got around that The Boat had raised its game - time and again I would find it packed with an impenetrable crowd of folk smart enough to get there early. First thing on Friday, however, it was still a place you could wander into and fall across a band that proved to be one of my festival highlights. Ex-Easter Island Head offered up a quite extraordinarily accomplished set that sat somewhere on a line between Steve Reich and King Crimson. A little later on, the stage presented the zither-based music of Blue Lake, showcasing a hypnotic mash up of drone and jazz that was very nearly as good. This was, I reminded myself, why you turn up to EOTR - to trust in the curation of things you didn't know you wanted to hear, yet immediately want to hear again.

Sandwiched between the two acts were a couple of excellent comedy sets from Sara Barron and Fern Brady. Comedy is heavily, and rather oddly, rationed at EOTR - three acts in the afternoon and one late at night. The Talking Heads venue is such a beautiful natural amphitheatre it seems a shame the spoken word is so swiftly forsaken for yet more music - the sorbet of talks and laughs throughout the day would surely make sense - but what there was, was worth the unsteady shuffle down its precipitous slope.

As CMAT's note perfect cover of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights drifted in the breeze - at the time I assumed it was a record playing - I wandered into the festival's only substantial undercover venue to catch Paranoid London. They were fine, but The Big Top is a hard place to warm to, not least as it's so warm and dark and sweaty inside. Dark and sweaty is probably what you want accompanying the insistent, pounding beat of Del and Quin's filthy dancefloor bass lines, but not when a balmy summer evening beckons. Jess Williamson's set, in the dappled shade of the Talking Heads Stage seemed a much better fit. Her demonstrative faith in God may have fallen on stony ground with the heathen hordes of EOTR, but she did, in fairness, have a heavenly voice.

The Garden Stage, enclosed by the architecture of the Larmer Tree Gardens in a way that creates a feeling of intimacy despite its size, is home to some of the festival's most intriguing international acts, performers that always seem delighted to be showcasing their talent in such a prestigious space. I’d been looking forward to Mdou Moctar’s fusion of Takamba and Hendrix to set me up nicely for the hotly anticipated Idles on the main stage, but a no show meant the Garden stage hosted Alabaster DePlume instead. Like some weird seventies throwback, he had the oratory of Bob Calvert and the saxophone parping of Nik Turner. Spreading his message of love over a receptive crowd, you were left wondering why he hadn’t been booked in the first place, such was his eccentric bonkerness. I loved every minute. I had been lucky enough to see the Idles set at Glastonbury earlier in the year, widely considered the best of that festival, and so was rubbing my hands in glee at the prospect of seeing them again. And they were good - sometimes very good - but I can't help feeling the extended set did them no favours. The splenetic rage felt a tad performative after a while, as did the crowd surfing and the posturing. Sometimes less is more.

Sometimes less is less, though, as Janine Harouni discovered when faced with a meagre audience for her midnight comedy set. Last year we got Lou Sanders and Bridget Christine - experienced headliners playing to a packed crowd pleased to have a proper bonus treat so late at night. It seemed odd, and actually unfair, to expect newcomer Harouni to do all the heavy lifting so late at night, performing to a small crowd wondering who they were watching and where else they could be. She should have supported Fern Brady, where she would have benefited from a Brady sized audience, leaving the brilliant, acerbic-tongued Sara Barron to tear a hole in the late night slot.

Sara Barron did make a second appearance on the Talking Heads Stage, albeit the following morning, when she chatted with her husband, Geoff Lloyd, about the telly they had been watching. Although recorded for their podcast, it was unusually engaging, as Barron entirely dominated proceedings, despite introducing Josie Long half way through. The session was preceded by a series of engaging talks, tucked away in the morning for early risers disinclined to give yoga a try. Jon Moses talked eloquently and persuasively about the right roam, after which Will Hodgkinson shared his experience of shadowing Laurence Hayward for a year. Frontman of Mozart Estate, Hayward's narrative of self-sabotage, serial failure and straightforward bad luck was so preposterous it felt like some sort of Kaufmanesque prank. The same could be said of Rob Auton's collaboration with PSB's JF Abraham. Leading a chart of "Water, what is good for? Absolutely loads of things”, Auton essentially rehashed his Water monologue with accompanying guitar noises from Abraham.

Sam Morton's Q&A was more problematic, largely as it was dominated by her music producer Richard Russell banging on about his tiresome remixes, leaving Morton smiling sweetly but silently. It soon became apparent this was more about trip-hop sampling than Alpha of the Walking Dead, so I sloped off and caught charming last minute additions, Chunky Mermaid, complete with whirling dervishes and dancing owls.

Frankly, things went a bit pear shaped after that, as a problem that bedevilled much of the festival came to a head. It seems churlish to complain that the acts on the Garden Stage were too popular, but enjoyment of Camera Obscura, Phosphorescent and Richard Hawley was mitigated by overcrowding. The issue spilled over into the Folly stage, as a long line of hopefuls snaked way beyond the Cider Bus, hoping to get to see first Flamingods and then Big Special. Hawley was reliably excellent, as was Flamingods, but I can't say I truly enjoyed an hour of craning my neck, trying to zone out the chatter all about me. Jockstrap on the main stage seemed cursed with sound problems, so perhaps other acts similarly suffered. I couldn't say as I wasn't there, but something kept the numbers down on the Woods Stage, which consequently left the other stages full to uncomfortably bursting. By the time Big Special were due on I lost heart and went to bed.

What a difference a day makes. For a start, the capricious weather Gods offered all seasons in a morning, as rain hats were swapped with sun hats and then back again. Noreen Masud spoke movingly of her struggle with PTSD, after which Harriet Baker gave a fascinating talk on three female authors - Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Warner and Rosamond Lehmann - linked by their Rural Lives.

In what must be the oddest act of the weekend, Molly Lewis serenaded the Garden Stage with her whistling prowess. Resplendent in sunglasses and off the shoulders evening dress, she had the look of Emma Peel and the pipes of Roger Whittaker. She had all the best lines too, promoting her miracle chap stick by dragging a suspiciously accomplished Thomas out of the audience for a whistling duet. With a Stewart Lee/Josie Long double bill heavily oversubscribed, the day thereafter quickly fell into the routine of shifting from the Woods to the Garden stage. Intrigued though I was by Ebbb, Deary and the extraordinary cacophony of Slift, the urge to bimble was offset by the prospect of full to bursting minor stages. Despite feeling I was letting the side down a tad, the scheduling of the big two stages was all two seductive, as I ticked off B52 wannabes Girl and Girl, rocking Julianna Riolino, delightful Florence Adooni and soulful Jalen Ngonda.

Ichiko Aoba offered a contemplative change of pace with a quietude that demanded respectful silence from her audience, while Nation of Language harked back to 80s new wave. Despite being New York based trio, I can only imagine they've been listening to Dad's UK imports with frontman Ian Richard Devaney channelling the voice of Mark Holly and the moves of Andy McCuskey. Altin Gun, despite being based in Amsterdam, then brought a distinctive Turkish flavour to their psychedelic rock offering, which laced with occasional funky interjection made for a winning warm up to what should have been Fever Ray.

But Fever Ray having dropped out at the last minute, Yo La Tengo were promoted to main stage headliners and it's fair to say they rose to the occasion. Challenging, innovative and loud, they made for an uncompromising act to close the festival, and while a fair few drifted away, the band surely epitomised the adventurous spirit of the festival. But then, so did the overwhelming friendliness of everyone I met. If I confess to spending a chunk of their set in a bar, discussing Keir Starmer's attitude to transgender issues with Chris from the band Austen Showers, that might sound more than a bit odd, but it also epitomised the spirit of EOTR. Only one of countless engaging chats I had over the weekend - Kate's analysis of her synaesthesia was particularly engaging – it felt as if you could walk five paces in any direction and bump into someone funny or clever or kind or all three. Folk seemed not only willing to engage with each other, but eager to do so. I said it last year but I'm happy to repeat it. The best thing about End of the Road are the punters who attend.

 

Latest Updates