Brockwell Park’s Wide Awake 2024 hailed in a seriously solid lineup, to the throng of pinstriped crank-wave veterans and jorta-holic city kids back for their May Bank holiday reveries. Ross Williams reviews…
Getting to my second year at Wide Awake was a more frantic endeavour than it had been previously. With my early morning National Express bus from Nottingham skulking down the M1, only to reach London Victoria two hours after the festival had started. We arrived in time for the dulcet tones of Crumb. Floating on the flotsam at the back end of the mainstage crowd, I was taken by the ease of facility they had. Drenching the field in a slippery bliss, Crumb appear to be a special case of a bedroom pop outfit that has flown free from the 2010s Cuco nest.
I briefly caught the beginning of Bodega’s set on the Desert Daze stage, when I was grabbing a bite to eat from one of the many great food vendors the festival offered. Whilst their studio material fills me with Ennui, as if Loaded Diaper had begun trying to emulate the Speedy Wunderground post punk sound, their live performance was vital enough to make me second guess myself slightly.
Next, was everyone’s favourite Brixton-local band Dry Cleaning, earnestly taking on the KEXP presented mainstage with heavy hitters like Scratchcard Lanyard and Don’t Press Me. Industry Icon Cheryl Water’s was keen to introduce them as one of her personal favourites and the set was good fun. Yet, I think Florence Shaw’s meandering prose vocals and Tom Dowse’s tone bending lead guitar sound both need walls to bounce off - their sound didn’t scream mainstage to me (and the underwhelming quietness of the mainstage sound system didn’t do them any favours either).
From here I followed the concise phantom chain of sets from groups that all performed in 2023’s Green Man festival, the slew of coveted Radio 6 royalty. I am by no means complaining, but such a packed line-up can make you feel less audacious than you chalked yourself up to be (here I’m another punter of the widely acknowledged kitsch). As you inevitably must miss a lot of the spurned promise of great smaller acts, the single day festival can be a bittersweet affair for a non-Londoner who can’t see these smaller bands at The Shacklewelll Arms on any given week. I digress, I wish I could be in two places at once or live the day again a few times to make sure I’ve seen it all. At the end of the day, this segue is in praise of the festival organisers for putting too much good music on the bill!
Fatdog cast the afternoon at the Desert Daze stage into a darkened eurotrash beat-scape, giving the air a sense of mirth. I kept my distance though (the closer you are at Fat Dog gigs, the smellier the air gets). The band always suits a larger stage. Their jargon filled anthems such as King of the Slugs and Running are ones to day drink to and amass energy for the evening ahead. Read Alice Beard’s Mic Interview with Fatdog here.
Squid soon followed and brought their same refined chaos, playing a set that confidently leant of their most recent LP O Monolith, with fan favourites like The cleaner and G.S.K strategically placed at the start to grab the crowd’s attention. Its krautrock, its post punk, its indelibly fresh as always. Their keys’ tines, tritone guitar/bass hooks and modular/analogue percussion combo demands to be heard live to be truly appreciated. I overheard the affirmations of a few first timer’s being converted around me in the crowd-if you get it, you get it.
I regret to say that Slowdive fell short of my expectations, my friend quipped that their background visualiser looked like a windows vista screensaver- it was a tragically astute observation. Their new material seems to lack any of the spunk and heart-rending gloom that the older tracks from the Souvlaki Space Station and Just for a Day albums still manage to conjure live, however moribund. It’s too tidy, I don’t want to see a guitarist emulating Edge of U2’s neat delay tails and cart it off as Slowdive. I won’t decry their good name completely; I’d still love to catch them in a concert hall, where I can stand right by the speaker and masochistically hope they will worsen my tinnitus.
As the generous May sun dimmed and gave respite for my cherry red ears, Young Fathers endowed the mainstage with their frenetic, soul filling brand of pop. Its dramatic performance art, its sincerity felt in the trio’s cathartic motions, their entries and gestures pointing towards a common goal of deliverance.
"They are a group that makes you feel human and part of something; inclusive and sonically refreshing"
Their pro- Palestinian state message, vocalised in midst of festive ambivalence shows their distaste for complacency and the status-quo, these issues shouldn’t be put aside for a day of music in a field. They are a group that makes you feel human and part of something; inclusive and sonically refreshing in amongst the platitudes of all the post-punk/alt acts I saw on the day.
Finally, the horde converged to mainstage to witness the messianic jams of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. Their disciples, uncombed hair-down-to-there type ragamuffins, surrounded us- the velvet jackets and the baker hats giving me the feeling I had time travelled to the early 70s to watch a Led Zeppelin show.
"Psych jam-rock is back, and its second coming has escaped Australia"
King Gizz’s set shot into action at a blistering speed, first sating fans of their sharper metal albums Petro-dragonic Apocalypse and Infest the Rats Nest. Songs Planet B and Organ Farmer burnt a hot sense of appreciation to the raw, chugging grit of their power metal explorations. However, my love for them stems from their psych rock material and I was not disappointed on that front. The Lord of Lightning and Evil Death Roll were excellent forays into angular riffs and saturated harmonica leads. A 20-odd minute rendition of Head on a Pill brought the peak of their set to an ecstatic fugue. The band slowly built the title track, whilst weaving in excerpts of Ice V and Hypertension to triumphantly return into the main riff. The analogue gooey, crackling visuals gave one the impression of witnessing a supernova in superb technicolour splendour (take notes Slowdive). Meanwhile, a drone flew pirouettes between the stage and audience to offer dizzying perspectives of the live show for the two large screens. The joy of this band comes from its ability to self-reference its treasure trove of genre bending tracks. Free game for fans to find joy in the endless ways a set may unfold. Whilst I do maintain that Prog Rock can be a contrived white man’s folly, it can be executed effectively when the music isn’t saturating the culture like it did in the 70s. No longer reserved for the dusty mantles of Pink Floyd and Camel lovers, however, Psych jam-rock is back, and its second coming has escaped Australia.
The reasonable 22:30 curfew spelled an end to a heady day which one would find hard to emulate elsewhere. Wide Awake has my heart, my only regret being that I couldn’t see everything!
Ross Williams
Edited by Alice Beard
In-article images courtesy of Misha Warren (Slowdive), Joshua Atkins (Young Fathers), Sam Huddleston (King Gizzard) and Luke Dyson (King Gizzard)
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