Key events
This year’s festival is a particularly starry one – and it’s all thanks to the usually unheralded Pilton Palais cinema, which has coaxed a host of Hollywood A-listers including Florence Pugh, Paul Mescal, Tilda Swinton and Simon Pegg to do pre-film Q&As. Lanre Bakare caught up with Pilton Palais’s co-curator Riyad Mustapha to find out how they pulled it off:
Here’s an on the ground report by Jessica Murray on Seventeen’s groundbreaking Pyramid set earlier today:
Dexys reviewed!
Laura Snapes
Given how many decades Kevin Rowland has been flaying his tortured soul for us, it’s surprisingly moving to see him looking so naturally, easily delighted as the reformed Dexys perform on the Park stage, the lowering sun casting a diagonal light across the crowd.
Parts of the set serve as tributes to past Runners: Geno is for Kevin Archer, a member of the band at the outset “and obviously a huge influence on the second album”, and Until I Believe in My Soul is for trombonist Big Jim Patterson, who has been unable to join them on recent tours. And precisely nothing from their astonishingly great 2023 album The Feminine Divine is played (seriously, it’s amazing: from classic Dexys to Gainsbourgian synth-louche, as Rowland disentangles and disavows his historic attitudes to women), in keeping with Rowland’s trademark contrarianism regarding nostalgia. But he is so utterly vital: he’s seemingly keeping someone’s portrait locked in his attic, he looks so tanned and splendid in his pink and green suit. And that voice is still the sound of soul reaching out from the depths of isolation in a desperate attempt to connect; he can still rip out high notes in a way that sounds like he’s striking a match.
Down on the Pyramid stage at the same time as Dexys start, Marina Abramović is asking the crowd to stay silent for seven minutes as they give one another their unconditional love. The atmosphere up here is far brassier but the mood is very much the same: that of a heavily carpeted, musty brown pub full of emotional men with their arms around one another, singing some of the greatest pop songs of the past 40-plus years.
It’s a real party up here, strutting to the brass of Geno, sparking off the fantastic thespianism of Until I Believe…, as Rowland pretends to bawl, hoo-hoo-hoo-style, in a classic tale of romantic rejection. In one of the revue-style bits with foil (and sometimes saxophonist) Sean Read, he admits to being 70 – “I’m already old, man!” – but Come On Eileen – man, it’s utterly timeless. I firmly believe there are songs every British person deserves to hear done live at least once – Robbie Wiliams’s Angels, for one – and this is much the same; a bawdy, reveller’s folk song (and the sped-up bit in the middle eight leaves me giggling). “You definitely liked that one!” says Rowland, seemingly still surprised at it striking such a chord 42 years later. Too rye aye!!!!
News from the Pyramid stage, where PJ Harvey is “sniffing some sage like a queen”, according to our roving reporter Jenny Stevens.
Jason Okundaye
Ted Lasso actor Kola Bokinni is looking fresh in a lilac-pleated Issey Miyake two-piece. He’s just seen Sugababes and he’s especially excited for Burna Boy and Shania Twain!
Here’s a pic of Marina Abramović performing her Seven Minutes of Collective Silence while dressed as a giant peace sign. Whatever you think of her brand of performance art, you can’t deny that she is a genius at grabbing people’s attention.
Zoe Williams
D:Ream brought Brian Cox on for Things Can Only Get Better. He’s introduced with “ladies and gentlemen, and everything in between, welcome back a man who’s become a lot more famous than any of us”.
Sugababes reviewed!
Jason Okundaye
“What a turn out, ladies!” Keisha Buchanan says. Perhaps the understatement of the century. Sugababes is heaving. So heaving that this review nearly doesn’t happen – access to the West Holts staged is blocked off from various entrances, and I’m forced to go on a mad dash around the perimeter of the area before it’s completely shut down. Two years ago, when Sugababes performed at Glastonbury’s Avalon stage, they were so overwhelmed by interest that the attendant audience could have filled the tent five times over. You have to wonder then how Glastonbury has managed to again underestimate the popularity of one its heritage acts – who could have easily filled the greater capacity Pyramid stage.
Opening up with Freak, the revived three-piece noughties phenomenon delivered a string of their greatest hits. Their harmonies are luxurious and transcendent but often it is the singular, enduring vitality of Mutya Buena’s vocals that stands out. Sugababes have always been more defined by cool swagger and slick electric movement than by highly choreographed theatrics, and as such, naturally their throwback performance of breakout single Overload, with a chair routine reminiscent of Top of the Pops, is the show’s centrepiece. The performance is elevated through the dynamism of UK garage, and though the crowd is at full capacity, there is still plenty of arm swinging, jumping and singing. There is a little too much time spent on an “olly olly olly” call and response, but their cover of Sweet Female Attitude’s Flowers is triumphal.
The crowd are only stilled for the duration of two of the revived Sugababes’s newer tracks – When the Rain Comes and Today – though the catchiness of the latter’s chorus soon takes off. You might have hoped that they would reach for more deep-cut album tracks but they’re comfortable with their bangers: Push the Button, Round Round, and Too Lost in You. However, closer About You Now makes me wonder if the set has been too safe: its beamy pop commerciality feels incongruous with the too-cool-for-school grit that defines the trio. Their ownership of the entire Sugababes back catalogue is a triumphant development considering their legal struggles, but they’ve already long proved that the name is theirs and theirs alone.
Sarah Phillips
This is Lucinda and Lizzy from Bristol who live on the same street and bumped into each other in the crowd for Marina Abramović. Lucinda: “I thought it was wonderful. I found out about it 30 seconds before she started. I adored her. That has made my Glastonbury. I thought it was really powerful. Seven minutes went really quickly.”
Over on West Holts, Damon Albarn has made an appearance in the middle of Bombay Bicycle Club’s set. Albarn made an appeal for Glasto-goers to vote: “I don’t blame you for feeling ambivalent about that but it’s still important.” He added that “maybe it’s time we stop putting octogenarians in charge of the world”, a reference to last night’s US presidential debate.
Gwilym Mumford
Gwilym here, taking you through Glasto’s pre-headline shift. Right now on the Pyramid Marina Abramović is trying to get tens of thousands of festival punters to shut their eyes and be quiet for seven whole minutes. It’s a big ask given the, ahem, well-lubricated nature of some Glastonbury punters, but by the sounds of it she’s been successful. The Guardian’s Sarah Phillips, who is in the field, says that, bar a rogue screamer, the crowd all kept quiet and that the effect is “incredibly powerful and moving”.
“It is completely still and silent and I weirdly want to cry,” adds the Guardian’s Jenny Stevens.