Live Review: Wilderness Festival (Day 2)

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In addition to the Wilderness Olympic medal awards handed out by youngest sprat (see Mrs Mackerel’s post here) Saturday at the festival was another day of glorious sunshine, bizarre moments (badminton matches joined table tennis, the official skinny dipping world record attempt, miming cats and much much more) and a stellar musical line-up.

The timeless, beautiful harmonies of The Staves set everyone up perfectly in the mid-afternoon sun, but their mix of softly strummed folk and a-cappella hides a steely core – these three sisters from Watford are nothing if not feisty when the mood takes them. Jake Bugg was next up, a rockabilly prodigy from Nottingham who you suspect has pictures of boxcars and Woody Guthrie on his bedroom wall. Clearly talented and with a classic three-piece line-up he kept the crowd entertained in a way that belied his tender years and finished with his “hit” Lightning Bolt – the perfect song to accompany Usain’s efforts in the Olympics.

Cloud Control fizzed and popped with their psych-tinged indie and sing-a-long choruses, and elsewhere Robbie Boyd’s funky folk cooked up a storm and created a mini-hoedown in the London Folk Guild tent. Local boys Stornoway enjoyed their clearly growing popularity with a perfectly judged set of melancholy tinged folk and The Temper Trap picked up the pace as the sun went down with a crowd-pleasing set of widescreen, epic electro-rock with soaring falsetto vocals.

Finally in the gloom, amidst the dry ice, guitar virtuosos Rodrigo Y Gabriella took the stage to showcase their six-string wizardry amongst video backdrops and pyrotechnics – perfectly melding Metallica riffage with flamenco, jazz, and everything in between, the crowd bumped, swayed, salsa-ed, and grooved their way through a blistering set from a couple (and Band) who were clearly enjoying themselves immensely.

Eventually, they took their leave, and us ours, with the last notes fading away to join more chinese lanterns and glowsticks in the sky and all of us looking forward to tomorrow.

Download Cloud Control – Gold Canary mp3 (from Bliss Release)

Download Stornoway – Zorbing mp3 (from Zorbing Single)

Download The Temper Trap – Love Is A Losing Game (Amy Winehouse cover) mp3 (from Q Presents Back To Back To Black)