The Welsh countryside is dry and yellow, with few flashes of its signature green visible as we weave our way down the winding A-roads. Rivers are weak and waning, water flowing less freely from the mountain heart, the hillsides fatigued by endless sun. Wildfires are in the air, the woody tang streaming in through the car windows as we pass Newtown, Builth Wells and Talgarth.
Even the light has a strange tinge to it, refracting carbon particles like we’ve put an Instagram filter on our brains to keep out thoughts about the impending doom of climate change. How do former folk festivals flourish in the face of an ambient apocalypse? I’m pretty sure Green Man can point the way…
I’m happy to admit that big multi-day festivals are often a form of compromise for almost any music lover, that’s a certainty. Whether it’s the compromise you make on sound, stuck further away from the band, or the timetabling negotiations you make when you have to decide between three or more acts playing at any given time. The concession to having to build in periods where you can entertain the kids between treating them to hour long downtempo electronic jazz excursions. They might just want to go on the Ferris wheel instead of falling for your latest Bandcamp flame.
There are the trade-offs you make with friends and partners as to who you’re going to watch in the headline slot, who is going to do the queuing for rotisserie chicken, who’s packed the suncream? The co-existence with your fellow campers, even if they insist on arriving late and pitching their tent inside your own porch. Not to mention the uneasy alliance between your wish to stand for hours and the lower back pain common in your forties…
It is also an incontrovertible truth that any sizeable festival exists in several realities at once. It’s one of the clearest examples of the multiverse in action. Maybe Hugh Everett should be headlining. Over the last ten years I’ve read reviews of Green Man where the writer and I had clearly experienced completely parallel timelines. I did not see any of the same sets as some of them, but what we generally agree upon is that the whole thing hangs together beautifully. The size of the site is pitched just right. When the night draws in, I can do a round trip to my tent in 20 minutes to fetch a forgotten woolly hat, there’s not many festivals able to provide that level of convenience for absent-minded festivalgoers.
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So to the alternate timeline – I’ll try and tell you about how it was for me, in the reality I was granted. Having the Settlers Pass and pitching my tent for the long haul, I started my musical experience on the Tuesday night of Green Man. Hot Springs and Osgled made a lovely pair to ease me in. The former generate some lovely Talk Talk style texture, with a miniature saxophone routed via effects processors as Rachel Rimmer sings of her dislike for small talk, and the latter ends up duetting with her presumably deceased Nan through the medium of technology, a bittersweet duet. The constant wash of reverb almost finds the sad synth chanteuse conversing with Enya deep cuts.
I’ve found a good festival rule of thumb is to follow the bass line. It’s usually what you’ll hear first coming from a tent or stage, and this is what might make me detour from the programme to go and investigate. On Wednesday night I’m at my tent when I hear a very Doors-esque bass line and go to seek the source.
It turns out to be Mantis, a band who are a slight nightmare to Google afterwards as there are many many bands with this handle. However, there are not many bands who are as enjoyable as Mantis are for me at that precise moment in a warm tent in a Welsh field. Their set brings to mind early Verve, some Funkadelic-esque grooves, the outlaw psychedelia of their debut album, The Amber Sun Saloon, takes me to a very intense place. Their shirtless percussionist keeps them focused on the rhythm and the vocals are pure and strong, alongside big guitars and weird keyboard noise. Mantis’ internet presence is refreshingly brief. There’s barely even a Bandcamp. You have to email them direct to buy their album. Great DIY stuff.
Thursday is where the music programme proper starts, and Green Man follows through on its Welsh roots to deliver a day of magic. I’m always drawn to investigating bands I’ve never seen, so I head for Dafydd Owain on the Walled Garden stage. I’m treated to an incredibly soulful set, think Van Morrison if he’d grown up smoking rocky in Caernarfon. The masterful minimalism means every sound has meaning, and it suits late afternoon in the stone surroundings perfectly. This isn’t chess, but the band know how to castle.
The sun comes and goes, the clouds are erratic, the crowds are ecstatic and I’m veering zygotic. I only catch the back half of Tai Haf Heb Drigolyn, which translates to Unoccupied Second Houses, a plague on the Welsh housing market, and their music captures some of the anger this phenomenon brings as well as the beauty that brings people to Wales in the first place. They’re a Catch-22 of a band who are easy to love. I’m not sure I can best the comment by finnegans_cake on their Bandcamp: “A shitgaze version of Gorky’s”. They are excellent. Mwsog follow, a giant Owl accompanying their shaman sticks and Sabbath-folk paganism which goes down well with this crowd.
My daughter wants me to take them to see Lime Garden in the Far Out tent. We head down the side and get quite close to the front of a packed tent, but we get distracted as someone has dropped a walkie talkie and we want to reunite it with the owner before it runs out of battery. A classic festival side quest, which we complete by locating the owner just outside as the band strike up Cross My Heart.
Keeping it Cymru, I swerve the brilliant Mogwai on the Far Out stage, although having peeked in on some of their soundcheck earlier I don’t feel I’m missing out completely. There will be time for Scottish genius later. Instead, my headliners for tonight are CVC, who I know little about to begin with. The assembled crowd is young and ready to dance, and they get the perfect soundtrack to that. CVC bring the funk from the off, and it could easily be that parallel timeline again, transporting revellers to the late 1970s, the soft rock and disco collision. This is perfectly encapsulated in The Remortgage Anthem, tackling the cost-of-living crisis lyrically while taking you to Studio 54.
There’s a genuine affection for the music where others might pose with ironic detachment, and the band look like they’re having a great time, which translates across to the audience who are kicking off their festival in style. The melodies are strong enough that I’m still humming Sophie days later.
Friday comes out swinging, bringing The Slow Country, rain showers, Tyler Ballgame, Ata Kak, Dry Cleaning (with a special Jeff Tweedy guest appearance) and the spectacular Aldous Harding. The latter is a thing of sparse wonder. I walk into the thick of the crowd with my friend’s teenage son; he’s switched on enough to feel the way she works the space between the notes. Everything she does do then carries more weight. She’s transmitting signals that I can tune in to. I especially love the duet with H. Hawkline, Venus in the Zinnia, a highlight of this year’s Train on the Island LP, and an outstanding version of Passion Babe.
The rain has been on and off, but everyone knows the score. A bit of hay goes down, a sprinkling of sawdust is sown. An appropriate aromatic as Wilco closes out the day, a lovely way to spend the evening. A catalogue of gems spanning several decades, a rack full of vintage guitars and a warm vibe that lifts the summer soul into a comfortable hayloft. Only minus point is that I checked my watch at least twice during guitar solos, and I actually have an extremely high tolerance of fretboard gymnastics, so if I have to put something in Nels Cline’s pipe, that’d be it, quick Jeff, pass him the waterproof matches.
Wilco (photo: Sam Gill)Saturday morning I’ve landed in the Cinedrome tent watching Labyrinth with the whole family. Great way to start a festival day, would recommend. Dave is as creepy as he ever was, and the threat of the bog of Eternal Stench an apt accompaniment to the compost long drop toilets of the modern festival. I emerge blinking into the yellow grass light. The sun machine is coming down and we’re gonna have a party watch more bands, ah-ha-ha.
Prewn in the Walled Garden are good for a solid indie-rock afternoon. I shelter from the sun for a bit in Einstein’s Garden, getting bombarded by some fella banging on from the depressing podcast stage about Shell Oil. He’s not wrong, what a bunch of generational arseholes, but it’s too much for me, I’d rather trade the shade for the sun and get back to the fun.
So, I’m sat on the hillside all afternoon, the natural amphitheatre of the Mountain Stage a great place to take in proceedings from afar. Ana Frango Electrico is excellent, another ‘brought here by the bass line’ moment for me. Cate Le Bon is a slight disappointment, only the xylophone stylings of Home To You hitting as hard as I want. The sound is fine, it’s all just a bit…dull?
Perhaps it’s just my own impatience. I’ve been eagerly anticipating The Beta Band, and by 9pm they’re here. I last about thirty seconds of the set up on the hillside before I’m legging it in for a closer view, for more of the sound, a stronger bond with the speakers, another chance to see Scottish genius at work. Steve Mason is in a fine mood, buoyed by the return to good health of Richard Greentree and aware that this victory lap is a precious thing that not all bands get the chance to perform.
Kicking off with Inner Meet Me, there’s no pause or hesitation, just liquid groove. The mix from the desk is incredible, for a festival sound, the technicians at Green Man really know how to make that main stage sing. Stereolab and Beth Gibbons in previous years spring to mind, and this year The Beta Band are benefitting. Dogs Got a Bone is phenomenal, with an on-screen montage of delighted canines running, jumping and barking.
Dry The Rain is immense, a true Hey Jude for the cagoule-sporting post-rave generation. How many groups have their biggest tracks mention ironing boards? Answers on a postcard. The screen behind them lights up with a slow-motion sunrise as they shift through the gears and build towards a euphoric climax.
I’m surprised they don’t use it as a closer and milk the crowd reaction, but after a brief reprise for a singalong, they’re into Squares, which perhaps they rightfully feel is an underrated track in their oeuvre. “Daydream / I fell asleep among the flowers,” sings Mason as he prowls the stage. Always more than a standard frontman, here he’s more like an MC, ditching the guitar and engaging the crowd. Closer, The House Song, sees a furious percussive onslaught as Mason joins Robin Jones at the drums, making up a quartet of rhythmic contributors, grooving into their goodbyes.
Sorry are probably the highlight of the whole weekend for me. I actually thought I’d missed the beginning of their set having a brew back at my tent, but it turns out I’ve shortsighted the programme and actually I’m ten minutes early. My mate, Mick, has recommended them, and I know him well enough to pay heed to the tip. I’ve only heard the single, don’t quite know what to expect.
The crowd around me is hungry, expectant, ready, and when the band walk out huffing balloons and brandishing megaphones, the place is primed to explode. We could talk all night, or we could just fuck. I don’t know all the song titles, I don’t know anything other than there’s an electricity running through my brain that I never want to cut the voltage to. There’s more edge than a circular saw, but it’s full of heart as well. Echo echo echo echo…
Showcasing much of their third album COSPLAY, each song starts with some kind of sample, an acapella Don McLean particularly effective as it twists in ghostly reverb and is subsumed as they start the next banger. Today Might Be The Hit, Jetplane, JIVE, and Magic all get an airing.
Asha Lorenz is captivating in her cap and big coat, attitude everywhere but not like a dickhead. Even a fella turning up for a bizarre bare arse-smacking interlude (to be fair, this is during a song called Tom Will Smack Your Ass) can’t distract from the serious intensity of this performance.
It identifies as pop music but it’s dark and feral, it might stab you in a badly lit alleyway, or it might give away its last cigarette and get you home safe on the night bus. The eyeliner is smudged but the nails are sharp. Back to the samples, they finish with the strains of Wish You Were Here washing out over the crowd. I’m shattered, exhausted, and blissfully happy. New music endures. Yadda yadda yah.
Cut to interior, tent: sleeping bag.
Sunday flies by like a summery summary. Stove on, coffee up, bleary eyes. Eaves Wilder in butterfly wings, Alexis Taylor airing The Stones’ Wild Horses, blazing heat, tacos, nicotine, then the Tara Clerkin Trio. These Bristolians brings some Broadcast vibes, their masterful control of sound blending downtempo jazz with video game music, vaguely hip-hop rhythms and sonic manipulations. Warped textures twisted like vines and twine, tying itself in delicious knots of melody. The clarinet and feather-light singing wind in and out, the drummer comes to the front for a vocal turn, and the keyboards are delightfully precise and squelchy in all the right places.
It’s been a relatively slow and relaxed afternoon, and as evening draws in, it’s time for Cat Power on the main stage. Last time I saw her at a festival was twenty-five long years ago and I think we’ve both got our shit together a lot since then. She walks us through the entirety of The Greatest, and then serenades with a lovely version of Nothing Compares To U. She’s clearly enjoying it, and so are we.
We swerve Wolf Alice in favour of Tricky, who is as moody as my kids kept up way past their bedtime, but a lot less disagreeable. Post-millennial tension. It’s almost the moment to call time on another great edition of Green Man, but I’ve promised the bairns they can watch the closing ceremony, so we’re another hour or two away from shuteye.
The risk of wildfire means that the Green Man himself is not being burned this year, there’s no traditional cathartic conflagration to finish the festival, Howie survives. Instead, we get a beautiful Welsh harp recital and an aerial ballet performance, followed by Pictish Trail serenading us with a singalong to The Waterboys’ eternal The Whole of the Moon. I think there’s something in my eye…it’s probably sawdust. See you back at the tent.