Glastonbury 2023: Foo Fighters play ‘secret’ show ahead of Arctic Monkeys – follow Friday’s action live!

The Mary Wallopers reviewed!

Gwilym Mumford

Crow’s Nest, 7pm

The Crow’s Nest is Glastonbury’s hidden gem – an atmospheric tent at the top of the Park area with some jaw-dropping views of the festival site. It has no pre-announced lineup but instead hoovers up the buzziest bands playing at the festival for intimate and often rowdy semi-secret sets.

And “rowdy” barely begins to describe the Mary Wallopers, a ferocious Irish five-piece who mix traditional barroom folk with stinging social commentary. They’re a band who have to be seen live to be properly understood, turning every venue they visit into a massive, undulating ceilidh. Every song – typical subject matter: booze, shagging, hating British monarchs – prompts a sea of flailing arms and grinning faces. The pace never lets up, so much so that even the ballads somehow end up in mosh pits. Euphoric.

Park, 7.45pm

Colossal trek that it is, being on the Park stage can sometimes feel like an unfair disadvantage. It’s a way of isolating the more interesting stuff away from casual eyes. But that’s not the case for Shygirl. With a crowd of fierce disciples ready to show up – and out – the London DJ-meets-rapper-meets-singer turns one of the farthest reaches of the festival into a queer-centric space of celebration and flirtation, the very epitome of getting the party started.

To call Shygirl sex-positive is a bit like calling Glastonbury a sizeable festival, but as she conducts her way through a string of groaning and moaning hyperpop-garage bangers, you realise just how impressive it is that she can command such reaction without twerking up a storm herself. The music simply does what it needs to do: with shades of MIA and Charli XCX, Schlut gets things off to a solid start, while Bawdy elicits huge reaction, a giddy jamboree of writhing waists and bouncing bumbags.

A vision in pink, she often need only gesture to raise a cheer; a chic dominatrix facilitator rather than full participant. “Whooooose from the streets in here? You’ll know this one then!” she announces before Slime, while Freak has us “on the bed, on the floor”, taking the piped porno moans up an extra notch. She slows things down to a more romantic sweetness with Honey, but by her own admission, “I can’t do sweet without talking about coochie … who else likes coochie?” Unsurprisingly, she then plays a song titled Coochie, and the crowd go wild, matching every note.

The Glasto locals taking in a pleasant sunset just up the hill must surely be appalled, but when she praises us at the end of its delicious sing-song chorus – “Well done” – you’re left feeling just the right amount of filthy, ready and willing to surrender.

Here’s Ben’s review of the Churnups – AKA the Foo Fighters – on the main stage!

Foo Fighters review incoming…

Ben Beaumont-Thomas

Here’s a teaser of Ben Beaumont-Thomas’s review: “It’s one of the cruel rules of love and attraction that the more you try to impress someone, the less you’ll succeed; no-one likes a try-hard. And so it proves with rock’n’roll: heavily produced, overthought and desperate to please bands just don’t resonate like the ones who are doing it to please themselves. After a few albums where Foo Fighters have felt like they were trying too hard to do the thing they once did so naturally – rock out – this secret set at Glastonbury, loosened of expectation, sees them finally relax back into what made them great.

“They were billed as the Churnups but this audience has clearly long cracked the code: it’s one of the biggest crowds ever seen on this field, stretching back to verdant turf once staked out by the Rolling Stones, Chemical Brothers and (improbably) the Levellers in the annals of Pyramid big-hitters. “We’re not good at secrets,” smiles Dave Grohl at one point…”

The Courteeners – reviewed!

Gwilym Mumford

Woodsides, 6pm

“This is for anyone who was here 15 years ago,” Liam Fray says before launching into the chiming chords of Bide Your Time. It underlines what a curiously robust proposition the Courteeners have been. Somehow their lumpen landfill indie has endured into a third decade.

They’re still as bewilderingly popular as before: they filled out Old Trafford cricket ground earlier this month. Glastonbury can’t quite match that huge hometown crowd: while the Woodsies tent is just about full, it’s not the overflowing bedlam seen here in recent years for sets from the likes of Gerry Cinnamon. (Although in fairness they’ve drawn the short straw here, scheduled against the Foo Fighters.)

At this stage of their career there’s little chance of an any surprises – a change of direction into gabber or free jazz. Instead we very much get the tried and tested: mid-tempo plodders with top-of-your-lungs choruses. In fairness it’s a formula that works: a rousing Not 19 Forever sees the air fill with flare smoke. But there is a misstep in covering It Must Be Love, a genuinely great song made famous by Madness, that rather shows up the relative meagreness of the Courteeners’ own output.

Laura Snapes

Surprising absolutely no one, the Foo Fighters are the mysterious Churnups, playing the main stage right now! Sounds invigorating from where we are backstage at least: feedback from the field incoming. Ben Beaumont Thomas says: “It’s almost a showcase for new drummer Josh Freese – long songs with lots of drum fills and beefy guitar wigouts.”

Also, hello, Laura Snapes taking over the next three hours’ liveblogging.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra reviewed

Ben Beaumont-Thomas

The Park, 4.45pm

New Zealander Ruban Nielson has quietly amassed one of the best catalogues in alternative music: five albums (and some extraneous, long, meandering offcuts) of lo-fi psych-pop and funk with the faintest sense of a hip-hop beatmaker’s sensibility. It means he essentially has a greatest hits set to roll out at festivals, particularly because the material from new album V – made as ever with bandmate Jacob Portrait – is some of his best. This is the Platonic ideal of a mid-afternoon Glasto set: laidback and three-pints blissful, but also with a bit of pep and bite to keep the head nodding rather than nodding off. The riff of opener The Garden sounds gorgeous rolling around the slope of the Park stage, and Nielson – while not a naturally robust vocalist – makes the most of his melancholic croon on the likes of Nadja. There’s a heady, happy vibe under the baking sun; a positive mindset to launch you into the evening’s big hitters.