Xfm's Glastonbury Review - Sunday
The Verve, Goldfrapp and Laughing Len Cohen... it's the last day of Glasto and the sun is out. Could this year's festival be the best in a long time?
Oh, but the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak! After a particularly heavy Saturday night, Xfm - in common with approximately 137,000 other campers - is feeling somewhat bleary eyed, not to mention a little tired and emotional. Be that as it may, that's probably what Brian Jonestown Massacre feel like every day. Yet whatever their public perception may be on the back of the 'Dig!' documentary, the seven-piece deliver a tightly packed set of stoner vibes over at the Pyramid Stage. For the first time ever - or at least the first time in your scribe's experience and there have been many - there are no arguments, rows or outbreaks of random violence amongst the band, just a collection of mellow vibes. Must be the Glasto spirit...
The spirit has taken Manc dance collossus The Whip who take the John Peel tent by storm. Clearly still on Saturday mode, the band wring out once last final piece of dancing from the audience with an utterly epic reading of 'Trash'. The great thing about Sunday at Glastonbury is the totally relaxed nature of the crowd and one that leaves minds wide open (or at least the ones that weren't totally shot the night before).
So it is that Neil Diamond draws the biggest crowd of the day thus far at the Pyramid Stage for the Old Gits' slot with one of the weekend's stand-out performances. A true pro of the old school variety, Diamond doesn't even flinch when the PA packs up. Instead, he keeps the throng going with a huge clapalong before dispatching hit after hit after hit. 'Forever In Blue Jeans' scores highly but pales in the face of the audience participation for a climactic 'Sweet Caroline'. After expeding so much energy, Goldfrapp's bucolic set comes as something of a relief.
Resembling extras from 'The Wicker Man' crossed with some weird sex cult, Goldfrapp alternates from the delicate cuts from current album, 'Seventh Tree', to the more stomping glam disco numbers that sees the legendarily stoney faced Alison Goldfrapp bursting into gales of laughter at the sheer absurdity of being surrounded by half-naked dancers with horses' heads on. Come the evening and the Pyramid Stage has swelled to huge numbers for the live return of Leonard Cohen after a 15-year break. Forced out of retirement after being swindled out of his nest egg by his accountant, Cohen is anything but a man singing for his supper. This is an impassioned set by one of the world's finest lyricists that ranges from ;'Suzanne', 'Bird On A Wire' and 'So Long, Marianne" to 'The Future', 'Tower Of Song' and an outstanding 'Hallelujah' which sees 60,000 people singing as one.
With the sun setting behind Glastonbury Tor, The Verve take the Pyramid Stage with a spectacular set. Having coasted along with a lacklustre solo career, Richard Ashcroft is inflamed with a passion that's been missing from him for what seems an age. Probably because it is an age. Opening with a widescreen 'This Is Music', it soon becomes clear that this is to be a special set for a Glastonbury of rare vintage. 'History', 'THe Drugs Don't Work' and 'Lucky Man' are greeted like old friends while 'Bittersweet Symphony' sees the biggest example of the day of a crowd getting lost in music. And so it ends for now. See you again in the Stone Circle next year...