Reading Festival 2017: The Review

Chock full of guest appearances left, right and centre, Reading Festival delivers a wonderfully exciting weekend of music for its 2017 instalment

Live Review by Josh Mines | 14 Sep 2017

While over the years Reading's audience has remained largely the same, the festival has continued to diversify, grow and improve its line-up across its stages. The mix of artists and genres, in particular, feels far better than ever before, and the prominence of top rap and hip-hop artists from both the UK and the States is just one example of this. Gone are the naysayers who ever questioned the introduction of the 1Xtra stage in 2013.

Over on the Festival Republic Stage, Reading locals The Amazons enjoy a rightfully rowdy early reception. In the almost unbearably cramped mosh pits, and with fans spilling all the way out the tent, you wonder why a band who have had regular Radio 1 airplay this summer find themselves in a midday slot. Starting with Stay With Me, The Amazons then rocket through singalong tune Ultraviolet before dropping their huge summer hit, Black Magic. The music is loud and the crowd raucous, but it sounds great and there’s rarely a lyric or guitar lick that feels lost.

Later, Lethal Bizzle takes to the NME stage playing a set that has to go down as one of the guilty pleasures of the weekend. Sporting a karate gi with 'Blackie Chan' adorned across the back, Bizzle drops some of his biggest, baddest and bassiest tracks one after the other. After gym anthem Rari WorkOut, we get Pow, and a rendition of new track Wigback Ting. The best is saved until last by the London rapper, who finishes with not one, but two huge guest appearances. Grime’s golden boy Stormzy is first up, immediately followed by Mercury Award winner Skepta, who smashes I Win, the tune he features on from Bizzle’s latest You’ll Never Make a Million from Grime EP. 

And the surprises keep coming. Queens of the Stone Age, fresh off the bus from playing a secret show at Leeds Festival earlier in the day, show up in Reading, drawing a large crowd to the NME tent and they do not disappoint. Launching immediately into No One Knows' heavy riff, Josh Homme and co play a short but sweet set that hits all the right notes. The second song QOTSA play, Feel Good Hit of the Summer, gets the crowd moving even more and sets a pace that does not let up for the thirty-minutes-or-so they were on stage. Before leaving, the California band give us a taste of two new songs from Villains  The Way You Used To, and The Evil Has Landed – which are both received brilliantly by the diehard fans in the crowd. Final track of the set, Little Sister, closes QOTSA’s performance perfectly, and seals their (not so) secret set as the highlight of Friday.

On Saturday, the strong rap acts continue although the tempo is taken down from grime’s 140 bpm to the far more leisurely pace employed in Loyle Carner’s intricate and moving bars. A hot favourite to win the 2017 Mercury Award, Carner’s stage – decked out with a lampshade, framed photo and armchair – makes the audience feel thoroughly at home. The Isle of Arran is a standout track, and bringing Tom Misch on (who played directly before Carner), to sing collaboration Damselfly is a nice touch from the South London artist. By the end of his grabbing and charismatic set, Carner has the entire crowd singing the lyrics to No CD. “This has been the best show I’ve ever done,” Carner says before leaving the stage. It’s a slightly cliche but moving statement that says a lot about the speed of Carner’s rise and how deeply bedded in his humble roots he is.

Sadly, trap trio Migos put on one of the most disappointing shows of the weekend. Before coming on, the group's DJ plays a warm-up set featuring tunes from the likes of Drake, Future and Lil Uzi Vert, but when Migos finally arrive their lack of energy and short performance time makes for an overall underwhelming experience. Coupled with that, the sound on the main stage throughout leaves the backing tracks for hits like Bad and Boujee sounding as clear as mud as the deafening bass completely drowns out every other layer.

Sunday easily offered the best main stage line-up, and perhaps the most unexpected highlight came during UK hip-hop artist Giggs' set. Starting on Kano's 3 Wheel-ups, before smashing through JME collaboration Man Don’t Care, the Peckham rapper effortlessly pulled out one of the performances of the weekend. The crowd were in disbelief when KMT, a tune from Drake’s most recent playlist rang out across Little John’s farm, and one of the biggest artists in the world made an appearance on Reading’s stage. It genuinely was a shock that very few expected, and was the icing on a crazy set from Giggs. Drake’s feature also marked Reading as up there with Glastonbury in terms of attracting big names, and has set a high bar for subsequent festivals to follow.

Headliners Muse, who last topped the bill in 2011, had high standards to achieve, as that previous appearance marked the 10th anniversary of Origin of Symmetry. Though their 2017 performance doesn’t quite hit those levels, the band still manage to get through a good mix of well-worn tunes as well as some of their more recent, slightly weaker material. The set’s opener, Dig Down, is a cracking tension builder and sets an excitable mood for the songs that follow; Hysteria, Plug In Baby and Stockholm Syndrome all get an outing, giving their fans barely a minute to take a breather.

Before the literal fireworks Muse had planned for the end, Brian Johnson shows up for a raucous cover of AC/DC’s Back in Black, much to the delight of the crowd. And there were no surprises with the final song of the set, as the eerie harmonica introduction to Knights of Cydonia pulls the curtain down on their performance and the festival, for another year at least.

Reading brought enough genuine surprises and new features to make it feel like it's learning and improving from the feedback it gets every year. There were many highlights for many different reasons, but most refreshing was that despite the predictable choices on the main stage and at the top of the bill, there is still exciting talent to be discovered.

https://www.readingfestival.com/