Big City @ Queen's Park, Glasgow, 29 Jun

"Fuck Glastonbury,” says Nadine Shah during her set, “this is alright!" 

The inaugural Big City festival at Queen's Park Recreation Grounds in Glasgow's Southside feels like a music festival’s music festival. It’s what Mogwai want from an all-dayer, swiftly executed. Bar queues are quick; the ones for the portaloos, likewise; and there's no litter! There are some issues (the only place to get earplugs is at the first aid tent), but it’s a strong showing for a first-time event.

The day starts cloudy, with occasional blasts of sun for five minutes at a time. So far, so Glasgow. The entrance down to the big blue tent and its smaller accompaniment, the Rock Action Tent, is flanked by a digger. There’s a wide range of ages, from teenagers with Slowdive totes to twentysomething guitarists, to punk mums (and dads). There’s flower prints, pastel leather jackets, and the full gamut of indie-rock T-shirts – Neu, Mogwai, a DFA lightning bolt...   

Sacred Paws open. It’s only 2pm but already Ray Aggs is jumping on stage to enthusiastic cheers, louder than you’d expect at this time of the day. Kathryn Joseph starts in the blue tent right as they end. All her songs, she tells us, are about people hurting each other. Only an electric piano and kick drum accompanies her voice; warm timbre for glacial subjects. There’s angst and intense anger – but there's also quiet; the crowd so silent you can hear the tent’s metal cables clank in the breeze.  

The organisers may have underestimated how willing the crowd is to see every act, so next we're at the back for Elisabeth Elektra’s take on gothic pop-rock, drummer going ballistic like it’s an eight-minute metal song. From here on out, to ensure we can see in the Rock Action Tent, we get into the habit of leaving the blue tent ten minutes early. There's beauty to a crowd of music lovers being this eager as hundreds of people flow back and forth between the two spots, thankfully mere metres apart.

Image: Big City @ Queen's Park, Glasgow, 29 Jun by Antony Crook

Michael Rother’s set starts off as a legacy act for his 70s seminal band Neu, except with more synths and/or innumerable guitar effects, which give the krautrock classics a proggy exuberance. It’s impressive, and it’s kind of camp. By the third track people are properly moving for the first time of the day. "I can’t see much,” Rother says at one point, “but are you dancing!?" 

In many ways, he provides the template for everything else that follows. BEAK> take no prisoners – they’ve been following an abrasive, cerebral, cryptic and propulsive vision for 15-odd years. Cloth, meanwhile, get huge well-deserved crowd support when playing their understated and intricate take on post-rock, and Nadine Shah’s baroque stagecraft electrifies the blue tent: think atonal post-punk with stadium effect, Shah dancing in her velvet suit in front of a criss-cross of red spotlights. Free Love, likewise, are a total delight. Suzi Cook bites off the head of a rose, spitting petals over drummer Paul Thomson. This is pure primeval spiritual dance music, all arp and acid bass, sheer electro-exuberance.

Dressed in a lavender-grey shawl, Slowdive's Rachel Goswell states that this has been their “favourite festival to play." It's a bold claim, but hopefully it's true. Emotions come to the fore, and we find ourselves crying when they start to play When the Sun Hits; Sugar for the Pill takes us back to 2017, our end of adolescence. It’s exhilarating seeing these shoegaze pioneers at the top of their powers, this peak of a second life the internet has allowed. They end on a cover of Syd Barrett’s Golden Hair, insane drums included, and then we stumble into the bright – for all the darkness and reverb within, it’s only now just golden hour.

Image: Mogwai @ Big City, Queen's Park, Glasgow, 29 Jun by Antony Crook

When we get in for Mogwai, we’re so far back we see the band only as silhouettes against the backdrop of an unbelievable light show. Some beams hit the tent tops; they look like smoke rings over the surface. It’s hard to know when the crowd is screaming, and when the guitars are – Mogwai are nothing if not masters of letting the human voice go, dissolution against their meditative tapestries of reverb, distortion, noise. It’s all encompassing; it makes us think of pantheism. Upon noticing at least 12 engineers behind the mixing desk, ensuring the intricacy of this audiovisual spectacle, we feel more grounded. 

Big City is a wonderful excuse for Mogwai to put their friends and labelmates on a colossal stage, and to present a Scottish take on the all-out all-dayer. We’re blessed we get to be caught up in their dream.