Edinburgh Psych Fest 2024: The review

Now in its second year, Edinburgh Psych Fest is billed as providing “mind-bending sounds and trippy visuals”. It’s an undoubtedly ambitious undertaking – six stages across four sites, dozens of bands and tickets sold for bargain prices.

Spread across three spaces within Summerhall plus The Caves, The Mash House and The Queen’s Hall, it’s a fair bet that most punters won’t get close to visiting all the stages but it shows that psych-influenced music is in rude health, from Pigs x7’s Black Sabbath-inflected doom metal and O.’s frenetic jazzy skronk to Whiteland’s colour-bleeding walls of sound.

In Summerhall’s Dissection Room, several hundred fans pack in early to see Hastings trio HotWax who rocket through their set of catchy Yeah Yeah Yeahs-indebted songs as an electrocardiogram pulses away on the screen behind them. The trio are supremely tight and accomplished for a group who look as if they could still be teenagers. The scorching Treasure nails the Pixies LOUD-quiet-LOUD dynamic, while Wannabe Doll is an ear-splitting blast of riot grrrl and Rip It Out brings things to a finish with a flourish. Their debut album will be one to watch out for.


Image: HotWax @ Summerhall for Edinburgh Psych Fest, 1 Sep by Stuart Stott

In the Main Hall, there’s just time to catch the end of Holly Macve’s set of country-fuelled torch songs. With her white corseted dress, tiara and videos of gravestones and wintry roads, the obvious point of reference is Lana Del Rey and true to form, the final track Suburban House is a gentle piano ballad, originally a duet with Del Rey herself. You'd struggle to describe any part of this set as psychedelic, but the compelling visuals and use of tightly-clipped backing tracks does push things into transportive trip-hop territory.

Around the corner in the atmospheric Queen’s Hall, there’s not only a much shorter queue for the bar but also a chance to see Brighton indie band Lime Garden. Vocalist Chloe Howard makes no secret of feeling overawed by the grand old church venue and this hesitancy does seem to hold back the performance at first. It’s not until she buckles on a guitar that the band fill out their sound and loosen up, helped by their best and most likeable song Nepotism (baby) – a ripping takedown of Kate Moss’s daughter – and set closer Love Song which has a touch of Siouxsie and the Banshees to its ground-shaking rhythm section.

Down the road at The Mash House, perhaps 50 brave Psych Fest fortune-hunters have made it along for Glasgow’s Nightshift’s left-leaning agit-prog. After a parade of punks, post punks and singer-songwriters, the quartet may be more authentically psychedelic than anything else we've seen so far, with twitchy songs that bring to mind both Broadcast and The Flaming Lips.

Image: Magpie Blue @ The Mash House for Edinburgh Psych Fest, 1 Sep by Stuart Stott

Lacking a cohesive aesthetic and seemingly a functional setlist, it’s endearingly shambolic, but not enough to stop us making a dash across to The Caves for Magpie Blue whose impressive finger picking and bluesy, androgynous voice recalls PJ Harvey. As well as some clever use of effects pedals, Crutch is a particularly impressive piece of songwriting that suggests that while their set may be something of a work in progress, there is serious talent to be deployed here.

Heading back to Summerhall's Dissection Room, The Wytches are certainly the loudest act of the day, lurching through darkly-themed punk-grunge reminiscent of The Birthday Party or Metz. The sheer volume may make it hard to parse their lyrics but they’re impressively committed to the bit. Maybe a little light and shade could leaven the sonic assault. Still, if your ears can’t take a battering, there’s always lots of other options. The organisers seem to be running a tight ship – everything runs to time and there’s always plenty more to see. 

If earlier Lime Garden were just feeling their way towards a distinctive sound, then Galway’s NewDad are the Charmeleon to the former’s Charmander. The band’s melodic post-punk is tightly written, with punchy choruses and soaring bridges on tracks like the lush Angel and the excellent Sickly Sweet. It’s no wonder their set gets one of the biggest crowd responses of the day, in particular for an authentic version of The Cure’s Just Like Heaven, a track which sounds like it is something of a lodestar for the band.

Another group who seem to be having a real moment are Dubliners’ Gurriers who pack the tiny Old Lab stage and proceed to absolutely smash their moment in the spotlight. Sounding like disciples of Fontaines D.C., their shoegaze-meets-punk sound lends itself to shouty gang vocals and glittering walls of sound custom-made for audience chaos. It’s the first outright mosh pit of the day and the band seem equally energised by their racket.


Image: Pigs x7 @ The Queen's Hall for Edinburgh Psych Fest, 1 Sep by Stuart Stott

Finally, it’s time for something a little more traditional. Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs may be a reporter’s worst nightmare to read from an autocue but they’re now seasoned veterans of the British psych circuit, delivering big antics and bigger riffs. Frontman Matthew Baty emerges barefoot in a gym vest and sports shorts to deliver what can only be described as the world’s most depraved Pilates routine. He eggs on the crowd as images of buildings flicker and distort on the screen behind him, and if his antics sometimes overshadow his band's rumbling stoner metal... well, the audience don’t seem to mind.

The sonics may be retro but what has turned Pigs x7 into such a compelling live act isn’t just Baty’s shenanigans, it’s the fact that they’ve never become a simple pastiche of their influences. Instead, it's grounded in an earnest desire to entertain and a love of simply the biggest, most thundering chord sequence you can think of.

Edinburgh Psych Fest might lack one big name to bring everyone together under one roof in communal joy, but it’s a survey of a musical scene with tendrils extending everywhere, and a triumph for the gang who put it together.

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Edinburgh Psych Fest 2025 takes place on Sun 31 Aug; advance tickets available at edinburghpsychfest.com