Reviews

Submitted by Nathan on

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General Discussion

Guardian is first out of the traps: 

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/aug/21/green-man-festival-revie...

I dont think I saw anything mentioned, other than PJ Harvey (and the social unacceptability of littering) 

My own review is another excellent edition of the Greenman. Highlights: Richard Dawson; Big Theif; Aldous Huxling; Andy Shauf; Nadia Reid; WH Lung. 

And the GM kids (are alright)

N

marcus_g replied on

Never heard of the quietus but I am sure its a quality site.  in contrast the guardian has future islands as band of the weekend. Its a funny old game. They blew me away as a live act too so in this instance I will go with the guardian rather than the ray rad fan club

ray_rad's picture ray_rad replied on

i am unaffiliated with any periodical that would have me as a contributor

funny that the quietus went with a picture from last year rather than this...

Wakestock replied on

Anyone have access beyond the Times firewall to post theirs? I saw that they gave it four stars and read the opening paragraph, but that was my lot. 

peridot's picture peridot replied on

Was able to do a trial registration to extract it below. Better in many ways than either of the above ... but equally pointless.

 

Pop review: Green Man festival at Crickhowell, Powys

Sets looked back in time with a nod to the Elizabeth, Roman and medieval eras, although PJ Harvey showed the future of pop

Will Hodgkinson

August 21 2017, 5:00pm, The Times

PJ Harvey is showing where pop music can go in the 21st century

★★★★☆
At this year’s Green Man you could be forgiven for thinking you were stepping back in various stages through time. GospelbeacH revived the sun-dappled sound of 1970s California. The four-piece Allah-Las were essentially a 1960s garage band transported into the modern age complete with fuzzed-out guitars and snarling attitude. The exotically attired Circulus revived the lute-laden pop of the Elizabethan era.

But the prize for retro set of the weekend went to Newcastle’s Richard Dawson, who aimed to capture the “period between 500 and 700 after the slow withdrawal of the Roman Empire from the northeast” on songs from his album Peasant. A ruddy fellow with a tuneful shout of a voice, Dawson was like a medieval Captain Beefheart as he sang his surreal folk ballads — and absolutely captivating.

It wasn’t all backwards-looking, and PJ Harvey gave a Sunday night headline set that showed where pop music can go in the 21st century. Harvey’s latest album, The Hope Six Demolition Project, combines war reportage and impressionistic writing on songs about Afghanistan, Kosovo and the ghettos of Washington DC. Dressed like a fashion-conscious angel of death in black feather headdress and billowing gown, Harvey blew a squealing saxophone for The Ministry of Defence, inspired by the sight of the titular bombed-out building in Kabul. Festival-friendly fun it was not, with gothic old favourites Down by the Water and To Bring You My Love included in the set, but it was as compelling as it was challenging and, typically for this clear-visioned artist, realised perfectly.

Other highlights included the ferocious rock’n’roll of Thee Oh Sees, which inspired a fight in the audience, making the band’s two drummers stand up and point their drumsticks at the pugilists in unison, and Julian Cope, who performed a solo set in which he got in a dig at his former manager Bill Drummond, later of dance music pranksters the KLF, “who burnt a million quid, some of which was mine”.

Ryan Adams gave a headline of pure country rock on Saturday, and the Bill Withers-like Michael Kiwanuka articulated his situation at the predominantly Anglo-Saxon Green Man with Black Man in a White World. And with a lot of rain, and the whole affair ending with the traditional burning of a giant green man, this was a distinctly pagan bout of time travelling in the Welsh countryside.