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A tip for tonight if you’re not into Queens of the Stone Age and/or there’s a lull in Elton’s set when you’re watching later: French dance-pop outfit Phoenix, playing Woodsies at 9.30pm, are supremely fun.
Established avant-pop artist Caroline Polachek has a very sparse crowd over at Woodsies, where she’s been playing for the last 20 minutes or so. The programming has not been kind to her – last year she was playing to a pretty decent audience up at the Park.
Photograph: Shaad D’Souza/The GuardianBen’s back from Lil Nas X. Jack Harlow came out for his verse on Industry Baby at the end there. Review coming soon!
Man, this War On Drugs set is such sunny spangly chill vibes. They’re in the middle of Red Eyes just now. Such a full sound, so very many guitar pedals. Meanwhile, the crowd at the Pyramid is starting to get a little restless, reports Shaad.
The War on Drugs have just arrived on the Other stage, sounding wonderful with Oceans of Darkness. The evening is very much underway – T minus just under one hour to Elton …
A couple of photos of how Lil Nas X is showing up on the Pyramid Stage right now:
Cutout bodycon dresses for all… Lil Nas X on the Pyramid Stage Photograph: Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty ImagesLil Nas X rides an artificial giant horse on stage for Old Town Road Photograph: Scott Garfitt/Invision/APThere is a huge crowd for Romy (formerly of the xx) at Mexi-themed micro-venue San Remo, reports Laura Snapes: “she’s playing big-feelings dance music, including a banging remix of SFA’s Flowers.”
Blondie reviewed
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Pyramid stage, 5pm
“A robust performance of the superb Dev Hynes co-write Long Time shows that their later tunes can match their classics, but it’s Heart of Glass that has this gigantic Pyramid crowd waving in unison – a truly awesome sight. By now Harry is dressed in a cowl made from shards of mirror, like a comic-book soothsayer stalking the mean streets of the Lower East Side. As she mellifluously sang earlier on, at age 77 she’s clearly not the kind of girl to give up just like that.” Full review:
Keza’s now back from a brief queer-chaos Lil Nas X moment – just in time to share the Blondie review…
Elle Hunt
As we await Ben Beaumont-Thomas’ review of Lil Nas X, Keza reports back from the Pyramid stage with what sounds like a cracking show:
Lil Nas X is absolutely beautiful in a gold crop top and tight white jeans, festooned with fur and feathers – true to his hip-hop country roots. Call Me By Your Name is a walloping tune, even if it only lasts about 90 seconds before he launches into something else, demonstrating that short attention span that is well known by now of Lil Nas’s sets. His backing dancers, of all genders, are wearing white cut-out bodycon dresses – and for his breakout single, Old Town Road, Nas appears on a giant golden horse.
The Hu reviewed
Gwilym Mumford
West Holts, 5pm
It’s never dull on West Holts. Straight after the South London jazz fusion of Speakers Corner Quartet, we’re served up a substantial slab of Mongolian folk metal. The Hu are an Ulaanbaatar-based eight-piece – some of them in ceremonial dress, some in leather dusters – who play a mixture of modern and traditional instruments, guitars rubbing up against tovshuur horsehead fiddles. Their songs follow suit, resembling Black Album-era Metallica if James Hetfield had more of a penchant for Tuvan throat singing.
Mongolia has a robust rock scene, with bands exploring everything from garage psych to black metal. But The Hu are the rare band to have broken through internationally, attracting hundreds of millions of views of their videos and collaborating with Papa Roach and Halestorm. You suspect that has much to do with The Hu’s willingness to play up their heritage: the war cries and songs about Genghis Khan surely go down well with audiences familiar with only that surface-deep idea of Mongolia. It would be instructive to know just how they are viewed by other bands in the Mongolian music scene.
That’s not an issue for the here and now, though. At West Holts the crowd are thrilled by those deep riffs and deep Mongolian ululations. At times, when the riffs go from sludgy to galloping, with those bowed instruments screaming over the top they could almost be mistaken for the Dropkick Murphys. The riffs do tend to repeat themselves after a while but no matter: there’s always something to be engaged by here. It ends as the best metal concerts do: with a massive moshpit, something that tends to transcend race or nationality.
Elle Hunt
Good evening, Glastonbury crew – I’m taking over the live blog for a little while so that my colleague Keza, who’s been so wonderfully steering you through for the past few hours, may enjoy at least the first few songs of Lil Nas X. Having just returned to Guardian HQ (it’s less glamorous than you may imagine) after a day roaming the field, I can tell you that there’s that last-day-of-school vibe out there on Worthy Farm right now – plus the longest queues for the bar I’ve seen so far this weekend. The breeze, alleviating the heat of yesterday, has made a noticeable difference – everyone seems to be back on top and determined to see off the festival in high spirits.
While we’re in a between-sets lull: I think my favourite moment of this festival so far has been singing This Charming Man with Rick Astley. There’s more than one generation of Smiths fans now who’ve never seen these songs played live, and it really was moving. Also, Slash’s superb soaring performance of Sweet Child O’ Mine. That guitar tone was sweet enough to give me toothache.
Becky Hill reviewedJenessa Williams
Other Stage, 6pm
Becky Hill at Glastonbury festival. Photograph: Scott Garfitt/Invision/APClad in a neon smiley three-piece that absolutely screams Glastonbury raver, Becky Hill is making no bones about the specialness of her 11-year journey “to get to this exact place”: meaning not just the Other stage, but also her station as current reigning queen of chart-friendly dance. She throws out a plethora of Ibiza hun bops: Overdrive is a belter, while Same Old Story has some great dancers voguing, renaissance-style, in glittering silver. “I went to Arcadia to see Chemical Brothers, and now I fully get this place,” she says. “I’ll be coming back now as long as I can. Hopefully working, if I don’t screw this up.”
Illustrating the growing respect towards her genre, she’s brought along the Heritage Orchestra, making sure that their contributions to the canon of dance, house and electronic music are well known. A win for Becky, it appears, is a win for the whole team, and there’s something very endearing about the level of thought she’s put into this occasion: a career bucket-list item ticked.
Georgia South and Amy Love of Nova Twins perform at Glastonbury Festival 2023 Photograph: Shirlaine Forrest/RedfernsSome appreciation in the comments for the energetic nu-metal-esque rockers Nova Twins, who played the Greenpeace Stage last year fresh off winning the Kerrang award for best newcomers and were upgraded to the Other stage this afternoon. They absolutely rock, all chugging guitars and deliciously spiteful lyrics delivered at lightning speed. Check ’em out if you can.