Green Man 2024

By markontour, August 26, 2024

Given tickets for Green Man sold out in 2 hours for this year’s event, I am hesitant about adding to the growing list of rave reviews for this carnival of music, comedy, crafts and beer that consistently delivers the best vibes of the British festival scene. But Green Man 2024 was SO good.

Let’s start with the obvious things: Green Man surely has the best backdrop of any festival main stage, framed as it is by the peaks of the Bannau Brycheiniog national park and set amid the ancient oaks of the Glanusk estate. I am, admittedly, very biased about the location, given that we are able to stroll in each day from the comfort of a narrowboat moored on the Monmouth and Brecon canal. This year, however, a tent would have been ample protection from the elements as mid-Wales enjoyed sunshine from Friday to Sunday, adding to the smiles and general enjoyment, although not fully explaining why I ended up drinking mango cider for most of the festival.

But in addition to the extraordinary setting, Green Man managed yet again to programme an extraordinary array of talent, particularly specialising in bands I’d never heard of before, scheduled at exactly the right time of day on the right stage. No other festival seems to get the commissioning quite so right. Big Thief aside, the headliners weren’t that important to markontour’s enjoyment of the festival, but there was at least one stand-out act on every stage or tent.

Then there is the unparalleled choice of beers and ciders, cracking festival food, minimal queues, and lots and lots of space away from the throngs around the stages. Green Man is a festival from which I come home feeling revived rather than exhausted.

Here follows markontour’s sort-of-review of Green Man 2024, trying to avoid ranking performances, particularly because the comparison between the surprise of a brilliant never-heard-of-before band performing their first album is difficult to compare with 30 year veterans singing out their old hits. But also because quite a few acts I only got to enjoy for part of their performance as there was so much on offer across the festival.

Music

Big Thief, Mountain Stage, Saturday 11pm
On stage it is more obvious how Big Thief is really Adrienne Lenker plus friends – she writes and sings the songs, plays some cracking grungy lead guitar, and shyly engages the crowd – seemingly genuinely awed to be playing to 15,000 people as the night’s headliner. The set was intoxicating, mixing gentle, often melancholic folk, with some Neil Young and Crazy Horse-esque guitar screeching. Apparently two-thirds of the songs were new, although ‘Incomprehensible’ at the end was so instantly catchy that most of the crowd were singing along. ‘Simulation Swarm’ and ‘Vampire Empire’ were the stand-outs for me of the songs I knew. I bought every Big Thief album at Rough Trade the next day.

KoKoKo!, Far Out, Thursday 7.30pm
The band’s publicity say they aim to recreate the essence of night-time in their hometown of Kinshasa with their bass-heavy, energetic and life-affirming songs. If that’s so, it’s a city I need to visit – their set was electrifying and joyous and an early festival moment, where everyone present simultaneously realised they were part of something special.

The Mary Wallopers, Far Out, Sunday 8.30pm
In their last festival performance of the season and clearly enjoying it, the Mary Wallopers lived up to their hype as the new Pogues, mixing raucous mosh-alongs, with a capella ballads, and a lot of politics – variously supporting a Free Palestine, revisiting the exploitation of immigrant Irish building workers in England, and reminding people not to “punch down” in response to the recent anti-immigrant riots in Britain and Ireland – “we’re all angry about the cost of living, but take it out on those who are really responsible – your government or your landlord – don’t side with the fascists”. A longer set than I had seen at Latitude or Glastonbury, demonstrated the depth of the Wallopers’ material and the interplay between the three singer-songwriters was more apparent.

Brown Horse, Walled Garden, Sunday 2.30pm
They call themselves ‘alt-country nobodies’, hail from Norfolk but sound like they’re from Nashville, and only one-album into their career have built a fantastic sound. The closest comparison I could make is to the Felice Brothers, a band I love, although the one cover was a great version of Woody Guthrie’s ‘All you fascists are bound to lose’. Must see again.

A. Savage, Walled Garden, Friday 8.20pm
Parquet Courts frontman doing solo-acoustic Americana in mesmerising fashion. Laid back and dreamy, I think I am going to be listening to his latest album a lot. Thoughtfully introduced a song about the genocide inflicted on indigenous Americans by European settlers before calling for support for the people of Gaza.

Porridge Radio, Walled Garden, Saturday 7pm
This year’s surprise special guests, Porridge Radio get better every time I see them. ‘Give/Take’ continues to be a crowd-pleaser with its “I want, want, want, want” sing-along lament, but there were a lot of new ones in this set which sounded very promising for the next album.

Lynks, Mountain Stage, Saturday 12 noon
This year’s ‘we were just walking past and couldn’t leave band’. I very much doubt I will ever buy a Lynks album or gig ticket, but this was one hell of a festival show. Lynks’ brand of pop relies on great costumes (lead singer and 3 dancers all clad top-to-toe in a kind of red and yellow tartan); sharp, funny lyrics, and lots of dancing. I remember a song about travelling on the DLR to have sex with a stranger; dancers hitting tennis balls into the crowd to accompany a song about taking up tennis; and I am sure there was one where the lyrics were basically a recipe for bechamel sauce. All very camp, very fun, and great mid-afternoon entertainment for a big main-stage crowd.

Fat White Family, Far Out, Friday 8.45pm
Some combination of hearing lead singer, Lias Saoudi, talk so compellingly about ‘Ten Thousand Apologies’, his auto-biography / Fat White Family memoir, at Krankenhaus Festival last year, and seeing Caitlin Rose play The Windmill in Brixton, a venue the Fat White’s made their own when they were starting out, has brought me back to the Fat White Family. That and the slightly gentler tone of the band’s brilliant new album, ‘Forgiveness Is Yours’. Previously I’d loved some live gigs, but found the chaos too distracting at others and never really engaged with an album. So I was gutted to have a clash with their slot at Green Man, but delighted to catch four or five songs which demonstrated a continuing intensity and genius, but all kept together a bit better. I will be buying tickets for their next tour.

Lemoncello, Rising Stage, Friday 3.30pm
An Irish female duo playing cello and guitar and achieving gorgeous vocal harmonies in songs that crossed somewhere between folk and indie.

Liz Lawrence, Far Out, Thursday 4.45pm
Rocking an outfit that could have been the feathered residue of an ostrich themed fancy dress night, but was probably a nod to the Green Man, Lawrence was on proper eccentric form. Funny, sometimes awkward, often beaming a smile, her songs are as infectious as her manner and I am glad we caught ‘None of My Friends’, but gutted we missed ‘Navigator’ and a slew of others while getting ourselves onsite and organised.

Revival Season, Rising Stage, Friday 6.30pm
This duo hailing from Georgia, USA, are signed to the ever-wonderful Heavenly Records, a label not known for its hip-hop, so I was intrigued by the promise of this collaboration between one half of indie-guitar band, Mattiel, and rapper Brandon ‘Bez’ Evans. They didn’t disappoint and the Beastie Boys comparisons are well made.

Black Country New Road, Mountain Stage, Sunday 6.30pm
I really shouldn’t like Black Country New Road – avant garde jazz is the kind of description designed to get me walking in the opposite direction, but there is something extraordinarily compelling about this band, from the bass guitarist who sits playing her instrument like a sitar, to the impassioned keyboardist/singer, all flourishing fingers and billowing dress. We talked about leaving at the start but were still there at the end, utterly mesmerised. I admit my favourite song was the most pared back, where the violinist swapped instruments for an acoustic guitar, but all in all I have to admit I am a BCNR fan now.

Sam Grassie, Walled Garden, Saturday 12.15pm
I only caught three songs, but they were beautiful finger-picking folk guitar in the style of Bert Jansch. Indeed, he did a version of ‘Angie’ accompanied by some kind of woodwind instrument that sounded like a clarinet but looked slightly different. Grassie’s stage patter was quirky and a little hyper, although perhaps that was just the thrill of being well-enough to be on stage, as he revealed that one song was about a battle with chronic fatigue.

Devendra Banhart, Mountain Stage, Saturday 9pm
A friend had recommended this Venezuelan-American singer, otherwise I might have gone to see Nadine Shah and missed out. One of many artists at Green Man who has collaborated with Welsh legend, Cate Le Bon, Banhart is similarly hard to pin down by genre, but this show was a kind of folky-pyschedelia that left me wanting to hear more. It was fitting that Banhart’s touring band features Welsh guitarist, H. Hawkline, and so lovely that he gave him the opportunity to sing is own song, ‘Milk For Flowers’, to us.

Royel Otis, Far Out, Sunday 4pm
This Aussie band seem to have a big following back home judging from Spotify, and I could see why. Jangly indie-pop, reminiscent of the early 1990s – the Soupdragons perhaps? The Syd Barrat-looking singer left it to the keyboard player with whom he shares song-writing credits to do the chatting to an increasingly enthusiastic afternoon crowd.

Pictish Trail, Walled Garden, 5pm, Sunday
We needed something relaxing and were proved emphatically right in guessing that Johnny Lynch’s annual Green Man performance was pretty much guaranteed to provide it. Warm, idiosyncratic, funny (a very odd tale about rabbits and bonfire night), the bard of the Isle of Eigg delivered as usual with his own brand of folk, electronica and pyschedelia, and generally seemed part of the essence of Green Man.

King Creosote, Mountain Stage, 5.45pm Saturday
”These songs aren’t that good, but at least they’re short”, so promised the self-deprecating King Creosote front-man, Kenny Anderson, before launching into another really-rather-good number. I guess quality control isn’t King Creosote’s primary concern, as the band just released their 50th album in 30 years, but it was all rather beautiful from 4 middle-aged blokes, 3 keyboards, an acoustic guitar and a lovely Scottish accent.

Lambrini Girls, Far Out, Sunday 1.15pm
Full-on feminist punk attitude from the Brighton trio, including very fast songs – we were only in the tent for 5 minutes but caught 3 songs and the lead-singer climbing a tent pole while passing guitar duties to a random, and ecstatically happy, member of the crowd.

Brown Wimpenny, Rising Stage, Sunday 12 noon
Providing acoustic backdrop to the end of our earthworm walk, this large Manchester folk ensemble seemed to be having a lot of fun, as did the audience, particularly through a comically drawn-out finale.

The Jesus and Mary Chain, Far Out, 10.30pm
I have wanted to see them for so long and ‘Sometimes Always’ and ‘Just Like Honey’ were just as gorgeous as I’d hoped they would be, but otherwise it was a bit of a drone to be honest.

Omar Suleyman, Mountain Stage, Sunday 5pm
I’m a fan of Omar Suleyman’s Syrian blues/electro, but on a big stage, with such a glorious backdrop, he really needed to provide more of a show than casually walking bath and forth in front of us, occasionally leading a half-hearted hand-clap, or exchanging a word with his DJ. To be fair, hundreds of people were dancing anyway.

Films, walks and talks

Kneecap, Cinemadrome, Saturday 1am
Funny, subversive, political, this is a music film from the top drawer, cleverly fictionalising the rise and controversy of Irish hip-hop band, Kneecap: two petty drug-dealing Belfast youths with a lot to say about British imperialism, the Irish language and cultural freedom, and who find an outlet for their talent when they team up with a thirty-something music teacher. Deserving of all the awards it has so far won, and the many more it will surely garner.

The Big Tree Walk, Sunday 2.30pm
I know it’s a walking talk, not a performance, and we join it every year, but Joe Middleton of the Woodland Trust is the kind of expert who makes it easy for other people to share his joy of trees, rather than showing off his knowledge. This year I learned that over 1,000 species of animal and insect live off a native Welsh oak, whereas only 10 are typically found on the imported, but still very beautiful, Turkey oak. By the end of the 11th century our ancestors had already reduced Britain’s ancient forest to 13% of its peak size and today there’s barely 2.5% left. Given a woodland needs to have been in-situ for 400 years to qualify as ‘ancient’ it is going to take us a while to rewild back to even the Middle Ages scale. Oh, and London Plane tress can survive in polluted metropolises because their bark absorbs pollution, but then flakes off before it can infect the core of the tree.

Richard King talking to Julia Holter about Arthur Russel, Babbling Tongues, Friday 2pm
I adore Richard King’s writing, from ‘Brittle With Relices’, his history of modern Wales, to ‘Lark Ascending’ on the music of the British landscape, but knew almost nothing about Arthur Russel before this talk, other than a vague idea he was an avant-garde musician. That turned out to be true, and one that was revered by fellow musicians, prone to play his cello at disco venues, almost produced Bruce Springsteen, and lived in the same New York apartment block as Alan Ginsberg. Given full access to the Russel’s archives, Russel-fan and fellow musican, Julia Holter, was fascinated by the correspondence reproduced in a biography which I clearly now need to read.

Beatles Dub Club AV set, Cinemadrome, Saturday 10.30pm
Beatles Dub Club DJ-sets have become something of an institution at Green Man, and this year the show was enhanced by the cinematic backdrop of old Beatles footage.

Earthworm walk, Sunday 11.30m
I didn’t know what I didn’t know about earthworms, but apparently there are 27 species resident in the UK, which is 27 more than in North America before European colonisation (with stowaway worms, it seems), as retreating ice sheets scoured away the worms’ entire habitats at the end of the last ice-age. Other facts: in a field full of cows, the worms under the soil weigh more than the grass-munchers above; Australian worms line their tunnels with mucus so they can escape faster if a predator comes calling; and moles eat worms by biting off their heads and then squeezing out all the mud and grit from the worm’s gut, so as not to damage their teeth when they bite in..

Huw Stephens in conversation with Jude Rogers, Babbling Tongues, Saturday 4pm
I am really enjoying Huw Stephen’s eclectic and very personal history of Welsh recorded music: ‘Wales: 100 Records’ and so this chat, with one of my favourite music journalists, Jude Rogers, was unmissable. In his amiable style, Huw confirmed that he is record-obsessed, that many of the entries in the book have been chosen for their cover-art as much as the songs, a few of which he had brought along in a scruffy carrier bag, including Ffrancon’s ‘Gwalaxia’, which features red sheep on a Welsh-flag green and white background. It was notable to see many members of young Welsh bands in the audience, although perhaps not a surprise given that Stephens is such a champion of Welsh music on his BBC Radio 6 Music, BBC Cymru, and previously Radio One shows.

Pete Brown Matches the Beers to the Bands, Babbling Tongues, Friday 12 noon
I love this session every time. Beer-writer, Pete Brown, is clear that a good drink is all about context – that first pint in a pub after lockdown was one of his best ever, even if it was a Peroni in a dirty Doombar glass. He recommended drinking a pint of Blustone’s ‘Red of Heaven’ while listening to the Mary Wallopers, and Big Hand Spectre’s Welsh Dry Stout with KoKoKo! (notes of coffee and a low pitch to go with the bass). Unfortunately KoKoKo! had already played and I had completely forgotten the recommendation by the time of the Wallopers’ set. Next time.

Food and drink

Green Man provides a huge range of beers and ciders, unmatched at any other festival I have ever been to. The vast majority are brewed in Wales too. My friends think it was because I’d recently had an operation that had left me without a sense of smell, but for the first time in my life all I wanted to drink was cider, and I became slightly addicted to the Green Man Mango cider. Sweet, smooth and slightly bubbly, it was the perfect drink for the summer weather. It remains to be seen if I will like it when I recover all of my senses.. Away from the cider, I enjoyed the Twmpa Golden Ale from Lucky 7 and the Super Summer Peach from Tenby. The Chinook VPA from Grey Trees Brewery I would also go back to, although it was very light so needs a hot day, or a lively band.