![Live Review: Live at Leeds in the Park 2023, Temple Newsam Park, Leeds [27th May 2023]](https://www.soundspheremag.com/wp-content/migration/images/stories/TDCC_@jacob_flannery_-17-scaled.jpg)
Words: Callie Petch
You couldn’t ask for better weather to hold a big day-festival during. On Bank Holiday Saturday (27th May), it is non-stop balmy sunshine with barely a cloud in sight, yet also retains a nice cool breeze to keep the humidity in check. If the Live at Leeds organisers were hoping for the best possible atmosphere to kick off the Summer festival season with, then they certainly got it.
Last year, Futuresound decided to spin-off its long-running day-fest with a Summer edition held at Temple Newsam Park, the site of Slam Dunk – in fact, you can see the main stage of that festival closed off from the rest of the site. The inaugural Live at Leeds in the Park turned out to be quite the success, so they’re back again this year, positioned now as the flagship star-packed one of the two festivals (the City version in October is carrying the explicit tag of being a “new music showcase”). The day is populated but, unlike Slam Dunk faced accusations of, not oversold with plenty of space around the grounds to manoeuvre and rest, whilst getting in and out of the crowd on bigger stages is a smooth experience. Perhaps attendance numbers aren’t quite enough to justify the size of some of these stages – even the main stage headline set seemed to pull in less overall people than the standing area of the Beyoncé gig I would attend 48 hours later – but as someone who hasn’t attended a festival in a long-time, I personally enjoy the vibe. Crowds are mostly into whomever they end up seeing, food vendors aren’t overran, and I can dip into toilets without issue.
Photo by Callie Petch.
After getting my bearings around the site, and with Lottery Winners continuing to brag about their UK #1 album to an apparently insufficient crowd reaction for their liking, I begin at the DORK Presents stages where Youth Sector are in the home-stretch of their set. I mean this in the nicest possible way: they seem lab-bred to play a festival like this. A five-piece indie rock band from Brighton, all dressed in an identical uniform of smart shirts and blazers, with a cheeky audience-baiting frontman, playing fast bouncy synth-aided guitar music like 2009 never left and you’re still yet to flunk out of Sixth Form. I find myself wondering if they’ll bump into The Hives at some point during the day and recreate the Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man meme. Again, I say all of this with affection. They write pleasingly nostalgic indie pop with singalong choruses and strong crowd work that shines whether you’re an agnostic or part of the growing fanbase who turned up here in enough droves to start a mini-mosh at set close.
Photo by Callie Petch.
Psymon Spine are up next, the dual-stage set-up of DORK meaning they can kick off within five minutes of Youth Sector wrapping. This New York-based five-piece, one with three different lead vocalists, traffic in psychedelic chillwave-esque pop on-record; “Modmed” from their 2021 album, Charismatic Megafauna, even boasts a co-write from MGMT’s Andrew VanWyngarden. But here today, before I know what the albums are like, their sound is a lot dirtier and rougher, slightly more in common with early DFA releases. It makes me curious to see if this might lead to a new sound on their next record. For now, they definitely inspire me to check out their work when I get home and I see one guy in a bucket hat who is absolutely VIBE-ing to the performance.
Photo by Callie Petch.
Since I’m seeing them at a headline show of their own in Manchester the next day, I decide to skip my beloved The Beths’ 3PM set in the Rolling Stone Big Top in favour of trying out beetlebug on the DIY Stage. Auri is pulling last-minute cover duty for the initially-billed Bully, who had to pull out days before due to Alicia Bognanno suffering from health issues, but they pull quite the crowd regardless. A lovely hushed vibe comes over as we listen intently to Auri’s sweetly poetic little folk songs strummed out on their trusty ukelele. Multiple times they announce a change to the initially-written setlist, seemingly to replace planned covers with a few more originals that they cop to “not having played in quite a long while,” a sign of a growing confidence in real-time. “cat serenade” sees a toddler stumbling towards the barricade, eventually being held up for a better view by their mother and, yes, I do find this utterly adorable.
Photo by Callie Petch.
In the late-2010s, between the release of documentary Underestimate the Girl and her supporting role on Netflix’s much-missed GLOW, the music world seemed to finally be in the process of reappraising and reappreciating Kate Nash. The singer-songwriter who first shot to fame in 2007 with the perfect pop song “Foundations” was quickly and wrongly tagged as being a one-hit wonder Lily Allen wannabe, and spent the next decade valiantly fighting against that label both publicly and within the industry with little-to-no-mainstream success despite some great music. (Go stream Girl Talk, it’s a fun album!) Of course, a Main Stage slot is going to attract people who aren’t aware of her growth as a musician and still see her as a piano-playing Made of Bricks MySpace singer.
But that’s a challenge Nash is willing to meet head-on. No piano in sight, Bricks standby “Mouthwash” is retrofitted for her three-piece all-female-presenting backing band; whilst the punkier edge brought to “Dickhead” teases out a link from 2007 indie pop to today’s Dan Carey/Speedy Wunderground landscape. Throughout, Nash brings an ever-jumping and twirling theatrical energy which keeps the audience hooked even during newer songs like the club-pop switch-up “Wasteman.” Of course, closer “Foundations” ends up being the track which gets the biggest reaction, the kind of mass catharsis singalong that festival crowds can provide, but nobody seems to have been impatiently watch-checking for it either. Nash initially cues it up early by mistake due to misjudging how much set time she had left, and the medley she and the band jump into as a means of delaying “Foundations” still gets cheers and dancing.
Photo by Callie Petch.
Another last-minute schedule change took place at the DORK Presents stage where Hull’s Low Hummer were swapped out for Leeds’ own The Kites, a buzz-building indie quartet who are… fine. A poster next to the DORK stages hypes up their headline show at The Wardrobe in September, but I feel like I’ve seen and heard all their tricks by the halfway mark of the 25-minute set. Achingly teenaged songs of love and self-loathing where every chorus aims for widescreen sky-scraping grandeur – sometimes by way of The 1975, sometimes by way of a pop-punk-adjacent scream, sometimes by way of a Snow Patrol imitation – but can’t quite get there just yet. Their songwriting and stage presence is still a little green behind the ears, lacking definable personality. Hopefully they find themselves in time.
Schedule clashes being what they are, I hope to catch at least half of Everything Everything’s big set at the Rolling Stone Big Top before I have to jet over to the DIY Stage. I end up only hearing two songs. Turns out the Big Top has been suffering from technical issues all day which has both pushed every act playing back at least 15 minutes and also cut into their potential set time. It’s a shame, but EE sound in fine form during the opening one-two of “Night of the Long Knives” and “Can’t Do” and the crowd kill the additional set-up time with that classic live show clarion call of an acapella “No Reptiles” rendition. I would like to have stayed longer, but my ears are drawn to a new love…
Photo by Callie Petch.
Prior to a week ago, I had never heard of CMAT. Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson was a complete unknown to me when she stepped on-stage at Sheffield’s Get Together for her hour-long second-from-headline set. An hour later, I was a full-blown convert, investing my metaphorical savings into her stock. The Dublin-based singer-songwriter paired delightfully melodramatic country pop, witty and relatable messy lyricism, a powerful and characterful voice, and a boisterous on-stage persona with Confidence Man-level commitment to camp theatrics. She’s so catered to my specific tastes, I’m frankly insulted at both myself and the world for only hearing of her now. I have a fever and, sorry Everything Everything, the only cure is more CMAT.
As I reach the tent, CMAT is going through her own technical issues, albeit chaotically on-brand ones. During soundcheck, she managed to fall over and break her guitar necessitating she borrow one from next-on-the-bill Crawlers for her now-shortened set. (“The Scouse-Irish relations remain alive and well!” she quips later on for benefit of late-comers.) In the rush of resetting, her mic pack is not properly attached to her skirt, meaning a brief pause after “Mayday” for her keyboardist to reattach it to her knickers whilst making endearingly awkward small-talk with the cowboy-hat outfitted crowd. It’s all immensely entertaining and makes the airtight renditions of what songs do manage to get played – complete with synchronised dance routines, panto audience dynamics, and two-step hoedowns to closer “I Wanna Be a Cowboy, Baby!” – even more winning. Despite the constrained set, CMAT’s star shines with megawatt intensity.
Photo by Callie Petch.
Food break and the Big Top is still suffering from technical issues that keep pushing back the day’s schedule further and further. Bummer for the bands and organisers, no doubt, but a winner for me since I can now see Maxïmo Park’s full set rather than dipping in at the end. Maxïmo Park are one of those bands whose early work (the big hit singles from the first two albums) I really connected with yet have never properly kept up with in the years afterwards. Honestly, I’m not sure why and this set only further adds to my bewilderment on that matter. “Versions of You” from 2021’s Nature Always Wins has the bittersweet dreaminess of a vintage Cure ballad, “What Did We Do to You to Deserve This?” gains extra muscle on-stage which enhances the still-timely political message of the song – frontman Paul Smith notes in the outro that they “wrote this about the last Tory government” – and 2022 loosey “Great Art” brings some angularity back to the songwriting.
Throughout, the packed tent is jumping and dancing and singing to nearly every song. This is the biggest crowd that I, standing on the sidelines, can see all-day and madness ensues once we finally reach the hit-parade of “Books From Boxes,” “Our Velocity,” “Girls Who Play Guitars,” and “Apply Some Pressure.” Touring members Jemma Freese and Andrew Lowther make for a fine rhythm section, whilst Smith remains chatty without stunting the set’s overall momentum. As the band depart the stage, one may be forgiven for thinking they were the tent’s headliner, particularly when a good percentage of the crowd also seem to vacate in their wake.
Photo by Callie Petch.
So, one could argue that The Hives and Maxïmo should’ve swapped places on the running order, if you believe that the headliner is supposed to be the act who draws the biggest crowd. If, however, you subscribe to the belief that the headliner should be the act who will put on the best show, then The Hives are exactly where they’re supposed to be. No disrespect to Maxïmo Park – they kick arse and I leave their set making a mental note to finally get back up-to-date with them – but The Hives are on another level compared to everyone else on the line-up. I spent a decade being told by those who had the privilege of seeing the Swedish rockers that they were one of the best live acts on the planet, a relentless force of swaggering punk-rock energy devoted to the singular purpose of leaving audiences a sweaty giddy mess. That no matter how good I thought they were on-record, they’re even better on-stage.
I am here to tell you that those people were right. The Hives are incredible live. Taking the stage in their iconic black-and-white tuxedos to the funeral march – in kayfabe, new album The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons is about, well, the death of their maybe-fictitious sixth member and sole songwriter – they launch into lead single “Bogus Operandi” and intense moshpits spontaneously start cropping up all around me. Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist, whose voice is shockingly strong for a man in his mid-40s that spends nearly every song yelling at the top of his lungs, lunges across all ends of the stage, split-kicks the air, turns over monitors so he can stand atop them like a pulpit, and maniacally flaps his arms like a pigeon demanding more intensity from a crowd seemingly incapable of running out of it. Nearly half the set is made up of songs from the unreleased album, yet are played with such vigour that they go down like lost classics. Shirts are freely removed in a sweat-soaked craze during “Hate to Say I Told You So,” “Walk Idiot Walk” has every word screamed back, and the climactic mosh of “Tick Tick Boom” almost falls apart due to a comical mass crowd slip from sheer giddy thrill (one that my gangly ass is a part of). The Hives burn that stage to the ground and salt the earth for good measure.
Photo by Danny Payne.
Two Door Cinema Club never had a chance, frankly. Live at Leeds in the Park is set up so that every other stage closes for the day before the Main Stage headliner, likely intending to funnel all of the crowd to that marquee set. As alluded to up top, though, Two Door’s set never seems to be that busy, at least from my vantage point on the hill a little ways back from the stage, nor that bustling or that vocal. At least, until the BIG hits from Tourist History crop up, at which point I can see people sprinting from random corners of the site to the centre mass to lose their minds at “Undercover Martyn” and “What You Know.” After said song has concluded, the crowd thins out again. To some degree, this is a little unfair. As mentioned, at least for me, Two Door are following The Hives and their competent aggregable performance – no muss, no fuss, minimal crowd work, heavily weighted towards their classic debut whilst their inoffensive latter work kills time between those hits – was always going to pale in comparison. On the other hand, it’s a very workmanlike headline set and I don’t think I see frontman Alex Trimble smile once during his time on-camera, even when greeted with mass ecstatic singalongs to “I Can Talk” and “Do You Want It All?” from the crowd.
I end up leaving a few songs before Two Door’s set wraps to beat traffic. But despite the slight whiff of a closer, I head back to my car having had a really great time. It’s been a very long while since I properly went to a music festival – mainly down to anxieties over how my fluctuating diabetic status would deal with it – and Live at Leeds in the Park was a highly enjoyable reintroduction to that particular experience.
