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Is pop metal dead? Looking down the bill of Reading 2024’s second day, you might well think so. Here’s Glasgow’s Dead Pony, benefiting from the morning’s sudden downpour to introduce a rammed Festival Republic tent to their melodic metal outcast anthems and Garbage-lite rave rock (as well as their inflatable black mascot Derek the Dead Pony). And out on the main stage, Boston’s Dead Poet Society are doing likewise, sadly minus a blow-up Wordsworth.
Both bands prove there’s life in melodic metal yet, but it’s alternative rock that’s really caught mid-resurrection today. The Last Dinner Party arrive on the main stage looking like a shelf full of haunted Victorian dolls come to life and sounding like the theatrical rock fantasy of a festival that would kill to have actual Kate Bush headlining.
Their flamboyant drama pop deserves – and owns – a stage this big; singer Abigail Morris prowls, twirls and collapses into screaming meltdowns through songs like the billowing, Byronesque “Portrait of a Dead Girl” that sound like a travelling cabaret troupe have broken into the Metropolitan Opera House and started throwing squat parties. Throw in their generational anthem of no-baggage sex “Nothing Matters” and a cover of Sparks’ “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us”, which could have been written for them to camp up, and it’s a true blooming.
Fontaines DC have a stylistic blossoming here too. The Dublin poet rockers stalk onstage sporting what you might call an acid punk look: purple tracksuits, tiger-print jackets, blood-orchid hair and, in singer Grian Chatten’s case, a jacket so green it embodies the Brattiest of summers. Heavy on the stylistic experiments of new album Romance, it’s a set of sharp left turns. The jaunty Smiths tumble of “Favourite” into the Cure-like murk of “I Love You”. The squalid rock of “Nabokov” into the manic Monkees rush of “Boys in the Better Land”. They close with “Starburster”, a recent single that sounds like James Bond having an anxiety attack during an Arabian chase sequence, and saunter offstage headed, sonically, heaven knows where.
Across in the Radio 1 tent, London’s Wunderhorse are coming up fast on the inside of Fontaines’ old post-punk furlong, playing Stranglers punk with Modern Lovers passion. And even Taylor Swift co-writer Jack Antonoff has chosen alt-rock as his natural habitat. His band Bleachers, blazing slickly away on the main stage, work from a basic blueprint of all-American boogie rock in the Billy Joel and Springsteen mould – there’s even the odd guitar versus saxophone duel. But otherwise they seem to be a high-production vehicle for Antonoff to try out what he’d do if he ever got his hands on various major indie-rock bands. “Chinatown” is him glossing up The National; “I Am Right on Time” finds him buffing down Arcade Fire.
After a breathless afternoon, Reading takes a lengthy breather. On the Chevron Stage – essentially a new outdoor dance arena where the second main stage used to be – Barry Can’t Swim deliver some Balearic chill beats dressed as lampshades, posing the question that if he can’t swim, why sound so poolside, Barry? And on the main stage, 2024 Brits phenom Raye has brought enough manpower for a Reading Moment – bank upon bank of choir and string section in bow ties and ballgowns – then mixes them so low beneath her sumptuous soul-pop confessionals that she may as well have brought them on backing tape. Still, she gets her moments.
Asking if anyone has just finished their GCSEs is an open goal of Reading Festival crowd banter, and her notorious verse from Casso’s “Prada” about getting lap-danced in Paris, while usually the sort of thing most of us would keep strictly between ourselves and our internal monologue, works wonders in both rock and techno forms here. And there’s “Ice Cream Man”, her deeply moving testament to surviving sexual assault and being “a very f***ing brave strong woman”. Preach.
Such fortitude thankfully rubs off on Lana Del Rey. This adored Californian chanteuse had her set cut short at last year’s Glastonbury after she took the stage half an hour late, and few lessons have been learned. Her elaborate Arthurian castle stage – all ivy-wreathed balconies, arching pillars and golden pianos – takes so long to build that she’s another 15 minutes late onstage tonight. By which time, in one of the biggest scheduling screw-ups in the history of festivals, Australian DJ Sonny Fodera has started his set on the Chevron stage directly opposite.
It’s not a fair fight. “Can you hear me through the techno?” Del Rey asks. And no, by speaker tower one we certainly can’t. Any subtlety and intimacy conjured by the piano ballad quietude of “Without You” or “Cherry” is obliterated by rave thumps; there are moments during “Pretty When You Cry” that might officially qualify as a collaborative remix. Nonetheless, Del Rey perseveres in crafting a show of delicacy, beauty and grace that’s part folie bergère, part Frozen and part Great Gatsby, attended to by balletic dancers in Busby Berkeley formations, spinning from poles and hoops or floating around with candelabras for the maudlin dressing room scene of “Bartender”.
The more swelling, opulent choruses of “Ride” and “Video Games” cut through – as, remarkably, does a gospel a capella section of “Chemtrails Over the Country Club”. Otherwise, a wonderful Hyde Park show gets buried under Reading’s noise. And then Del Rey has to suffer the indignity of being cut short again and sitting in silence while her hefty fireworks budget goes up in smoke.
Since war has been declared, the main stage pulls out the big gun. Rising from the centre of the crowd on a scissor lift as blue lasers put a roof on Reading for “Turn on the Lights Again..”, Fred Again is out to revolutionise the live DJ performance just as much as his enveloping rave sounds have pushed dance music forward.
With cameras tight on his pad-tapping frenzies, he plays keyboards, sings along with vocal guests gracing the big screens – Obongjayar on a warm-hearted “Adore U”; Angie McMahon on the magical folk rave “Angie (I’ve Been Lost)” – and races between stages in a bid to become the world’s first knackered DJ. Like The Prodigy before him, this is dance music taking on the personality, connection and showmanship of the headliner role, not just its spectacle, and further proof that the culture-leading spirit of Reading is alive and kicking.
