Right – that’s yer lot. And what a lot it was! McCartney, Springsteen, Grohl – and that was just one Pyramid headline set. Amazingly there’s much more to come tomorrow. I assumed every band in existence had played here already, but apparently not. Expect Kendrick Lamar in the headline slot, Diana Ross in the afternoon legend’s corner and much, much more. Keep an eye out for Alexis’s review of Macca in the meantime. Good night!
Róisín Murphy
West Holts, 10.15pm
Where Paul McCartney gives the people what they want on the Pyramid, Róisín Murphy makes us work for it. She starts with a wonderfully louche rendition of Moloko’s Fun for Me, and builds through a gentle Let Me Know and Incapable, when she starts to show the diva power in her formidable voice. She has an entirely self-possessed stage presence, high-kicking, spinning and gyrating with her foot perched on a monitor, and teases her prowess, waiting until the end of Moloko’s The Time Is Now to truly wail. Even when it comes, she has an enchantingly withholding presence, barely singing the chorus to The Time Is Now because she knows the non-McCartney faithful will do it for her.
Throughout her set, Murphy changes costumes about a dozen times, gradually disassembling from a fabulous red suit to a lime green and purple look, red ruffles and blue glitter and many iterations in between. It mirrors her glorious deconstruction of dance music: she is poised yet unpredictable, a live wire yet utterly calm, her music minimalist but furiously bodily. At the climax of Overpowered, she is bent backward as the static whirrs; on Murphy’s Law, her voice pixelates and yet Murphy – now in a fabulous padded cropped pinstripe blazer – is hoofing her chunky heels in the air. “Just look where we are!” she yells as the set concludes, and the band traipse off one by one – only to proceed back onstage for an acoustic rendition of Moloko’s Familiar Feeling, Murphy singing down the camera in typically, fantastically confrontational fashion.
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