Any review of Wilderness Festival has to begin by acknowledging the elephant in the room. This is a posh festival. Or rather, this is an eminently middle-class festival, a bougie, family-friendly event that seems to place as much emphasis on the upmarket “experiences” it offers – a panoply of health and spa activities, horseback riding, archery and fine dining – as the music itself. Squint a little, though, and these four days in the resplendent Oxfordshire sunshine don’t like feel all that different to being at any of the UK’s other major festivals – there’s just a bit more room to breathe.
Festivities start on Thursday at a slow crescendo. There’s comedy from Suzi Ruffell, Michelle de Swarte (who wryly summarises Wilderness as being “pretty white… there’s just a garnish of Black people”) and Russell Kane, who begins his set lamenting that Covid had cancelled last year’s festival (it hadn’t), before launching into a solid 40 minutes of high-energy, low-imagination patter. Far more enjoyable is the Dutty Moonshine Big Band, whose charismatic blend of hip-hop, dance, bounce, and jazz (complete with a seven-man brass section) packs out the Atrium stage.
