Green Man 2016: Festival Review

The British Festival: the ultimate folly. June, July or August – hold them when you like, but always fear the worst because music and the great outdoors are increasingly mis-matched bedfellows. Despite the madness, Green Man mitigates the various minor agonies by curating its art with care while providing as much comfort as the enterprise will allow. Julia Holter's only UK festival appearance and a 99-brew independent beer festival? Roll on up. Regardless of this year's near-constant rain, the beautiful Glanusk Estate in the Brecon Beacons makes for a breathtaking setting. 

"How many days of sun do you guys get? I heard it was, like, a day." It's barely Saturday lunch time and Tyler Heath gazes doubtfully at the ashen skies from the Mountain Stage as clouds loom over the main arena. "Still, good book weather, right?" The Oh Hellos are nine strong, and how brother and sister Tyler and Maggie built their band around their touring troupe is a story in itself. But today they make good on years of promise, delivering the best songs of 2015's breakthrough Dear Wormwood with reckless glee. They tear into opener Exeunt and Green Man folds. Folk rock: suddenly not a bad idea.

On the Far Out Stage, Julianna Barwick brings the songs of Nepenthe and Will to mesmerising life. In one of the weekend's most telling examples of an audience journeying from curious to enraptured, she simply stands there and transmits. The voice is all around and it hauls us in. She sets See, Know in motion and slowly intensifies the pulsing, revolving figure before bringing it back to earth. It diminishes and fades as if it was never even there. Barwick's choral minimalism makes for a deeply satisfying live experience. 

Julia Holter, photo: Richard Gray

Connan Mockasin's psych-pop grooves find friends and goodwill in an afternoon slot on the Mountain Stage but us cynics smell noodling and his smoothed-out arrangements are less immediatley fulfilling than the madcap creepiness of his early releases. Suuns set about the Far Out Stage in an early evening slot. Ben Shemie is a defiantly anti-festival presence. His voice and delivery know little of community: it's all about him and his hurt. These are (g)rave anthems. But his band exert a powerful hold and its blackened grooves and nervy beats are impossible to resist. Also in the tent, Floating Points's increasingly prog-flecked electronica benefits from full live band re-tooling; an epic Kuiper is a heady blast.  

But tonight, the Far Out Stage belongs to headliners Lush. Who'd have thought that their return would spark quite so much affection, and see them re-emerge as (at least) equal to the incarnation that lay quiet for 20 years? Certainly not them. But here they are, playing a set of songs that have bloomed over time and giving notice, with the achingly beautiful Out of Control, that the new stuff is going to be special.

Miki Berenyi dedicates the song, a heartfelt parental confessional, to her teenage daughter: "This is for Grace. She reckons she knows some of the words but I know she secretly knows all of them." Hearts cleave. Tonight, Lush are super-charged. De-Luxe. Hypocrite. An explosive, epic Desire Lines. Past and present collide – oh, and here comes the future too. When Berenyi flings that 12-string Epiphone across her hip and sets about shredding her way around Emma Anderon's solo on Sweetness and Light, it's like 1996 all over again. Or – lucky us – 2016. 

Laura Marling, photo: Richard Gray

Sunday brings the sweetest surprise. Over on the Rising Stage: Goat Girl. They are stupendous – an accomplished and uncommonly cool guitar band, tacking the blissed out atmospherics of Mazzy Star onto Courtney Barnett's livewire, literate bubblegum. There are four of them, they play like they've been preparing for this moment for years and they sing like you wouldn't believe. Look them up – only don't, because there's nothing out there yet. This lot are plotting something. Note the name. Stay alert.

In the Walled Garden, Emma Pollock struggles to remember whether she's played here before. A front row devotee reminds her that she has. "Oh, yes. I remember now. Well, I don't so well, to be honest..." Must have been a good 'un. Today she holds off the rain until a closing Clemency but her set is a blistering reminder that her In Search of Harperfield is still one of 2016's most accomplished songbooks come to life, and her easy charm is a tonic.

A mid-afternoon slot on the Mountain Stage multiplies Ryley Walker's British fanbase by a factor of god-knows-what. He recognises our limp, shivering resignation and he rises above. "Good afternoon, Green Man. I'm Ryley Walker, this is my band and we are down for the fucking cause!" Who could argue with that? The free-form filligree of his guitar playing is captivating and, backed by just bass and drums, his small-scale narratives are made electric. He and his band feel their way into and out of an elongated Roundabout, and he responds warmly to a fan in the crowd. "What's that? Oh thank you." He shares the news with us: "Hey! The reviews are in: we're great!"

Warpaint, photo: Richard Gray

Cate Le Bon is also great but you wouldn't know it from the crowd who, bar the front section hardcore, just fucking stare. Suddenly: the suspicion that the bill is cooler than the audience. Le Bon is a unique and magical artist, and she and her band get devilish with her brimming back catalogue's tricksy, pinpoint designs. You suspect (hope) she extends Sisters' alarming stuck-in-a-groove coda just to piss people off. Whatever, it seems to work. She's an inch away from wayward genius – what's not to get? Oh, people. What were you thinking? 

With the audience now disoriented, the rest of the day's Mountain Stage performances do little to restore order. Tindersticks are an institution worth celebrating, no doubt, but even they struggle in an 8pm slot that (in hindsight) needed pop sparkle rather than bedsit gloom. They up the difficulty level by playing minus video screens and even their sterling reworking of Odyssey's If You're Looking For a Way Out does little to engage the Goretex-clad throng. We love them regardless. We love Laura Marling, too, but she makes equally baffling choices. She sounds great, and she performs with guile and grace, but she also bafflingly eschews the video screens. Alongside a short (one hour) set and no encore, it's no wonder people start to drift away long before the end.

Sometimes it takes a newcomer to show a (relative) veteran how to do it. Margaret Glaspy has charm to spare but she gobbles up her Sunday opening slot on the Mountain Stage like her life depends on it. This year's most essential new voice brings a casual savagery to the live performance of her debut album, Emotions and Math. She smiles throughout, but then she also sings, "I think you might be owed a little heartache," and you swoon at the prospect of album number, ooh, eight? The sun comes out and stays out. Alongside a smouldering cover of Lucinda Williams' Fruits of My Labours, she deconstructs Bjork's Who Is It without even introducing it. Just in case, you know, you were looking to redefine 'cool'.

Belle & Sebastian, photo: Richard Gray

On the Far Out stage, Kevin Morby is spirited and inspired. "I have been to the valley, and I have wandered the shore," he sings, an effortless communicator and, increasingly, our most compelling journeyman/troubador. One lucky lad asks his mate: "What's his story, then?" What isn't his story? The Besnard Lakes soar in in Morby's slipstream. Has it taken just a little too long for the Canadians to become quite so captivating? Perhaps, but their songwriting has finally caught up with their sonic smarts and they storm and convert a largely unsuspecting crowd.

Impeccable billing sees the Mountain Stage close out in style. It's official: Julia Holter is now A Star. How did that happen? Her exquisite chamber pop is surely too cerebral to energise a crowd of this size but Green Man holds her tight. Even a gossamer rendering of Barbara Lewis's Hello Stranger doesn't dilute the atmopshere.

Warpaint follow and they are phenomenal. Again, with the arena emptying momentarily after Holter, the rain returning and with children to be fed and pacified, who'd have thought the crowd would return in number and with resolve? An opening brace of Elephants and Undertow is electric. New Song and Whiteout slot in amongst old favourites Keep It Healthy and Biggy. As the muscle memory of finding their groove returns, Green Man erupts. A closing Disco/Very makes for a euphoric close.

And so to Belle & Sebastian. Dismiss any doubts that an act as modest and niche are anything other than a worthy Sunday night main stage headliner. They pull a large and loving crowd. Stuart Murdoch's offer to the front row to join him onstage for The Boy With the Arab Strap is hilariously over-subscribed and by the time security just give up, there must be 200 people up there. Belle & Sebastian work a tired and bedraggled audience – one clearly in need of a lift – like old hands. Smiles all round, onstage and off.