End of the Road 2014

“More manageable than Glastonbury, less twee than Latitude” is how stand-up Stu Goldsmith at the festival’s comedy stage sums up End of the Road; it’s a pretty neat summation for a weekend which combines thoughtful music programming, boutique civility, and spurts of inspired lunacy, all set – natch – in a valley of impeccable English countryside. And impeccable it remains throughout. Most music festivals become landfill sites within minutes of the gates being opened; rarely has a festivalgoer felt so compelled to find the correct recycling bin.

Like any self-respecting ‘boutique festival’, there’s ample peripheral entertainment, much of it in twinkly fairy-lit woodland glades. Wander long enough around the well-manicured gardens that make up the site and you’ll stumble upon art sculptures, piano bars, outdoor ping-pong, a cinema, even croquet. Croquet. You won’t find croquet at Reading or Leeds. At one point, innocently walking past a children’s workshop, The Skinny finds itself roped into playing backing cowbell for an impromptu song entitled ‘Pancakes’.

But the real music lineup is the undisputed focus. This is a place for music lovers. Think 6 Music, Rough Trade; Uncut; ATP without the Butlins redcoats or financial snafus. Four-piece guitar bands are an omnipresent sight on an End of the Road stage, and acts like Wild Beasts, The Horrors, and British Sea Power all put in workmanlike sets. But it’s the more unusual offerings that linger longer in the mind.

Take, for example, the delightfully bonkers Three Trapped Tigers, whose manic brand of discordant noise-rock punctures a jagged hole in Friday evening’s otherwise gentler bill. Their sound – Aphex Twin meets demented videogame music from 100 years in the future – is strange company, and not easy to get a purchase on. It’s hard to tap your feet, let alone mosh, to a 7/8 time signature, but they make enough of a racket to demand attention. At their core lies a remarkable drummer with an itch that conventional percussive techniques just can’t scratch, and at one stage he bashes away with such thunderous vigour that a cymbal comes crashing off, to be sheepishly replaced at the end of the next ‘song’. Even without this logistical plot twist, the whole thing feels utterly thrilling and not a little mad.

None of that malarkey for Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, who spend a highly agreeable hour twangling away with their well-honed class of warm Californian indie. In both lyrics (“I’m contractually obliged not to care”) and stage presence, Malkmus has a lackadaisical charm that’s immediately disarming. And while his brand of rock doesn’t exactly raise pulses, it’s unfussy and cool, often drifting into baggy guitar solos, like a bunch of dudes jamming in a garage. The inevitable request for a Pavement song comes from the crowd, but if Malkmus has grown bored of politely batting away these entreaties, he doesn’t show it. A crueller observer might see a reflection between crowd and performer here – both are stubbornly ignoring their ‘90s heyday as they stare down the barrel of middle age. As if to reinforce the point, during the Jicks set one mother in the crowd busies herself with some knitting on a picnic mat, while her ear-defender-wearing young son dances merrily. Median attendee age at End of the Road is probably around 35, though that figure is driven down by the high proportion of ankle-biters.

Sometimes you see the disparity in age groups. Connan Mockasin closes the Big Top on the first night with a raucously enjoyable funk-psych-pop set, laced with the kind of ‘70s sleaze that, while entirely non-threatening, nonetheless prompts parents to call bedtime. Things get sexy quickly. “If 25% of you get naked,” the shaggy-haired Mockasin proposes during his encore, “we will get naked”. Even a respectable English crowd of this calibre struggle to resist that sort of offer, and suddenly there’s a lot of flesh on show, both on stage and in the pit, all grooving to lyrics like “You’re such an easy flirt”.

Unexpectedly hungry for a bit of edge, a sizeable young crowd then trundles along to one of several late-night surprise slots booked into the Tipi Tent. Listen to the hushed whispers of frenzied speculation and you hear Bowie or Prince, but with the Tipi Tent roughly the size of Bowie’s living room, perhaps the promise of ‘surprise’ is a little too tantalising. When the warbly folk stylings of The Barr Brothers are revealed, 45 mins late, having already booked in for an afternoon slot on the main stage, there's audible disappointment: 2am is approaching and the under-30s were after something a little bouncier. It's a rare, minor misstep – this is a programme where the fingerprints of curation are everywhere.

You don’t have to look far to find it again: few would be bold enough to book acts like the Radiophonic Workshop, the pioneering BBC electronic outfit responsible for theme tunes like Doctor Who and Hitchhiker’s Guide. Or John Cooper Clarke, delivering keen and funny poetic observations to an appreciative audience. Or the incredible ‘Gene Clark No Other Band’, featuring members of Beach House, Grizzly Bear, Fleet Foxes and Fairport Convention, in what is effectively a world premiere recital of the Byrds frontman’s classic 1974 album.

Or, indeed, St. Vincent. Having already headlined these fields once before with regular collaborator David Byrne, Annie Clark goes it alone with a supremely confident performance, mostly taken from her recent self-titled LP. Maybe we’re just all thinking about her more now, but with such art-pop sensibilities, jaunty dance moves, and curious interludes, there’s surely a touch of Kate Bush here. Clark may not quite be reenacting her own drowning – as Bush was in London that very evening – but there’s plenty of entertainingly baffling moments to ponder. At one point, she rolls slowly down some giants steps, and sticks her legs in the air, in darkness and silence. We’re not really sure why, but we dig it. Crucially, she sounds terrific: taut, courageous, brimming with ideas. The beautifully awkward Digital Witness is greeted with the loudest cheer.

Here, futuristic bleeps are less common than vintage dazes, and those who like their music with a psychedelic Americana tinge are well-catered for. There’s Unknown Mortal Orchestra, who manage to be rocking, if repetitive. There’s Temples, who seem time-warped from an Old Grey Whistle Test episode, all big hair and fuzzboxes. And there’s the fabulously-named Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, who attract a sizeable crowd, unfairly but ostensibly there to catch a glimpse of a John Lennon progeny.

The joy of a festival like this is that unknowns prove to be the highlights. St. Paul and the Broken Bones are barely known in this country, as evidenced by the slim crowd that initially greets them at the main stage. But they blow socks off. The brief is simple: authentic, straightforward Motown, direct from the Deep South. The band, brass section present and correct, cut an unassuming form. Then an unlikely frontman emerges in the shape of Paul Janeway. Eyes closed, you’d think he was some sort of generously-bosomed African-American lady. Look to the stage and you see a chubby white guy, bespectacled and cheap-suited, like a cross between an IT management consultant and Alan Carr. We’re bemused, but one hoof of his preposterously powerful lungs instantly wins us over. Practically willing away the Saturday afternoon drizzle with his soaring melisma and clumsy pelvic thrusts, Janeway is the surprise star of the weekend, in an extraordinary, soulful, hugely fun set that channels everything from Sam Cooke to Otis Redding. A set-closing rendition of Try A Little Tenderness and Janeway has the crowd in the palm of his hands. It’s little wonder he trained to be a preacher back in Alabama.   

The Broken Bones deliver such a blinding performance that it has the effect of making the others a seem little bland by comparison – which, facing a schedule stuffed with folksy offerings, can be problematic. There are some nicely-positioned hangover-soothers: Lau, Stealing Sheep and Lyla Foy are friendly and inoffensive enough. Johnny Flynn, on the other hand, sounds a bit bored, and his Sussex Wit backers veer closer to Mumford than you’d care for. Perfume Genius turns shoegaze into melodrama, and his afternoon set threatens to bring the mood down a tad.

It takes The Flaming Lips to change the mood of the whole weekend. Wayne Coyne, dressed in a skintight leotard (and “freezing his balls off”) turns everyone’s moods inside out – and then showers it in sequins. It’s an old journalistic cliché to say something is “on acid”, but watching a set like this, you begin to wonder if at least a small tab of some sort of hallucinogen hadn’t been slipped into your pint at some point. By song one, there’s giant inflatable animals – something of a trademark – and exploding glitter cannons; by song two, the words “Fuck Yeah End Of The Road” are spelled out with balloons onstage and left to surf the crowd. By the time the set concludes, appropriately enough, with Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, we’re left dazzled, exhausted, and pondering how many thousands went into the glitter budget. The Lips have a decent following over here, but their back catalogue is hardly littered with anthemic hits. Only one of their fourteen albums has ever made the top ten in the UK. A common line among the post-match analysis heard around the site went: “I didn’t really know many Flaming Lips songs, but holy shit, that was a show!” In many ways, they were the perfect headliners: winning over newcomers and old-timers alike with a mix of theatrical showmanship and sheer rock’n’roll flair. End Of The Road knew exactly what they were doing.