Reading Festival 2003

Friday, August 22

Having spent last year's Carling Weekend at Leeds (instead of Reading) Festival being mercilessly harassed and then nearly being burned at the hands of rioting yobs, a return to the familiar toils of Reading looked like the only way to end this year's season in high spirits. The ultimate rock festival, Reading 2003 proved to be one mighty weekend (and from what we've heard, so did Leeds!). Despite the seemingly patchy Main Stage line-up, the vibe was chilled and smaller stages packed with top bands.

Friday's early afternoon wander however, was really a case of picking peanuts out of the trash. InMe and Violent Delight's evident popularity is no excuse for the kind of sub-Silverchair slop-rock tripe they churn out. Carling Stage openers Colour Of Fire are where it's at - pretty boy flame rock, a cross between Muse and Sonic the Hedgehog.

The rest of the early afternoon's line-up is made up of turgid novelty cock rock of the All American Rejects variety, and after watching Alien Ant Farm do their overweight Michael Jackson cover for the third year in a row, we opt out of heckling the humourless Mull Historical Society for a bit of Less Than Jake, who have the first decent sized crowd of the day.

The open air seems to have expelled the last remaining drops of novelty from The Datsuns, and though they play songs that aren'r on their LP, they can hardly be described as 'new'. Still, at least they're not offensively dreadful, like Staind. As with Electric 6, The Darkness have two really fucking great songs, and quite why they appear before whiny little Brian Molko is beyond us. Everyone at Reading comes to see The Darkness, and in truth, it's one of the moments of the weekend.

Forgoing the frills that Blink 182 offer (c'mon, there must be some!), Elbow get all deep and meaningful with us in the Radio 1 tent, the crushing wistfulness of their new LP 'Cast Of Thousands', proving to be totally lush. Guy Garvey's preciously tearful vocals underpin their swathing, emotionally brash melodies that are a lot more worthy of headlining that the next act. The cartoon cult of The Polyphonic Spree may not have sold enough records to secure a new deal, but fest-wise they're pretty much unbeatable, unless the competition consists of Chester Beddingfield, his swollen gut and Linkin Park's debut Reading performance.

A majestic stage set complete with their trademark standing blocks hosts the biggest rock phenomenon since Nirvana, and they just about pull it off. Chester seems to seemingly overestimate the crowd's knowledge of their songs - there's embarassing semi-silences when he gets them singing along to some of their verses, but come the end of the night, Mike Shinoda's video game rapping is all in good spirit. Naturally, 'Crawling' is what we came for, and it's what we duly get. Same time next year? We doubt it, but then pop is only as good as your last album.