Festival Review: All Points East
London’s biggest festival brought some of the most exciting names in the British scene back together and we were buzzing.
Artwork by Poppy Lam
“I care about this moment right here,” said Loyle Carner on Saturday evening, after knocking it out of the park. Victoria Park, of course. The last week of August was the one where everything, finally, was pointing east once again, East London. After a year of hiatus, one of the city’s biggest, and buzziest, festivals came back trying to satisfy everyone’s post-lockdown gig-thirst. The event, spread across the weekend and Bank Holiday Monday, was packed with emerging noisemakers and already established ones like Jorja Smith and London Grammar, Jamie XX and Kano, Bombay Bicycle Club and Foals.
The festival took off on Friday with most people buzzing for the R&B darling behind bangers like ‘On My Mind’, ‘Be Honest’ or ‘Teenage Fantasy’, Jorja Smith. Though she put our guilty-pleasure receptors at peace when performing all of her most hyped tunes, it wasn’t anywhere near the fantasy realm. Her sweet spot hitting voice could’ve been a saver but not this time. Unless forgetting your own lyrics is a thing now. Luckily, London Grammar set the bar higher. Hannah Reid took the stage by storm with the intimidating aura of an indie legend. There was nothing more satisfying than ‘Wasting My Young Years’ as we’ve wasted a good couple of months years ago obsessing over this one. Another soulful moment came from BRIT Award winner, Celeste. This new school of jazz prodigy and wunderkind of modern alternative R&B stole hearts on a massive scale. Her effortless charm and fierceness in owning womanhood, not in a mainstream, socially constructed sense of the word, but rather tailor-made to her demands, were magical. A spell that Celeste casts is a strong one. Talking about magic, at the North Stage, another kind of sorceress set up her practice. Welsh electronic musician and producer, Kelly Lee Owens steered the crowd from behind the decks. Her ethereal techno is a unique mix of body-moving beats and inner, in-depth dialogue that makes it a spiritual experience. If anyone deserved a bigger crowd, it was Kelly Lee Owens. Shame on those who missed it. On the rap side, Kojey Radical bridged old school hip-hop with modern musings and brought the funk to the main stage while Loyle Carner conquered the west one. Literally. Never mind if you’re a die-hard fan (shout-out to the guy who knew all the lyrics and got a cap from Carner) or a newbie, it was like you were up there with him as he poured his soul out in songs about fatherhood and struggles of hustling through life. Loyle shed a tear or two and so did we. Extra special mention of the day goes to Sons Of Kemet. Pure joy. Pure excellence.
Saturday kicked off, or at least did for us, with Nubya Garcia’s spectacular set; an accomplished saxophonist and composer, she woke us up from a post-Friday sleep-deprivation state better than a coffee could so we were ready for the most eclectic day of the festival. Arlo Parks with a breakthrough album Collapsed in Sunbeams graced the main stage, bringing the sun back, at least metaphorically, to the gloomy, grey sky. There’s this kind of unobvious coolness about Arlo that makes you want to melt in her sulky voice and stay for a bit watching her making rainbows out of something painful. To balance the mellowness out, we caught Little Simz bouncing around the stage and spitting stories of the successes, failures, anxieties and shifting relationships with a bad-ass attitude. Performing live, she’s charisma and power incarnated. Hats off. No matter what’s your opinion on Slowthai, he can slay a performance. Yes, he’s a dodgy figure, a madman perhaps or simply an arrogance-ridden asshole. Still, if we can shove it all aside for a second, under the layers of shade hides a really sick performer, energetic and engaged. It spread to the crowd that went mental mosh pitting. There was fire. In a literal sense, we could feel the flames going off the stage in the tenth row. Jamie XX managed to keep that spark alive for the next hour and a half, letting us boogie the night away.
Despite all the love we’ve got for Working Men’s Club, and how much we stan them (it’s official now), it’s a bit strange to experience their set at 3 pm, as the first thing of the day. Their genre-hopping raging electronica belongs to the night-time. Preferably, 3 am in an after-party mode so you can get sucked into this mayhem with no obstacles. Settings aside, they’ve worked hard to make us rave. Surprisingly, mission accomplished. South London’s legends Goat Girl put on a performance consisting of a mix of their old post-punky stuff and soothing psychedelia of their last album, On All Fours. It was a sweet dose of experimental melancholia. To shake it all off, we headed to see the most boisterous band present Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard. This Welsh bunch has mastered the trickery of tongue-in-cheek lyricism, resurrected the ghost of rock and roll and dressed it up in a funky denim attire as their track ‘Double Denim Hop’ suggests. When they’ve gone forward with a gospel for their true gods, ‘John Lennon Is My Jesus Christ’, we’ve converted to their cult. Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard was our Jesus Christ for a day. Jokes aside, along with Foals, the show-stealer of the day, was an English songwriter of Pakistani and Norwegian heritage, Nadine Shah. Since the first second of ‘Kitchen Sink’, she got us stunned. Laidback and enigmatic in a Nick Cave manner with Siouxsie and the Banshees' vocal theatrics and modern jazz and folk-rock leanings, Nadine is a special kind of performer. Instead of pushing you straight into her world, she slowly drags you in so at some point, you find yourself in a faraway land of brooding pop and mystique with ‘Evil’ and ‘Fool’ as stepping stones. There’s no escape, nor a need for one. Unless there are Foals nearby. Then we had to make a quick detour to a brilliant closing set that unified the crowd as no other headliner did.
Everyone at All Points East, as Loyle said, cared about that moment. Right there. The sweat-soaked air was filled with gratitude and relief. A relief that maybe now things are back ‘normal’. Another festival took place. Another excitement checked off the list. A few months before, we’ve been expecting Summer of Love 2.0 or The Roaring Twenties Revival but instead we got served pre-pandemic's most popular kicks. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with it. Still entertaining, still exciting. We love the familiar. All Points East wasn’t a big bang scale musical revelation but it didn’t have to be. We came, celebrated, contributed to the survival of the industry and had a helluva lot of fun. That’s more than enough. At least for now.