Festival Review: All Points East The Strokes

Indie-sleaze in all it’s glory.

The London city festival that bookends the summer is here. Videos from Aphex Twin’s Field Day set from the park last week has us hopeful for tonight’s festivities. It’s an indie-sleaze inspired billing featuring Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Strokes, Angel Olsen, Amyl and the Sniffers and Black Midi as well as fresh faced, buzzy bands like The Lazy Eyes, HighSchool and Picture Parlour.

HighSchool: Cupra Tent

First act on our bill is Melbournian, goth-pop group, Highschool. The genre bracket HighSchool’s music falls under makes a sleepy start for us, however, maybe a welcomed respite if you got down early and caught the effervescent Lazy Eyes before. We are carried through the rest of the set. The loose guitars and drum machine feeling beats definitely establishes who HighSchool are and there’s no doubt these guys are good, however, it would have felt more fitting to have the guys play later on in the night with a bit more of an atmosphere, even if it meant a smaller stage.

Angel Olsen: East Stage

Maybe it’s down to scheduling and collective artist commitments during the busy festival season, but it feels kind of off seeing Angel Olsen so early in the day. An artist known for hauntingly beautiful, orchestral shows, moved to a time slot where the sun shows no signs of setting soon, to a half full crowd, seems a little bit of a disregarded move made by the organisers. Opening with recent releases Dream Thing followed by Ghost On, Olsen and her band drift through, the air feels tired but not because of the performers. Like HighSchool, Angel Olsen’s music feels like it should be seen at the depth of midnight, a black sky lit with the twinkling eerie synths from All Mirrors. At 7 songs deep the show is over before it has begun.

Amyl and the Sniffers: West Stage

The highlight of the day comes from Australian Pub Rock Band and Still Listening’s earlier cover stars (interview here), Amyl and the Sniffers. Bryce, Declan, Gus and Amy rugrat their way through their explosive catalogue with sincerity and meaning. The band seem to have been relentlessly touring since the birth of their self titled album in 2019, but the foursome show no signs of exhaustion or boredom when sharing their music live and this energy floods through to the crowd. The heavens open midway through their set, separating the boys from the men, the weighty rain fuels the audience, Amy makes “wet” jokes and marches across the West stage. The downpour aptly prompting an unplanned addition of Monsoon Rock to today’s set, the sound cuts out briefly but is quickly resolved. Closing with Comfort to Me’s, Knifey, together we stand with wet eyes and clenched fists. With a medium amount of material released, there aren’t many changes to an Amyl and the Sniffers setlist, but it doesn’t stop you from having some kind of soul stomping, spiritual experience every time you see the band play live and it's no surprise that they climb higher and higher up festival bills as each summer passes. We predict Amyl and the Sniffers will be headlining in no time.

Black Midi: Cupra Tent

Looking to warm up and diffuse any chances of pneumonia, we seek shelter at the Cupra Tent for our next act: Black Midi. A WWE inspired intro fills the corners of the blue pavilion, Greep, Simpson, Kelvin and Dairy walk out on stage and pick up their assigned instruments. Opening with Welcome to Hell, Greep calls to the sound tech, “It sounds like I’ve got mosquitos in my ear” he flurries, it feels like part of the show. The band blast through Cavaclade and Hellfire releases, the crowd punches along. However, the setlist is left 3 tracks incomplete due to time constraints, leaving us hungry for more.

The Strokes: East Stage

Regrettably, we missed Yeah Yeah Yeahs in an attempt to secure a decent, elbow free spot for The Strokes. Having seen the guys play that fateful sonic nightmare of a time on the same stage a few years back, we were hopeful that tonight, we wouldn’t hear the sound of our own slurry voices louder than Julian, Albert, Fabrizio and the two Ni(c)ks.

Hope is a foolish thing.

From the opening notes of What Ever Happened? 2019 APE attendees are awash with deja-vu and some can’t resist belting “Turn it up” back to the East stage. A few songs in, audio still low, the energy from The Strokes isn’t exactly bursting at the seams. Not ones to have a reputation for exorbitant shows, but a reputation that exceeds them nonetheless, keeps us here, in the half-assery.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom. It was nice seeing Comedown Machine’s, Call It Fate, Call It Karma and Welcome to Japan live. The deep cuts over shone “the hits,” even we couldn’t hear them too good. However, the price paid for these moments was a flat, disinterested crowd, only rippling a wave of cracked iPhone screens above a haze of grape flavoured vape mist when the intro to songs like Last Nite and You Only Live Once are played.

Without sounding like an old man in Long Johns, rocking in a chair on a veranda, reminiscing of indie nights past. Back in my day (I croak), seeing a band like The Strokes live would have involved, a beer-steaming sweat pit of teens with borrowed IDs, community calls for lighters, that would have been gleefully held up with clammy hands towards a dripping ceiling the moment they were requested. Pits that held you and made you feel like you were inches from death at the same time. No phones. Screaming your favourite song in skinnies next to a stranger next to you. Catching the last train, soaked in beer with one shoe on, the other has a new home now. Tonight has us scanning the crowd, trying to make out these familiar faces from yesterday-year of the silhouetted shapes around us. We are still here, we are just old. And maybe if music was louder or The Strokes played with a crumb more energy tonight, we wouldn’t be thinking about this.

On paper, the setlist was a pretty healthy selection (if it had included Heart In a Cage it would have been their best IMO). The energy from the band is something you take with a pinch of salt. These are all okay passes. However, the poor audio mixed with the greige energy from the goldfish audience (that could only be resuscitated by a song that can be “duh, duh, duhhed” along to) made for a pretty uninspired evening. Fittingly closing with Is This It, The Strokes conclude their sophomore All Points East show.