For twenty years now, End of the Road Festival has been stretching the summer to its last embers, rounding up the festival season with panache. The birthday event this year saw things ramp up a notch: a bigger festival, alongside the usual beauty of the lights in the forest, the wandering peacocks, the golden-hour light illuminating the fairground fun slide. Preparations for the big birthday saw newly fitted screens for the main stage, bigger tents, and even a birthday cake for the Piano Stage.
There was no easing into the party either, with a Thursday rush leading to a traffic jam as everyone arrived early to catch the most talked-about band in a generation, Geese. For anyone who was feeling a bit stiff from the journey, the performance delivered – a first half that saw the more confrontational side of their catalogue that may have turned away some with less-sympathetic ears, though at EOTR there weren’t many, followed by the sing-along favourites that sent sections of the audience into euphoria. EOTR has a habit of handing headline slots to acts just before the rest catch up, and this set was kept secret beyond the tickets selling out. It marked Geese’s first European festival headline slot.
Friday arrived wearing a check shirt and a baseball cap as Mac Demarco played a tight, more relaxed set than in previous years, though with no less stage antics – a birthday singalong for his bus driver Steve, ‘No Other Heart’ sang by his photographer Yuki, a couple of handstands, and of course some nudity. Earlier in the day, a showcase of acts signed to Mac’s Record Label filled the Folly, with an especially lovely set by Tex Crick: Steely Dan by way of 70s Japanese jazz. For anyone seeking more head-massaging, Tomo Katsurada, formerly of Kikagaku Moyo, played a sublime set of ambient guitar and cello that drifted the audience into evening, kicked off by a brilliantly lively set from Prewn and led anywhere from the unhinged joy of deBasement, to intensity and resonance of caroline.
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Saturday took a decidedly Celtic turn, as a standout set from Isle of Skye native Brighde Chaimbeul on the Scottish smallpipes hyponotised the crowd, before Rois and the wonderful Madra Salach propped up the Irish contingent. A short but beautiful secret Piano stage set by Jasper Llewellyn– one of the previous night’s headliners – included a deeply emotional tribute by way of Mazzy Star cover, one of the most memorable moments of the weekend. The evening belonged to Pulp, who announced a hiatus with a set for the connoisseurs: a chronological dive into their history, presented via PowerPoint on the new Woods Stage screens, and the livedebut of the fantastic . For those whowere deep fried in the Big Top tent afterwards, the Stop Making Sense… Live crewtore through Talking Heads tunes, before things boiled over with a Kelly Lee Owens DJ set.
After three days of waking up shattered, chasing your tail around clashes, you’d think Sunday might be a write-off. But it’s here that End of the Road’s programming really comes into its own. The still, crystal-clear voice of Bonnie Dobson lightly wakes you, while the hypnotic Ezra Feinberg band, on acoustic guitar and flute, lead you back to consciousness. The Cindys bring the heartbeat back up to something resembling lifelike with a powerful set of anti-lovesick (their own words: ‘no more love songs’) garage rock, before Marisa Anderson offers a masterclass in guitar – tracks from her new album The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music reworks nine songs from Harry Smith’s vast collection of folk recordings, drawn from regions the US has been in conflict with since 1970 – a special, poignant counterpoint among the festival’s looser pleasures. ØXN, as the sun set, was somewhere between electronic music and druid ritual was one of the weekend’s most striking sets. It ended with an as-ever exquisite performance from CMAT, one of the current cream of pop performers, whose stage production and prowess feels destined for bigger festival slots yet.
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Twenty years in, End of the Road’s greatest strength remains its curiosity. Its indie roots stay firmly in place, yet the programming continues to wander off in unexpected directions with remarkable consistency, year after year. You can spend an afternoon moving between something hushed and beautiful, something completely unhinged, and something you couldn’t begin to categorise, without ever feeling the festival has lost sight of what makes it special. End of the Road feels less like a festival that has arrived at a formula than one determined to keep exploring — which is perhaps why, even after 20 years, this particular journey feels far from over. Happy birthday.