It’s tricky to capture exactly the energy of Live at Leeds. There’s something about the intoxicating combo of iconic venues, fresh talent, and the start of the summer. The familiar streets of the city centre turn halfway into a festival overrun by punters mingling with shoppers, while your favourite venues welcome you in to complete the metamorphosis – for a day, the city’s worst kept secret. This year’s Live at Leeds challenge, though, was for the festival to capture its own energy and translate to their new summer home: Temple Newsam, out of the centre in East Leeds.
Well, the day proved beyond any doubt that wherever Live at Leeds lands, its character is in the people that play, and the people that go. The showcase of new and established talent was, as ever, second to none, and though the sun was only teasing, Live at Leeds didn’t hold back in unleashing, once again, a contender for brightest day of the year.
Here are our highlights – shot on film by Aklaq Haque for The Phonograph.
Alfie Templeman
Alfie Templeman knows how to get a festival going – in the most effortless, friendly way. In the live setting, his back catalogue of cosy bedroom jams positively radiates, taking on a new life delivered by Templeman, charming and inviting on Live at Leeds’s main stage. We’re staggered, observing from the rolling hills of Temple Newsam as if it was Brixton Academy’s famous sloping floor, but that just means everyone gets a prime view of Templeman teasing a dance out of the early afternoon crowd.
Confidence Man
The Australian duo are incapable of letting a crowd walk away without absolute confidence they’ve just witnessed the performance of their lives. Confidence Man don’t just rely on the incessant catchiness of their dance-pop anthems, or the magnitude of their fabulous showmanship – they play off them both, moving and grooving and throwing in enough cheekiness to make them a triple threat. They hypnotise the DIY Big Top with skill and bangers alike.
Courting
Live at Leeds gets its leftfield guitar music moment all at once, in mighty amounts when Courting and Sports Team launch onto the stage at the very same time. Like the latter’s slightly more chaotic younger brother, Courting make sure that everyone who showed up is vindicated for their decision by turning their chaos into one of the most fun sets of the day. Despite the lack of a setlist, or perhaps because of it, Courting prove that they’re eccentric, exciting, and as effortlessly cheeky as they come, and everyone at the Dork stage has a grand time and leaves with a little more of a wry charm about them.
Sea Girls
Totally at home on the main stage, Sea Girls have always been a festival band. Their emotive singalongs have had crowds roaring along as long as they’ve been a band, frontman Henry Camamile commanding the noisy choir as they mosh elatedly. What Sea Girls also do really well, though, is balance out the bangers with the more reflective side of things, and as they showcase cuts from their most recent album Homesick, they demonstrate that their songwriting has elevated to blending both sides of Sea Girls.
Arlo Parks
Poised, relaxed, the picture of sheer cool: Arlo Parks’s hour-long set in the DIY Big Top is one for the books. Parks has collected a number of ‘ones for the books’ since the release of the brilliance that was her 2020 record Collapsed In Sunbeams – her stage presence is like no other, so distinctly in line with her sound and simultaneously ethereal and down-to-earth. Her sonic blend of effortlessness and pure heart and soul is captivating.
Zuzu
Liverpool’s songwriter-storyteller extraordinaire Zuzu provides a delight of a set – a set that’s far too short for comfort, in which she gives us a whistle-stop tour of all the gorgeous human emotion she pours into her tracks. Cherry-picked for a festival setlist, her groovy ones go down an absolute treat, the crowd swaying along to The Van Is Evil with style. When we’re not dancing along, we’re screaming along to the heartwrenching, cryptic Skin and Bone, which tugs on whatever we need it to say to us and turns into an emosh fest. And we jump along ecstatically to What You Want – it’s a party which sees folks pouring into the tent, hooked, practically till the last song, and we all leave in love.
The Vaccines
The Vaccines headlined Live at Leeds in the city just a few years ago after the release of Combat Sports, their rock’n’roll band opus, and they gave a show to match. This time around, they’re fresh off the release of Back In Love City, an album that saw the iconic group have what sounds like the most fun they’ve ever had, delivering pure pop anthems with their classic Vaccines edge, and they give a show to match. Totally at ease in his frantic stage persona, Justin Young cavorts around the stage giving us 100% on old and new alike. There’s a sense of genuine love for every step of The Vaccines journey emanating from the band and from the crowd, together on the journey from Wreckin Bar, to I Always Knew, all the way to the likes of Headphones Baby, back to I Can’t Quit… and back to the always-gorgeous All In White to close. The Vaccines are beloved and brilliant at every step of their discography, and tonight is a celebration.
Tickets for later this year’s inner-city grand return, featuring Pale Waves, Baby Queen, Will Joseph Cook, and many more are available here.
