Reading Festival - The Horrors / Soul Savers

Soulsavers with Mark Lanegan

While the majority of reading has congregated in front of the main stage to watch the Kaiser Chiefs and Kings of Leon, the more discerning have gathered at Festival Republic to watch Soulsavers with Mark Lanegan. Nevermind gravelly voiced, this man has a pebble dashed larynx and sets about bringing the mood down, then down further with tales of loves lost, loves never won and general misery and doom all wrapped in the most beautiful melancholic parcels.

The Horrors

A festival, let alone a festival tent, is never going to be the best environment to see a band like The Horrors deliver a set made up entirely of one of the most sophisticated and beautiful albums of the year. A great chasm divides them from their followers and the detail of the music gets lost somewhere up in the tent’s stripy canopy. Neither of these facts, however, dent anyone’s spirits. The audience embrace the band with a fervour so enthusiastic that by the third song people are flinging themselves over the barrier begging for water and air. All the time encouraged by a goading Faris, standing on the monitors to get closer to his fans. Smiles break out across the band when during the Ronnettesesque break in Who Can Say the whole crowd simultaneously claps the beat. Everyone is under his control, from the 15 year olds getting crushed at the front to the cynical music photographers dancing in their pit.

Words and photo by Elinor Jones