We’ve narrowed down our picks from this year’s bash
We bloody love The Great Escape. After all, it’s probably the only place on the planet that takes a host of the planet’s hottest new musical talent, crams them into venues that are half the size of those that they’d usually play in, and then wraps it up in the surroundings of an oh-so-pretty English seaside resort. That, dear reader, is pretty damn close to being our idea of heaven.
Naturally, with so much talent on offer, it can be rather tough to pick out the acts that are definitely worth checking out from the festival’s sprawling line-up. Alas, dear reader, you don’t have to worry – for, we spent three days running around Brighton like writers possessed in order to present you with this definitive list of Acts We Saw At The Great Escape That We Can (Almost) Guarantee You’ll Love.
So, without further ado, here are the acts who blew our minds at this year’s bash:
Emily Burns
Emily Burns is going to be a megastar. More polished than a suburban housewife’s silverware, her songs are catchy-as-hell slices of pure pop perfection that arrive brandishing the kind of choruses that Max Martin has been attempting to pull out of the air since summer 2004. We’ve got a funny feeling that she’s going to sign a megabucks record deal at some point in the very near future – so, let’s hope she gets a Damn Good Lawyer.
James Smith
Armed with the kind of undiluted Cockney accent that empowers you to shout ‘PARKLIFE!’ at the end of every line he sings, James Smith delivered a confident and competent half-hour set on the festival’s Beach Stage. He’s the very definition of a diamond in the rough: needs polishing, but more than capable of shining.
APRE
They… Well, they were mind-blowing. That’s it. There’s not a lot we can say about their half-hour set at Komedia on the Friday night of the festival, other than that it was one of the most impressive, considered, and relentlessly brilliant displays of live indie-pop music that we’ve seen for many a year. They’re going to be HUGE.
Georgia
Mark our words: Georgia‘s only a hit or two away from selling out Ally Pally. After all, she’s already got the stage presence to do it – her set at The Great Escape took place on the biggest stage at the festival, and yet there still was barely enough room for her, her Frankensteinian live rig, and her boundless enthusiasm. Oh, and did we mention that she’s also the woman behind some of the more irresistibly infectious pop bangers of the last twelve months?
Friendly Fires
God bless Friendly Fires. You can always rely on the St. Albans lads to kickstart the good times; so, it came as no surprise when they turned their forty-five-minute headline set on the Beach Stage into a full-on indie-house extravaganza, complete with a veritable canon of indie-disco standards (Jump In The Pool, Paris, Kiss Of Life, etc.) and a frontman whose primary goal appeared to be to dance like a man possessed around every single inch of the stage by the time the night was over.
Boniface
Take exquisite songcraft, pair it with with a frontman whose performance style has come straight from the Morrissey-meets-Thom Yorke school of tortured-artist showmanship, and throw in some of the best choruses we’ve heard all weekend, and you’ve pretty much hit the nail on the head. They were, quite frankly, a revelation: and, they were the only band we witnessed across the entire festival whose sound was enough to blow up the venue’s in-house PA system. #respect.