It’s quite hard not to enjoy The Great Escape.
After all, it’s one of the planet’s biggest (and best) new music festivals, and it takes place within the oh-so-pretty confines of Brighton, England.
The only problem with going to The Great Escape, really, is that it can be tricky to work out which artists, out of the multitude of options on offer, you should go and see. Well, never fear, dear reader – your friends at One on One spent a weekend darting around the jewel of the South Coast like men and women possessed, and all so we could provide you with a definitive list of the very best acts who graced the stages of The Great Escape 2023.
The Waeve
The lazy amongst us might be tempted to just describe The Waeve as ‘Graham Coxon from Blur’s new band’. But, at their intimate set on the Thursday evening of The Great Escape, The Waeve proved beyond doubt that they deserve to be considered, and respected, as a serious, standalone artistic entity.
It’s tricky to grab an audience’s attention with a set of unreleased songs at the best of times – but the fact that they managed to do so at a festival is a testament to the quality of the work and the impressiveness of the musicality on display. We can’t wait to hear more.
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Will Joseph Cook
Indie-pop prodigy Will Joseph Cook helped festival-goers to shake off their Friday morning hangovers with an enthusiastic and infectious seafront set. Turns out there’s no headache that the sweet, sweet strains of one of Britain’s best up-and-coming indie starlets can’t fix.
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Pixey
Liverpool’s Pixey has spent the last two years quietly building a catalogue of some of the most intricate and multi-layered indie-pop songs to emerge from these isles for years – and at The Great Escape, she proved that she’s got the performance chops to match. If anybody should be in the running for the title of ‘Britain’s Next Big Pop Prospect’, it’s her.
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Lynks
We’re going to be honest with you here: Lynks was on at 1am and we can’t remember a thing. We think he was great, though. 🤷
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Yard Act
The biggest new British band of 2022, playing a festival venue that they’re coming back to headline outright in a few short months. What’s not to love? Naturally, they were fantastic: songs like The Overload, Rich, and Payday are built for big stages and bigger crowds, and it’s no surprise whatsoever that the band will spend the next year or so performing them to precisely that.
James Smith and co.’s set at The Great Escape was a masterclass in performance and songwriting, and one that proved beyond all reasonable doubt why they’re the most talked-about band in Britain right now. Bravo, Yard Act.
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Enola Gay
There’s nothing like a bit of Belfast-born punk music to wake you up on day three of a festival. (Trust us).
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The Backseat Lovers
Their song ‘Kilby Girl’ has spent the last six months blowing up on TikTok and Spotify – but with a sun-drenched set on the beach stage, The Backseat Lovers showed that there’s more to them than that. The Utah-born alternative rockers delivered a half-hour set of gnarly guitar riffs and genuinely affecting harmonies, and one that was backed by some of the strongest alt-rock choruses we’ve heard for a long, long time.
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