If you’ve ever gotten shitfaced in a sweaty basement and belted out the words to Mr. Brightside, then you would’ve been all over this one.
Rest in peace, indie sleaze. You would’ve loved Community Festival.
With a line-up that boasted more contemporary guitar heroes than any given installment of Rock Band, the Finsbury Park one-dayer returned to North London and brought with it enough bangers to keep a butcher’s window stocked for the rest of the year. Here’s what went down.
Alfie Templeman
Indie-pop wunderkind Alfie Templeman fired up the Main Stage with his unique blend of Seventies-inspired phased guitars, radio-ready choruses, and enough funky basslines to make Nile Rodgers turn his head. The boy’s a ‘future star’.
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Circa Waves
Circa Waves are one of the most underrated bands in British indie. There, we said it. Sure, they don’t have a defining banger like The Wombats have Let’s Dance To Joy Division, and they might not have the razor-sharp suits of Two Door Cinema Club – but, if ever there was a band who were built to soundtrack your dancing around a field with your mates while downing a tin of Strongbow Dark Fruits that’s growing warmer by the second, it was Circa Waves.
Fortunately, that’s exactly what happened at Community Festival – and dear reader, it was glorious. The likes of Wake Up, Fire That Burns, and the below-embedded Sad Happy were duly trotted out before a triumphant closing rendition of T-Shirt Weather resulted in a veritable shower of Dark Fruits as numerous over-priced pints were chucked in the air in what we can only describe as the finest exhibit of Indie Lad Emotion that we’ve seen all summer.
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Pale Waves
Emo bangers? Check. Excellent clothes? Check. And, in Heather Baron-Gracie, a frontperson who looks like she could both lull you to sleep with a sweet lullaby and beat you in a fight? Check. Long live Pale Waves.
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The Wombats
All hail the reigning kings of British Indie. If you didn’t grow up with at least a passing appreciation of Matthew Murphy and co.’s knack for a stadium-sized chorus, razor-sharp guitar licks, and some of the most shamelessly British lyrics this side of Damon Albarn’s working-class appropriations – ‘this is no Bridget Jones / won’t someone kill the director!’, anybody? – then we’re sorry to tell you that you wasted your youth.
The Liverpudlians brought their A-game to Community Festival and rattled through the kind of greatest hits set that most bands would kill to lay claim to. If you were there, you know – and if you weren’t, you really missed out.
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Nothing But Thieves
There aren’t many bands in Britain who could follow The Wombats. Fortunately, Nothing But Thieves are one of them – and, on that sunny day in a London field, they proved beyond doubt that they’ll be headlining festivals within the next couple of years. Angsty, anthemic, and emotional ballads are paired with a penchant for bombastic, expansive stadium rock riffs to create a sound – and a band – that feels at once contemporary and utterly timeless.
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Two Door Cinema Club
And then, we came to Two Door Cinema Club. The feel-good leaders of the ultimate Indie party, and the closest thing possible to a sure-fire festival success story. As they rattled through their hits, there wasn’t a single member of the Community crowd who wasn’t belting out every word at the top of their lungs, pogoing along to the sounds of some of the finest indie bops these isles have ever produced or flailing their t-shirts around their heads like men and women possessed.
Long live Two Door, and long live Community Festival. Now, who’s up for next year?