There are some things in life you just can’t argue with.
The feeling of sunshine on your face in an expansive park in Hertfordshire; the refreshment provided by a cold pint of cider on a surprisingly sunny spring day; and, more than anything, the sheer joy that’s experienced when a few thousand people join forces in an acapella rendition of We The Kings’ seminal emobanger, Check Yes, Juliet.
And, if all three of those sound like a good time to you, then we think you would’ve loved Slam Dunk Festival’s Southern edition.
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And frankly, dear reader, that sounds like a very good time to us.
Which is precisely why we couldn’t resist heading down to Slam Dunk and seeing what all the fuss was about for ourselves. Here’s what went down:
We The Kings
If all they ever did was Check Yes, Juliet, they’d already have done enough to go down in alt-rock history – but fortunately, they also happen to have written enough bangers to make a thirty-minute set in a field in Hatfield a really rather enjoyable experience.
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Pale Waves
It was their first (proper) show in a while, but you’d never have known by the sheer sheen and polish purveyed by Heather Baron-Gracie and co. It’s baffling that they’re not one of the biggest bands in the country.
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Boys Like Girls
The line ‘I USED TO BE LOVE DRUNK, BUT NOW I’M HUNGOVER’ is forever immortalised in pop-punk history – and for good reason. Not only are Boys Like Girls a notoriously underrated band, but their set showed that they’re also quintessentially Slam Dunk – fun, feelgood, and armed with enough choruses to engage (and enthral) even the most nonchalant of lingering-at-the-back audience members.
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The All-American Rejects
Frontman Tyson Ritter’s on-stage antics may have given some One on One-adjacent members of the crowd the shivers, but there’s no denying that the American stalwarts have got more than enough hits to back up their legendary status.
Opener Swing, Swing served to warm the crowd up nicely before a closing one-two sucker-punch of Move Along and Gives You Hell meant that most audience members ran the risk of losing their voices before the day’s headliners had even taken to the stage. One might call that a success.
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You Me At Six
It’s quite hard to dislike You Me At Six, isn’t it? The Surrey-born five-piece have spent the last twenty-ish-years slowly building a catalogue of bona fide contemporary rock anthems – and at Slam Dunk South, in their penultimate festival appearance ahead of their already announced break-up, they brought them all along to the party.
From the moment the opening notes of Save It For The Bedroom rang out across the Hertfordshire fields to the second the last crash of Beautiful Way echoed across the sky, the modern-day British rock institution gave a masterclass in how to deliver a top-tier festival headline set.
Early highlights Reckless and Straight To My Head tipped an already-hyped crowd from ‘Quite Into This’ into ‘Sod It, Let’s Head To The Front’, before Take On The World, Underdog, and the aforementioned Beautiful Way closed out the set in an anthemic (and slightly sweaty) fashion. Long live You Me At Six – and long live Slam Dunk Festival.
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Want some more? Oh, go on then. Here’s a gallery of a few of our favourite shots from Slam Dunk South 2024:
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