Part one of this year’s Sziget round up is available here and our take on Editors is available here.

Yves Tumor, August 9, Main Stage

We started day three of Sziget at the Main Stage- and when I say we, well, there wasn’t all that many of us. Despite it being the Friday, which usually means an increase in visitors, as locals count on partying till dawn and nursing headaches in bed on Saturday morning, the afternoon vibe was decidedly sedate, or perhaps demure, in the parlance of our times. This did not suit Yves Tumor very well- he looked a bit like a caged lion who chose the wrong battle. The opposite of a festival discovery is the festival letdown: when an artist you listen to regularly on record, and quite enjoy, fails to deliver live. I believe it was more the setting- too early, too bright, too hot for the kind of edgy and brooding sound Yves Tumor has to offer, more suitable for a small, stuffy club past midnight than the equatorial sunshine of a festival’s main stage in the late afternoon.

Warhaus, August 9, Revolut Stage

The blog’s industrious co-photographer remarked that Maarten Devoldere of Warhaus sounds like Nick Cave and moves like Matt Berninger and I shall add that critics have, correctly, pointed to a somewhat Leonard Cohen-esque strain in his lyrics. As such, the man is fundamentally a musician AI could have engineered for me to like. This was therefore the first of this year’s concerts that I really loved and stayed for the full length of it. Everything seemed to click: the setting, the audience, the band. Without wishing to be too critical of acts who come with a lot of prerecorded music- which can work in festival settings- it was lovely to hear a band playing live music together, and a singer inhabiting his tunes in that particular place, at that particular time. With an almost shamanic cadence, Devoldere improvised lines about the direction of the wind blowing in Budapest that night. I checked my weather app. He got it right.

Liberato, August 9, Revolut Stage

One could hardly imagine a more different offering to Warhaus than that of Liberato- a masked man from Naples, playing a bit of everything from Neapolitan folk to hard bass and all that ranges in between. Liberato is more of a concept than a band, and passionately loved in his hometown. His sound and look are intertwined with that of Napoli’s terraces- Friday was sky blue on Sziget, and not because of Oasis loving Manchester City fans. The full array of classic and modern Napoli shirts was on display in every corner of the island, and die-hard fans soldiered through all of the day’s Revolut gigs in the front row, with flags and tifos prepared for Liberato. The concert was a strange yet uplifting experience, almost as if you’d been allowed to enter an exclusive cult, to witness its secret rites. With stars and galaxies projected as a backdrop to the masked revolutionaries, bits of the concert felt like voyaging on the starship Enterprise, to seek out new life and new civilisations, and convince them all to subject to the might of the one true leader of all the universe, Diego Armando Maradona.

Liam Gallagher, August 9, Main Stage

I did mention Oasis, but of course, we got only one half of the forever bickering Gallagher brotherhood. Liam was, if nothing else, perfectly equal to himself: grumpy, short tempered, dissatisfied with the crowd, the world, anything and everything. The current tour marks the 30^th anniversary of the release of Definitely Maybe, the debut album with which Oasis, without much exaggeration, took the world by storm. An era and genre defining album, it sounded pitch perfect when delivered from the Main Stage- no mean feat on Sziget, where the sound system often betrays bands. Not tonight, though, this was a highly professional job, fully controlled and perfectly delivered. Eschewing the temptations of diluting the tracklist with crowd pleasers such as Wonderwall, Liam let Live Forever, one of the most perfect festival anthems ever written, carry the cathartic section. And yet, true catharsis remained out of reach. To stick to footballing references, this was Manchester City playing in the third round of the FA Cup. 85% possession, De Bruyne completing 99% of his passes, Haaland with 8 shots on goal. Crystal Palace win 1-0.

Bebe Rexha, August 10, Main Stage

The wonderful thing about Bebe Rexha, whom I don’t listen to all that often, is that she works perfectly at 5:30 in the afternoon in the equatorial sunshine. Come to think of it, though, we all listen to Bebe Rexha much more frequently than we think: a good number of recent chart toppers have her hand in it, yet she was unable to rocket her own career to the stars. She does play quite a few of her collabs, so the set sounds eerily familiar, perhaps from the aisles of supermarkets and retail chains, but familiar, nevertheless. Bebe’s look has a strong lady who sings belters at Eurovision vibe, complete with energetic dancers and fans acting as wind machines. Given her origins, a number of Balkan states could consider sending her as a representative, and let me tell you, it would be a whole load of fun, they would likely win, and bankrupt the country by organising the following year’s show, because, unlike Norway, they don’t have enough petrol.

Crows, August 10, Revolut Stage

Crows were Saturday’s unexpected discovery, the most unexpected thing about this being that I really should have already had then on my radar, given that they sound roughly like the love child of Nine Inch Nails and Interpol. The Revolut tent was, at this point, shockingly empty, as most the day’s crowd had arrived for Martin Garrix, who is many things, but definitely not the love child of Nine Inch Nails and Interpol. Unfazed, the Crows lead singer walked off stage and into the front rows- while this was more of a leisurely stroll than any form of stage diving, there was an undeniable energy in such close interaction undisturbed by the kind of frantic grappling, pushing and shoving which makes most crowd incursions during concerts more of a gimmick than an actual musical performance.

MØ, August 10, Revolut Stage

Saturday had been plagued by technical malfunctions- Bebe Rexha had one in the afternoon, then Martin Garrix had to heartbreakingly interrupt his uniform thumping for about ten minutes due to another outage, while MØ arrived minus her visuals. This would not bode well for most artists, but if anyone has the chutzpah to pull of a show, in semi darkness, all by herself, that’s MØ.  Her current tour is celebrating the 10^th anniversary of her debut album, No Mythologies to Follow, and the lo fi look came as an unplanned, but fortunate addition to the record’s vibe. Before taking the charts by storm alongside Major Lazer, MØ had a raw, unstudied charm perfectly fitted for sweaty little club shows. This night was evidence that, given the right circumstances, she has lost none of the fun and quirks that make her such a compelling musician.