Festival Review: All Points East // The National - Victoria Park, August 2022
The National, Fleet Foxes and the artisan coffee van were the big draws in London’s Victoria Park this past Friday for the latest instalment of the six-day All Points East Festival.
It was my first visit to the festival purely because “It’s a bit far away from my flat” and it struck me early on that, given the distance between the East and the West Stage, I was going to be knackered by the end of it.
Sadly, due to being on criminally early, I missed Rae Morris opening the East Stage. I’ve seen Rae live a few times and she’s always spellbinding so it was somewhat disappointing she was on so early in the day when the crowds were still filtering in. Regardless, it’s great she got to play on the main stage.
First up for me was Virginia Singer/Songwriter Lucy Dacus on the Ray-Ban West Stage. It was the perfect early evening soundtrack to accompany my 10/10 chips and cheese. I’d only heard one Lucy Dacus song before, the well-covered ‘La Vie En Rose’ and as chance would have it… she didn’t play it. As was a continuing trend right up until the headliners took to the stage, I rinsed Setlist FM and failed epically with some optimistic Shazam’ing to make sure I was getting the setlist right. ‘Partner in Crime’ was introduced earlier than expected into the set due to a few technical difficulties which required a bit of adlibbing to rearrange. The song which is heavy in well-declared autotune was one of many beautiful moments to feature from her 2021 album ‘Home Video.’ “Who here is gay? Here’s a little gay tune” was the introduction to ‘Kissing Lessons,’ one of the set’s more energetic songs. At a little under two minutes, it’s a brief but wonderfully festival-friendly song with its distorted guitar lines accompanying Dacus’ heart-melting vocals.
A half-marathon away over on the East Stage, Kurt Vile brought in a healthy early evening crowd. I say healthy, ‘Flyin (Like a fast train)’ and ‘Bassackwards’ popped up early in the set which was all the encouragement some in the crowd needed to spark up a few happy cigarettes which added to the 4D experience of a Kurt Vile show. I’ve always really enjoyed Vile’s loose and laid-back guitar playing style as you never quite know until the rest of the band joins in which song he’s loading up. A prime example of this was the noodly introduction before the recognisable “I woke up this morning. Didn’t recognise the man in the mirror” lyric of “Pretty Pimpin” which got the biggest audience reaction in the set by a distance equal to that of the East and the West Stage.
It was then to Public Service Broadcasting who were on in the welcome halfway house which was The North Stage. The indoor setting of the tent was the perfect location for the band as their set relied heavily on visuals and light shows which would have been diluted in the August sky. Aside from the headliners, Public Service Broadcasting were my band of the day. Stylistically they were quite a jump from the bands I’d seen elsewhere and like the first coffee of the day they brought some timely energy to the line-up. Dressed all in white and all in a line the band were somewhere between Talking Heads, Kraftwerk, and Klaxons. The Setlist FM bingo wasn’t quite as hard this time as the visuals provided some welcome clues to the songs including ‘People will always need coal’, ‘Sputnik’, and ‘Spitfire.’ All three felt instantly recognisable and several thousand in the tent including some members of the band Villagers who were on the East Stage earlier in the day seemed captivated by the band’s emphatic performance. 2021’s ‘Blue Heaven’ was delivered triumphantly and felt like a real moment which further underlined how strong a live band they are.
At 7 pm, Mogwai were the final band on the East Stage ahead of The National. The Scottish institution had been a late but welcome substitution for King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard who just a few weeks previously, unfortunately, had to draw an early line under their European tour due to health problems. Opening with ‘To the Bin My Friend, Tonight We Vacate Earth’ the first track from last year’s UK Number 1 album ‘As the Love Continues’. The lion’s share of the setlist consisted of songs from the album including ‘Ritchie Sacramento’ with its bass lines which I imagine could be felt in flats within a 3-mile radius of Victoria Park. It was my first time seeing Mogwai and while they’re not a band you can exactly sing along to, they’re certainly every bit as loud and powerful as everyone has been telling me they are for years.
Closing the West Stage it was Fleet Foxes. I’m guilty of referring to Fleet Foxes in the past as a band for beardy beanie-wearing falafel eaters, but they perfectly warmed the crowd up for the main event. If I was being further cynical about it I’d say they were a matcha made in heaven. While they had a sizable crowd, their performance highlighted that tonight was far from a sell-out. The crowd could quite happily sit back and take in the music without needing to worry about anyone standing on their Havaianas which probably added to the relaxing feelgood vibes of their set. ‘Ragged Wood’, ‘White Winter Hymnal’, and ‘Mykonos’ all got big reactions as the sun began to set. Speaking of big reactions, The National’s Aaron Dessner swung by in his golf kart (which I was extremely jealous of at that point) from the East Stage popped by for a rendition of ‘Phoenix’ a song by one of Dessner’s many side-projects Big Red Machine which Fleet Foxes featured on. Far from the best song in the world, it was still a novelty to see the collaboration which would be later reciprocated in The National’s set when singer Robin Pecknold lent his vocals to ‘Weird Goodbyes’ the band’s new single which ordinarily features Bon Iver. It’s difficult to gauge how big Fleet Foxes still are after the peak of their success in the late 2000s but on tonight’s showing, they felt at home on a big outdoor stage.
Onto the main course, it was all eyes on The National to headline the night. It was the band’s first gig in the capital for three years since their British Summer Time shows at Hyde Park in July 2019 with Florence + The Machine. They had lined up two sold-out shows at Brixton Academy in 2020 which were then rescheduled to 2021 before becoming another in a long unwelcome line of live music casualties which were consigned to pulp.
With Leonard Cohen’s ‘I Can’t Forget’ ringing out, the band took to the stage and straight into ‘Don’t Swallow the Cap’ as the crowd were still making their unhurried pilgrimage to the East Stage. Following ‘Mistaken for Strangers’, ‘Bloodbuzz Ohio’ brought with it the first real singalong from the ~ 30,000-strong crowd. You could tell early on that the band and fans were equally up for it and there were smiles all around, apart from the guy a few rows in front of me who had just received an unwelcome delivery of spew to the face Amazon Prime’d from his over overexuberant mate’s mouth. An act he would remarkably replicate five or six songs later with the same amount of liquid, surprise, and panache. Only at a National gig could you throw up on someone twice and they would just look a bit bewildered and disappointed and not punch your lights out. That weird act of compassion somehow only reinforced the good-natured vibes of the evening.
From a bucketload of sick to a bucketload of songs, it’s sometimes easy to forget just how strong and varied a back-catalogue The National carry with them. The band played 19 songs spread across seven albums and you still felt they could have played for another couple of hours without drifting anywhere near a bad song. Perhaps the only surprise was they only played two songs from their latest album ‘I Am Easy to Find.’ ‘Light Years’ and ‘Rylan’ were memorable moments with the former being greeted by a sea of lighters in the air to accompany the duo of gentle piano lines and singer Matt Berninger’s absorbing scratchy vocals.
Anyone that’s seen The National live before will know that Berninger loves his crowd work. ‘Day I Die’ signalled his first foray out to the crowd and the typically chaotic ‘Mr November’ towards the end of the set saw the singer going safari into the crowd with his 50ft mic cable. Sweeping past me to the right of the stage like a man trying to escape bees, the crowd work adds so much value to the band’s live show and it’s always the moment you look forward to.
Seeing the night out as they often do with ‘Terrible Love’ and ‘About Today’, unlike watching AFC Wimbledon yesterday, it was 90 minutes which flew by and I didn’t want to end. The National are a special band who mean so much to so many people and alongside a terrific and well-chosen cast of supporting bands it was a night that will live long in the memory. Unless you were the guy that threw up on your mate twice.
Words by Richard Cobb
Photography by Abigail Shii
