Festival Review: Mogwai + Lankum // South Facing Festival, August 2025
South Facing Festival plays host to Mogwai, Lankum and more in a tightly packed lineup that makes the most of a hot day for a masterclass in post rock and folk.
Mogwai, The Twilight Sad, Lankum, Caroline and The Yummy Fur. Not a bad day for a festival to start things off at South Facing. Due to the nature of the festival being on a Thursday, it isn’t properly packed until long past five pm, a tad unfair on the bands coming on earlier. There are a lot of Arctangent tees in the audience – no doubt on the back of Mogwai playing there last year – and it’s similar vibes across the night. I was able to make it down from work for The Twilight Sad – who hold a place in my heart as the first band I ever saw live; supporting The Cure. The indie artists have earned fans from the likes of Robert Smith and are aware of everything that The Cure and Mogwai have done for them in the past – one of the most well-known and well-regarded Scottish bands in a country that has produced so many great ones.
They have new music on the way and plenty of time to make allowances for it – it’s the live debut of Dealing in the Dark and Waiting for the Phone Call. I like [10 Good Reasons for Modern Drugs] and it’s easy to fall in love with this song, James Graham’s brogue anchoring the script together blending post rock and synth superbly. They often can’t always fit in a particular one box – sometimes noise, sometimes not – but here they built the noise rock energy to the table effectively. Shooting Dennis Hopper Shooting, an ode to the legendary actor of Easy Rider; is a nice touch.
As this is the first day of South Facing, it set the bar high. They open with The Wild Rover and tell the audience that it’ll probably be the last time they play this set that they’ve been playing for two years now – and having seen them at Primavera and their solo show, it’s also the shortest set that I’ve ever seen them do. No matter – it’s excellent, rallying a cry for a free Palestine which the crowd oblige in their traditional deployment of folk songs The Wild Rover and Peat Bog Soldiers. It’s a politically charged set as always – The Rocks of Palestine is effective as a statement that lets the band’s music do their talking for them, and they joke about the barrier protecting them from a dangerous crowd that’s anything but; lovely and welcoming and super respective. Lankum have an air of creating mythic anti-war songs in nature and scope that pulls you right into the urgency and sense of peril and danger in the gaza strip, raising awareness through song in a way that holds your attention instantly and addresses the matter at hand.
To end on Go Dig My Grave allows Radie Pynch to deliver a stirring, haunting, emotional centrepiece of a song that feels more like an exorcism than a concert; a folk ballad in full effect. The multi-instrumentalists are talented – Daragh and Ian Lynch capable of cultivating stage presence that feels appropriately magnetic and casts a spell on the crowd. Lankum admit they only arrived with 20 minutes to spare, joking about being stuck behind a group of Spanish tourists and thank their immaculate sound production team. Much of their set is drawn from False Lankum, and the band will have a very tall order to top their mercury prize nominated album.
Then after an hour break, to stock up on beer and a good food selection, it’s time for Mogwai. They come on with a Palestine flag in the background and let their music do the talking for them. Fresh off the UK charts with a surprise hit in 2021 their resurgence has continued to balloon – the post-rockers eat up the stage with God Gets You Back to get things under way from The Bad Fire, one of the strongest albums of 2025 so far – and the near vocal-less drum and guitar driven of Lion Rumpus create a searing epiccentre for the band to end their set on. There is no encore; but it’s good enough for the crowd to get invested in throughout the thirteen songs played, drawing from eight albums – Young Team, Rock Action get outings and there’s even time for Hardcore Will Never Die, but you Will – the appropriately named How to be a Werewolf. Fanzine Made of Flesh allows the band to dip into peak guitar waves, never slowing down.
The sound wash is emotional and you get a real feel of the scope and scale of the piece. The music for Mogwai is loud and it’s a high standard for South Facing – making the most out of the outdoors venue. The synth heavy early cues lead into The Bad Fire in to get a good run out, and for something so loud, it somehow manages to feel so quietly intimate in a way like no other before it. The nostalgia is there for Ritchie Sacremento, the back catalogue drawn from in waves that keep the older fans engaged whilst delivering their earth-shattering new material. It can at times feel like you’re standing in front of a jet engine, but no matter how many times you see Mogwai, and this is my second time seeing them – it’s a way of creating something that instantly feels fresh and like the best gig that you’ve ever seen. The instrumental music is like no other.
In an evening that’s a love-letter to Scottish and Irish bands, South Facing have curated a day with the help of Mogwai that feels like no other. Rich and rewarding – the follow-up acts, featuring the likes of Skepta for the Big Smoke, curating a day that includes the likes of Central Cee – have a lot to live up to. The genre-curation of each day means that it’s sure to appeal to a uniquely different audience each time out – UNCLE and DJ Shadow for example dip into Sonic exploration territory on August 14th. But it feels Mogwai are the ones to beat – starting strong and starting high. When the crescendo hits, it’s like no other feeling on Earth.
Words by Miles Milton Jefferies
Photo Credit: Gem Harris
