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 | | Your front-row pass to who the performers will be watching at Glastonbury From punk trios to folk icons, performers share their Glastonbury picks – and it’s not who you might expect |
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| Gwilym Mumford |  |
| | | Hello from Worthy Farm, home to Glastonbury festival! As is tradition, this newsletter is coming to you from a sparsely apportioned cabin behind the festival’s legendary Pyramid stage, which this weekend will feature headline sets from The 1975, Neil Young and Olivia Rodrigo. The festival proper is kicking off right about now, though really it has been whirring away for two days already. The official opening was on Wednesday night: a circus spectacular on the Pyramid stage featuring jugglers, drummers, fire-flinging dancers and a bloke doing handstands on a fairy-light-strewn bike suspended above the audience. The extravaganza came courtesy of the talented folk from Glastonbury’s theatre and circus fields, who were tasked with opening the festival for the first time since the early 90s. (Incidentally, the Theatre and Circus Fields have a pretty remarkable origin story: in 1971 Winston Churchill’s granddaughter Arabella was being relentlessly hounded by the paparazzi in London, having created a bit of a stink by daring to speak out against the Vietnam war. She legged it to Somerset, and there helped one of her father Randolph’s former employees, Andrew Kerr, and some farmer named Michael Eavis, launch a certain summer festival. Churchill would devise the Theatre and Circus fields a decade later and handled their running until her death in 2007. You’d imagine she would have been thrilled to see her charges back doing their daredevil stuff on the Pyramid.) The theatre and circus folk will be doing their thing all weekend, part of the more than 3,000-strong army of performers at this year’s festival. As ever the Guardian is your one-stop shop for coverage of the biggest and best of those performances. All manner of goodies have already been published: an interview with the band Keir Starmer wants banned from the festival, Kneecap; music editor Ben Beaumont-Thomas’s tips for the best acts to see this year; Glasto returnees, including Billy Bragg and Kate Nash, recalling their festival debuts; and, most importantly of all for those of you at home, an exhaustive viewing guide. Then, all weekend we’ll have news, reviews, galleries, features and of course the big Glastonbury liveblog, which runs from lunchtime to after midnight today, tomorrow and Sunday. That will be topped off on Monday by a special Glastonbury edition of the Guardian’s G2 newspaper supplement, with a full exhaustive review of the festival. Drink it all in because next year Glastonbury takes a year off, to allow the farm to recover from hundreds of thousands of people stomping all over it. I’m dreading it already, but let’s worry about that later and make the most of this year first. To help maximise your enjoyment of the festival, whether on site or at home, we’ve asked some of this year’s performers to share the one act they’re most excited to see this year …
Tom Odell | Eternally boyish indie pop singer songwriter “I’m such a huge fan of CMAT – Ciara is an incredible artist and such a fun person to be around. She supported me last year in Amsterdam at the Ziggo Dome, and we all ended up getting incredibly drunk in the backstage bar afterwards. I’m so happy to see her absolutely smashing it right now, and I can’t wait to watch her perform on the Pyramid Stage!” Tom Odell plays Woodsies 9pm, Saturday
Lambrini Girls | Sardonic, sweary Brighton punk trio “I’m really looking forward to see Turnstile take the Other Stage [4:30 PM Sunday]. They’re undeniably one of the most hyped bands right now, and it’s for good reason. Their live shows are beautifully orchestrated chaos. I really respect their willingness to evolve. They’ve pushed the boundaries of hardcore, embracing pop and indie influences without losing their edge. It’s ruffled some feathers because a lot of hardcore fans want to gatekeep hardcore – and that is what I love most about it. Punk was never meant to be exclusive, Turnstile are making it accessible for everyone!”
Lambrini Girls play Left Field, 7.50pm Saturday
Billie Marten | Soulful jazz folk, straight from Yorkshire “There are oodles of treats to watch this weekend; Four Tet, Father John Misty, Amyl and the Sniffers, Nilüfer Yanya, Jalen Ngonda … but it’s all about Beth Gibbons for me. What a hero! I grew up listening to her aching vocals on the Portishead records, and then her solo work. Mysteries is a masterpiece in writing, structure and production. Having never seen her live, only through the shiny barrier of YouTube and TV, I am totally ready for one hell of an arresting performance. Long reign Beth!”
Billie plays the Acoustic Stage, 5pm today.
Ros Atkins | BBC analysis editor and rave master “My head’s spinning from the array of DJs I’d like to see. But one time I won’t be listening to them is 3.15 on Saturday afternoon. Instead, I’ll be at the Greenpeace stage. Last year, I was a guest on Huw Stephens’ Roundtable on BBC 6 Music and one of the songs we reviewed was Antarctica by Divorce. It stopped me in my tracks and I’ve been a fan ever since. There’s a brilliant creativity and range to their songwriting and sound; I also find their tracks really affecting – in a good way! I’ve not seen Divorce live and plan to put that right. Emotions may run high.”
Ros played the Stonebridge bar on Thursday. You can listen to The Festival is Here, his Glastonbury-themed collaboration with Crissy Criss, here |
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| Take Five | Each week we run down the five essential pieces of pop culture we’re watching, reading and listening to | | 1 | TV – The Bear
Anticipation for the latest outing of the acclaimed restaurant saga has been muted, an understandable response perhaps to a third season that rarely reached more than a low simmer. Still, when The Bear really turns up the gas, there’s nothing like it on TV: funny, tense, absorbing and with plotting as sharp as a kitchen knife fresh from the whetstone (other clunky culinary metaphors are available). Season four picks up with the publication of a much fretted-about Chicago Tribune review: will it leave Carmy and Syd’s fine dining dreams in tatters? Full season available on Disney+ now.
Want more? Another show hoping to rebound from an underwhelming previous outing, Netflix’s Squid Game returns for one last burst of jump-suited sadism. Available now. For even more, here are seven shows to stream at home this week.
| 2 | BOOK – The Original by Nell Stevens
Nell Stevens’s latest is a take on the Victorian “sensation novel”, complete with murder, theft, betrayal and sex. The Original’s protagonist, Grace Inderwick, arrives penniless aged 10 at her uncle’s house just before the turn of the century, her parents having been admitted to asylums. There, she discovers a talent for forging artworks – and a romantic interest in other women. “Stevens is one of a generation of writers finding new ways to queer the Victorians,” wrote Guardian reviewer Lara Feigel, who also noted that the author is “showing herself to be that rare thing: a writer who we can think alongside, even while she’s making things up”.
Want more? The Orwell prizes for political writing were awarded on Wednesday – check out the winners, the posthumously published Looking at Women Looking at War by Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina, and Irish writer Donal Ryan’s Heart, Be at Peace, a follow-up to his debut The Spinning Heart, if you haven’t already. And here’s the rest of this week’s book reviews.
| 3 | FILM – F1
Ever since Netflix’s officially sanctioned Formula 1 documentary Drive to Survive made the motorsport a truly globally popular spectacle, a blockbuster drama from the world of F1 has been inevitable. Here it is: loud, shiny and ferociously fast, adeptly steered by Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski. Brad Pitt plays the retired driver brought back to the track to mentor Damson Idris’s wayward prodigy, as he embarks on his debut F1 season. Pitt’s star-wattage and Kosinski’s gift for staging vast vehicular set pieces should be enough to temporarily distract you from the fact that this is, at heart, a large, noisy brand extension.
Want more? There’s more than a glimmer of Terminator 2: Judgment Day in the tech horror sequel M3GAN 2.0, as our titular, terrifying doll is reprogrammed to take on an even deadlier threat to humanity. Plus, here are seven films to watch at home this week.
| 4 | PODCAST – Postwar
You’d have thought David Runciman – academic, London Review of Books and Guardian contributor, host of the political history and ideas pod Past, Present, Future – had quite enough assignments to be getting on with. But here he is cropping up on BBC Sounds’ Politically feed, with a 20-part series (less intimidating than it sounds; each episode clocks in at a snackable 15 minutes) on the 1945 election, AKA the one where Clement Attlee’s Labour bested Churchill and the Tories. It was a Leicester City-level upset, but, as Runciman and informed talking heads explain, one that had been hiding in plain sight for a while, with a war-battered public desperate for change. The result would be the making of modern Britain, from the winding down of colonialism to the birth of the NHS. Fascinating.
Want more? First broadcast in 2005, Charles Wheeler’s series Coming Home provides an at times haunting account of Britain in the immediate aftermath of the war. (The episode on missing people, places and homes will chill you to the bone.) Also available on Sounds. Plus, here are the best podcasts of the week.
| 5 | ALBUM – Lorde: Virgin
It always seemed likely that New Zealand’s finest would make an appearance at Worthy Farm this weekend: she had already sent out a come and get me plea, and her sparring partner-turned-bestie Charli XCX, headlining the Other stage on Saturday, loves a guest spot. Moreover, there’s a new album to promote. After the lockdown introspection of 2021’s Solar Power, Virgin sees Lorde return to the exuberance of Melodrama, with a series of club-adjacent bangers full of references to breakups and wild nights out. Exactly the sort of thing that would go down with a giddy Glasto crowd – and lo, she is playing a secret set at the festival right as this newsletter drops into your inbox!
Want more? Honduran pop experimenter Isabella Lovestory pushes her sound ever further with futuristic new abum Vanity. For the rest of our music reviews, click here. |
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| Read On | | “They weren’t yobby – they were quite sensitive”: Oasis mania reaches the Guardian’s My Best Shot feature, with photographers including Jill Furmanovsky and Kevin Cummins recounting what it’s like to shoot the Gallaghers. | Few theatre directors are able to push the zeitgeist’s buttons quite like Jamie Lloyd. In the wake of Lloyd’s viral Evita stunt, Michael Billington considers what makes him such an all-conquering, controversial figure. | Are viewers starting to find wealth porn a bit of a turn off? As a sea of smug affluence washes over shows like The Four Seasons, And Just Like That and Your Friends and Neighbours, Stu Heritage predicts a TV peasants revolt. | Vulture’s Buffering newsletter reports on the increasing importance of anime to streaming services: globally, the genre generates a dizzying $20bn in annual profits. |
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| You be the Guide | Last week we asked you to revive a film franchise. Here are the reboots you rustled up for us: “Surely it has to be the godfather of all franchises … The Godfather. One of the most epic stories ever told cannot die with number three. As good as that was (yes, it was), it was not a patch on the previous two so it would be great to see how the family tried (and failed?) to modernise into the 80s.” – Mark Walker “This struck a chord as somehow I was thinking of Wayne’s World just the other day – 2025 needs a bit of Mike Myers. Sadly, Dana Carvey is unlikely to be back – but wait … doesn’t that dude look a bit familiar?! Turn’s out, Garth’s secret offspring via second world war femme fatale Honey (Kim Basinger) is fully woke gen Z. Hilarity ensues as Wayne gets him to loosen up, learn to rock out and tells him about his dad, and there’s an Aerosmith concert at the end. Schwing!” – Andy Myall “The Fletch films from the 80s, with Chevy Chase at his peak as a wisecracking investigative journalist, are too funny to fizzle out with 2022’s unremarkable Confess, Fletch. Daniel Kaluuya could bring his laconic charm to the role, or Emma Stone has the comic chops for it. But it probably falls on the writing – a number of people have been attached to reworking the books over the years, but maybe Seth Rogen or Rian Johnson might capture the tone well.” – Richard Hamilton |
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| |  | | Summer reads | 2 for £15 at the Guardian Bookshop |
| | Enjoy 2 for £15 on selected paperbacks – from the hottest new releases to Guardian Bookshop bestsellers. Stock up your shelves and support the Guardian with every order. |
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| Get involved | This week I want to hear about the comedy sketch that never fails to make you laugh. It can be as world-renowned or niche as you fancy: from more cowbell or fork handles to the depths of late-night Channel 4. In honour of the Gallaghers’ return next week, I’ll kick things off with the Mr Wells sketch from the Fast Show, which as well as being very funny also features the best Oasis song Noel never wrote. Let me know your pick by replying to this email or contacting me on gwilym.mumford@theguardian.com. |
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| | | THE CHAMPAGNE IS ON ICE AT LONDON'S NEWEST CULTURAL HOT SPOT |  | A refreshing take on Private Membership Clubs. Attracting the creative, the contemporary, the corporate and the casual is London’s newest cultural hotspot to socialise, dine, and wind. Hidden behind a private door on London’s iconic Trafalgar Square, you’ll find Supporters House, the first private Membership Space from the National Gallery. Described as ‘classy and cool, exclusive but accessible’ this is not your average Membership space.
Access is available via House Membership and includes daily access, unlimited visits to all exhibitions, a programme of House events, and much more. From just £135 per year there is nothing else in London like it.
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