Want to see more photos? We have a gallery of all the bands reviewed here too.
Friday; there may have been a bit of music before today, but Friday is the day everything gets into swing. I was most excited about the John Peel stage opening it’s doors with a few hours of incredible indie to energise Glastonbury’s huge crowd. It was a joy to start the day with Sheffield’s Drenge, who managed to pull in such a crowd that people were struggling to get in from the edges. As you’d expect, if you’ve caught the duo before, volume was pushed way up as the fuzzy guitars assaulted your ears and the hard hitting drums shook the skulls of all those up at the front. They’re a band we’ve loved for a while now and they certainly show no signs of calming down. They showed, playing one of the festivals larger tents that they can certainly keep the energy going on a large stage. Next year on the Pyramid or Other Stage? I can see that happening. 
Staying at The John Peel stage, we were then treated to a set from Temples, who’s psychedelic indie pop saw a lot of smiles around the tent. The stage mc made a good point before they headed on stage; Glastonbury’s early days involved a lot of watching psychedelic music in a field and this hasn’t really changed for the most part! It’s fair to say that I’m not the biggest fan of psychedelic music but I found some interesting guitar licks and was generally impressed by the abilities of the lead vocalist – they were certainly an impressive band.
After a short break to enjoy Glastonbury’s legendary weather (read: walk back to my tent in the rain to recover my raincoat that I’d brilliantly decided I wouldn’t need when the sun came out around lunch time) it was time for Crystal Fighters. I hadn’t listened to the band previously but decided, after a strong review from Antony the time they played Open’r festival, that I would have to check them out for myself. I am so glad I did. Definitely one of the more interesting bands of the lineup, their setup contained more instruments than I could count. Of course they started in a suitably eclectic manner, two members of the band playing wooden beams with wooden poles. There was a lot of interesting additions from the typical instruments you’d expect from a band (I wouldn’t be able to name a lot of them…) but even ignoring the instruments, there was a lot of people singing creating some superb harmonies. The dressing, of both the stage and the band members, seemed to be an important part of their set – the headdress of Sebastian Pringle being a prime example, the tribal dress generally setting the atmosphere. Partially hiding the amps behind shrubbery worked well too and it was impressive that, despite it being a festival, the band appeared to have had the time to make the stage look fantastical. Really then Crystal Fighters are the whole package; a band who create incredible, diverse, music who also put a lot of effort into the live show. Who can argue at that? 
Heading over to the Other Stage to try and catch Interpol the weather earlier in the evening had put everything out of time by an hour so I ended up catching Foster The People. I’ll admit, they were definitely not on my list of bands I wanted to watch, striking me as being overly poppy and definitely not to my taste. I could appreciate what they did though and they certainly were going down well with the audience cheering and singing along. An hour later than advertised, Interpol claimed their spot on the Other Stage, supported by a crowd of fans who’d been bubbling up for the best part of an hour, anticipating one of indie music’s greatest bands. Their set was largely hit after hit, with an outing of ’Evil’ early on, as well as performing ’Narc’, ’NYC’, ‘’Not Even Jail’ and ’C’mere’. The highlight of the set for me came from the finale, the classic ’Slow Hands’ which effortlessly had the audience jumping and singing. The band put on a great performance – there wasn’t a lot of energy to it (with the exception of their second guitarist, who was clearly loving it), but then for the style of music that’s not really necessary and they make up for it with the quality of their songs.
Pyramid Stage headliners Arcade Fire had a deservedly huge crowd; looking back all I could see were people, people creating one hell of a noise building up for the band’s headline slot. Opening with ‘Reflektor’ the band were clearly in their element from the get go, not put off by the crowd rolling back up the hill, grinning massively and jumping around like loons. Win definitely seemed to be in his element, quickly running the walkway down towards the crowd before borrowing an audience members phone and filming as he walked back to the stage, film part of the set and then throw the camera back to them – he borrowed one of the photographers camera’s for a quick selfie too! Their lengthy set was incredibly well varied, with tracks from Reflektor next to classic tracks like ’Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)’ and ’Keep The Car Running’ (complete with ’My Body Is a Cage’ intro). The band kept it interesting too, with the addition of extra people for dancing out the front of the stage and people completely covered from head to toe in mirror surfaces next to the projector screens, creating the effect of human disco balls. Ending the main set with ’It’s Never Over’ to spectacular applause, they wasted no time coming back out for the encore – such a short time that I imagine the band were a bit too excited at the side of the stage to wait around – returning to the stage to a mashup of ’Common People’, ’Bitter Sweet Symphony’ and ’Wonderwall’ with bobble heads dancing around. The encore was nothing short of spectacular, with ’Here Comes The Night Time’ and ’Wake Up’ complete with massive amounts of confetti fired over the crowd from the front of the stage as well as the sound desk. The quality of Arcade Fire’s music is phenomenal on record but they definitely pull it off live too; they’re another band who play a lot of instruments between them but even the changeovers were pretty much unnoticeable. They played the songs as perfect on record but while grinning and jumping all over and I for one didn’t want it to end. 
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