WIDE EYED 2022: AN INTIMATE AND AWAITED RETURN
Last weekend, VOCAL GIRLS headed to Leicester for this year's long awaited Wide Eyed festival. The team also caught up with Grandmas House about their newest single ‘Body’, as well as what they got up to during their first full festival season.
Wide Eyed Festival made its mark after a successful, sold-out debut back in September 2021. Based in Leicester O2 Academy and split over two stages, this year’s all-dayer offered sets from acts such as Gwenno, Home Counties, The Goa Express and Courting. The reorganised festival originally promised sets from the likes of Gilla Band, Billy Nomates, Big Joanie, Honeyglaze and Lime Garden, however, it’s an unfortunate and unavoidable fact that all of these mentioned artists - and a few more - couldn’t play the festival once it came around. Thankfully, persistence meant that acts such as Do Nothing, Panic Shack, Silverbacks and Knice stepped in and smoothed over the cracks of the earlier postponement and a flurry of cancellations. The good spirit of the crowd and the quality of performance from every artist on the bill ensured - at the very least - a day of good music.
Donned in cowboy hats and crop tops, the day was kicked off by the Leicester-based, high-energy outfit The People Assembly. Home Counties hit next with their wonky dance-punk; the 6-piece boasted a colourful versatility by constantly switching places and instruments in their intriguingly adaptable lineup.
Grandmas House took to the stage under the stress of a near-late arrival: “traffic” they quickly explained, before jumping straight into a tight and powerful set. They soon helped us forget their stress by delivering hard-hitting renditions of crowd pleasers such as ‘Feed Me’ and ‘Always Happy’. After their performance, Yasmin (guitar and vocals), Poppy (drums and vocals) and Zoë (bass) of Grandmas House joined us outside to tell us a little about their packed festival season and their recent release, ‘Body’.
How did you all meet and start the band?
Y: We met at uni! Me and Pops started playing and then after uni we all moved to Bristol. Well, Pops dragged us to Bristol-
P: -I made them move. I’m from Bristol originally and I was like “yeah you’ll love it!”. We all went to London for university but it's just so expensive.
Y: Now Bristol is the same, but back in the day it was a lot cheaper, so we were like “let’s go to Bristol!”.
P: After that we properly started the band, in 2019.
You’ve just put out your new single, ‘Body’, what’s been happening around the release? I saw it went a bit crazy on TikTok.
Y: Yeah! We posted on TikTok about a month before the release, we put up a few snippets of it-
P: -it was just us in a car park with this big wheelie bin [laughing]
Y: It literally went viral overnight, people were asking “where is the single?” and we were like “oh no it’s still a month away”! It was amazing though because we quickly made it so you could presave, and a lot of people did, it’s doing really well.
Festival season looked busy for you guys, you played the main stage at Truck Festival for example, how has it been?
Y: Oh my god that was insane.
Z: It was the first time we had screens.
Y: They filmed us! We were shitting ourselves about that.
P: -and I got wheeled out on this raised platform?
Z: It was very high-tech.
Y: It was Sunday morning as well, but I think we managed to get quite a good crowd.
P: We even had a little mosh pit in the middle. The whole festival season has been really good, it was our first proper festival season too.
Y: We did Green Man as well at the last minute! We weren’t supposed to play it, we were at the festival and it was Sunday-
P: -I was about to go home cause I was like “I can’t do this anymore, I need to get back to my bed” [laughing]
Y: They were like “someone’s dropped out can you play?” and of course, we said okay.
P: We found out literally two hours before we played! We had no instruments either so we were just running around like “Can anyone lend us anything! Can anyone lend me some drumsticks!”.
What was your favourite festival set of the summer?
Y: I really enjoyed Nozstock. We did two festivals in a day, we did the main stage at Truck and then in the evening we did Nozstock. I’d never heard of it before but it was really cute. I think that whole day was my favourite.
P: The timing at Nozstock was great too, the sun was setting, people were walking past but then it started raining so they all stuck around. It was such a nice crowd!
How are you guys closing the festival season?
Z: I feel like Green Man finished it off?
P: Maybe Ritual Union, that’s the 1st of October.
Y: True! It’s an all-dayer in Bristol.
P: It’s a really good lineup - Los Bitchos, Katy J Pearson…
Z: -and it’ll be the biggest venue we’ve ever played in Bristol too.
Post chat came Liverpool-based four-piece, Courting. Peppered with moments of auto-tune, they played a brief rendition of Icona Pop’s ‘I Love It’, as frontman Sean hung to the front of the barrier. Attention later moved upstairs for a set from Silverbacks; Fronted by brothers, Daniel and Kilian O’Kelly, the Dublin post-punk band filled the room with their jagged and noxious riffs, garnished with effortlessly powerful vocals. Downstairs, Jools were taking over the larger stage with their seven-piece lineup, including four guitarists. In their own brand of modern glam-rock, they committed to an intense performance of tracks like fan favourite, ‘How Can Some Experience What Pride Is Without Liberation for All?’. With two vocalists both leather-clad and melodramatic, Jools’ set brimmed with exuberance and flamboyance.
Panic Shack and The Goa Express filled the penultimate slots of the day. The former attracted the busiest crowd yet and were undoubtedly a highlight. Playful – and at times ridiculous – vocalist Sarah Harvey repeated “I don’t want to hold your baby,” followed by spurts of synchronised choreography. With tracks like ‘Mannequin Man’ and ‘Jiu Jits You’ earning cheers from the crowd, the electric energy rubbed off on anyone within earshot. Then it was The Goa Express’ turn. They came on stage after arriving in the UK from Norway just that morning. Undoubtedly exhausted from their Norwegian stint (which also led to the loss of their beloved harmonica), they swayed into tracks like ‘Everybody In The UK’ with ease, while lead vocalist James Clark’s heartwarming coming-of-age lyrics were backed by dynamic—and at times frenzied—instrumentation.
Gwenno’s set marked the beginning of the end. As one of the closing acts of the day she gracefully submerged the upstairs room in her ethereal performance. With the crowd transfixed, she jumped between the sweet serenade of her siren-like vocal and a casual jokiness. At one point she even taught the crowd a saying in Cornish which translates to “Is there cheese?”, and then later congratulated the room on being the “largest congregation of people shouting about cheese in Cornish at the O2 Academy Leicester''. This charm and a dreamy run of tunes from her Mercury Award shortlisted album, ‘Tresor’, (which is all in Cornish) effortlessly won over watchers.
The day came to a close with Do Nothing. Admittedly, after a long day and the last minute change, the crowd had dwindled, but Do Nothing’s Chris Bailey handled this with grace, announcing: “this has turned into a strange little thing, I like it”. Opening with the earworm ‘Gangs’, guitarist Kasper Sandstrøm played with ease as Chris nonchalantly embodied his slick frontman persona and impressed with a vocal almost identical to the record. Closing with the jazzy fan favourite ‘Handshakes’, the festival came to an end.
Admittedly, after a series of seriously unfortunate events, Wide Eyed 2022 was not the way anyone originally expected it to be. With a lot of spanners in the works, the show still went on, and every artist on the bill delivered brilliant live performances: From the sarcastic punk of Panic Shack, all the way to the reliable danceability of Do Nothing. Ultimately and most importantly, the music delivered, but when Wide Eyed returns, hopefully it can swerve the potholes that hampered it this year.
Photo Credits: Nicole Osrin | @nicoleosrin
