Glastoooo

She's back (again)

Oh hello, happy 4th! Greetings from Brooklyn, where me and my depleted serotonin levels are recovering post turbo-charging my live music junkie transformation¹ by attending Glastonbury, aka the largest/most important music festival in the UK and possibly the world.² I just got back from 10 days in England, where I spent some much-needed time with friends and my unstimulated brain in Salisbury and London. But four days at Worthy Farm in Somerset was — and I say this a lot but really mean it this time — one of the greatest experiences of my life, and that includes several night hours walking around the grounds solo while crying in the rain.

This was the third music festival I’ve attended since I last wrote this newsletter (oops) — Coachella in April (my endurance sport, as I file reviews of the headliners every night after the shows), New York’s Gov Ball in June (relatively small and chill), and now Glastonbury, which I attended for fun via a ticket I “won” through work³ and thus had zero incentive or interest to perceive anything professionally. Each have revived me in different ways — Lady Gaga’s headliner set at Coachella remains the best live show I’ve seen second only to Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour⁴, I was alone and stone-cold sober and generally Gaga-agnostic and yet the first four songs were equivalent to ecstasy. (I also love Coachella because it’s the only time all year where being a night owl actually serves my career; it is a particular joy to get paid to reach my full nocturnal potential.) Gov Ball introduced me to a couple new artists on the up (Young Miko) and demonstrated that the folk-pop revival is in full swing, what hath Noah Kahan wrought.

peace out to my dopamine

But Glastonbury is incomparable to any festival really as it is 2+ the size of Coachella, more of a national carnival than music festival (activities include blacksmithing workshops, unicycle lessons, a movie theater, and “psychedelic integration” counseling), and a whole tradition/ethos that I would say generally lived up to the hype. Much less corporate than any American music festival, much less emphasis on VIP, much more political, sometimes shockingly so (in a good way) — I cannot imagine concessions at Coachella asking for donations to humanitarian aid in Gaza or organizers calling to free Palestine on stage between sets. People weren’t wearing makeup even at the all-night raves, so I didn’t either, and that’s the best way I can describe the audience vibe.

Other Stage pano attempt

Anyway, glasto, as they say, felt like the natural endpoint of a weird few months for me that I’ve found hard to describe — not depression exactly, more like feeling nothing at all most of time, consistent tunnel vision on everything from work to socializing to dating, except when I’m at shows. Somehow between work and play, I’ve ended up attending live music (including DJ sets, which count when they’re good) with the regularity of a churchgoer and the openness of a supplicant — a personal trend of worship that only belatedly occurred to me as notable when I got emotional on the floor of the acoustic tent on Sunday afternoon, listening to Rhiannon Giddens and Dirk Powell (folk musicians from North Carolina and Ohio/Louisiana, respectively) talk about the evolution of the banjo from West Africa, among enslaved people in the South and then Appalachia. People’s capacity for joy and communion even in horrific circumstances, banjo plus fiddle. Once again reminded of the obvious but still revelatory fact that coalescing around music is a very old and powerful human instinct, no wonder it is so closely tied with religion.

I have never been a particularly religious or devout person (though lately I’ve been drawn to the cult of music festivals, I get it now) but I do feel increasingly spiritual about humans gathering for music. The pandemic instilled in me a pretty strong crowd starvation mindset — as in, some persistent, semi-conscious fear that live events with people could be taken away at any moment, and thus I must hoard them. I’ve always been naturally energized by crowds — one of my favorite all-time memories is getting lifted off the ground by a moshpit of fellow 15-year-olds to Sandstorm at a freshman year dance and buzzing for literally hours after as it was the most exciting thing to happen to me at that point. But idk, something feels more practiced and magnetic about crowd energy lately, I am still growing into it I guess. Maybe with so much emphasis on simulation these days, I am increasingly comforted by the still unreplicable and unruly experience of being surrounded by other people with the same express purpose of hearing something really really teeth-chatteringly loud. Bliss! So that’s what I was mostly doing at glastonbury.

yes we were at the relatively fancy campsite, shout out Caroline and Jane for letting me tack on to the group

As for the music itself — well, 40% of the reason I went to glasto was to see the 1975 headline, as I have simply loved them too much for too long to not be a Matty Healy apologist. Admittedly not my fave setlist from them, but they were very smooth and validated my longstanding opinion that they are ultimately a boy band for adults with internet brain (complimentary). The peak of the weekend for me was, unsurprisingly, Charli XCX, even though I have been out on brat for awhile and generally annoyed by the clout-iness of it all.⁵ This was my 7th Charli show and my 3rd since brat, and this time the blow-up hit me in a good way — truly surreal to see 60,000 people jump to Vroom Vroom and to watch several straight men convert in real time, best Track 10 I’ve seen her do, an absolute exclamation point of a pop star set, I’m so happy to witness it. The Lorde “surprise” album release set at 11:30am on Friday, before I’d even had coffee, flattened me in a way I didn’t expect; she’s so back with Virgin; Green Light live was genuinely life-changing. And the best new artist I saw was Amyl & the Sniffers, an Aussie punk band whose frontwoman has insane energy, the kind that takes you from “hmmm I might sit for this” to “I will be going to all future shows in new york” within 10 minutes. Lmk if you want to see a punk or bluegrass show in nyc, I’ve realized these are two important but critically overlooked aspects of my “uppers only” music ethos.

my camera roll is mostly terrible photos like this of “landmarks” to locate friends at the late-night raves lololol

And that’s like, barely scratching the surface, I was there four days and maybe saw 10% of what it had to offer. But I’m hooked! They’re having a “fallow” year in 2026 to let the land heal (lol hippies) but if anyone wants to try to go with me in 2027….hmu

Not many recs bc it’s summer and I’m about to head upstate for a dear friend’s bachelorette. But if you want to talk content, I adored season two of The Rehearsal (give Nathan Fielder an Emmy and a Congressional hearing!), was mixed on The Materialists and am looking for people to argue about it with me, and am still moved to tears by the sight of 2 MILLION people attending Gaga’s free concert on Copacabana Beach in Brazil.

That’s all, happy holiday weekend!! Hopefully see you back here soon.

xoxo,

Adrian

1. This transformation will complete once I attend my first Phish show later this month.

2. No one can agree on this but I can assure you that Glastonbury has more cultural relevance than Summerfest in Milwaukee.

3. Technically, I won the opportunity to buy the ticket at full price through work, which I later realized is still a big deal so thanks Guardian lottery!

4. Also second to Beychella (Beyoncé’s 2018 Coachella set), which I sadly did not see irl but is by my money the absolute gold standard of pop performances this century, watch Homecoming if you haven’t.

5. For the record I love brat and the remix album so much, I’m just being a dick about liking Charli since 2017 aka being ahead of the curve for once in my life.