Music review: TRNSMT festival

George Ezra attracted a massive crowd to his Main Stage slot

TRNSMT festival (Friday & Saturday), Glasgow Green ****

The sun was almost out and Paul Heaton had put £1000 behind the bars of five local bars – definitely a Glasgow win as TRNSMT 2023 kicked off in mellow mode on Friday afternoon.

Homegrown crooner Joesef is a young man with an old head on his shoulders and the style of a supply teacher. He and his suited and booted band caressed the main arena with their sultry summer soul sound, dusted with Eighties saxophone, soothing backing vocals and a man wielding a tambourine. There was a plaintive edge to his songs of romantic misadventure delivered in fluent falsetto – he was fully equipped to cover Sister Sledge's Thinking of You and even elicited a spot of milky sunlight by the end of his set.

The View's Klye Falconer played until his fingers bled

No such subtlety from renowned wrecking crew The View, who punched through (not literally, on this occasion) with their strong melodies, the witty lyrics of Same Jeans and an almost wistful Face for the Radio, and a lot of furious guitar strumming, with frontman Kyle Falconer literally playing until his fingers bled in between atypical plugs for their forthcoming album.

Socialist hero Heaton, fresh from redistributing his wealth, delivered a perfect festival set of hits by "original Eighties boy band" The Housemartins and The Beautiful South, culminating with moving a cappella “song of peace" Caravan of Love. In the enforced absence of Jacqui Abbott, his vocal foil for the day was the brilliant Bellshill singer Rianne Downey, graduating from the River Stage last year to Main Stage star turn.

This year, the tiny River Stage has been moved…slightly along the river where indie lads The Royston Club attracted a healthy crowd before self-styled “painfully Scottish musician” Nati Dreddd brought Friday proceedings to a rootsy pop-rock conclusion.

The King Tut's Stage and arena is compact and the place to head for alternative sounds, such as Hamish Hawk – flamboyant Edinburgher, spinner of yarns and painter of pictures with a touch of the Jarvis Cocker in his shape-throwing stage presence – and London wags Warmduscher, who offered quite the left-field alternative to One Directioner Niall Horan on the Main Stage with their relentless heavy funk basslines, declamatory vocals and rock guitar and drumming. "Some of you are new to us, some of you are way too old," noted frontman Clams Baker Jr on being told Warmduscher were an audience member’s mum's unlikely favourite band.

Everyone else's mum's favourite polite young man George Ezra attracted a massive crowd to his Main Stage slot. He may be the pop boy of choice, but there was no doubt that headliners Pulp were the main attraction as heavy curtains parted to reveal a showbiz set of stairs and a game chamber orchestra for what was, according to the intro film, the 529th concert by Pulp. By way of witty preamble to Do You Remember the First Time, Cocker recalled their first time in Glasgow – a feebly attended gig in King Tut’s more than 30 years ago.

Cocker was always bound for larger stages, as confirmed by a greatest hits setlist which included later melodramatic epics such as This is Hardcore and Sunrise as well as the beloved Britpop outsider classics on which they built their curtain-twitching aesthetic. Disco 2000, Misshapes and Babies are anthems for frustrated adolescents of all ages, Sorted for Es and Wizz was custom written for just such a self-referential moment as this, with the orchestra getting into the spirit by donning bucket hats, and you don’t get much more egalitarian than Common People.

Saturday was a patchier affair, musically and elementally, degenerating from the sultry temperatures and sounds of Georgia soulman Teddy Swims on the King Tut’s Stage to the brooding clouds and showers that accompanied the urgent indie punk drive of Mancunian quartet Afflecks Palace on the River Stage.

Over on the Main Stage, another mouthy Mancunian, rapper Aitch, paid tribute to his home city, charging his guitarist to fire up a twanging Stone Roses riff with accompanying funky drummer shuffle and breaking out an artless burst of Wonderwall to galvanise the crowd.

Serviceable indie sorts The Wombats did their best to counter increasingly dreich weather, embellishing their own suggestion on the peppy Let's Dance to Joy Division by bringing on a troupe of dancers in wombat costumes, while Kasabian presided over a football terrace-style atmosphere, attacking their penultimate Main Stage slot with turbo-charged guitar, power drumming and frontman Sergio Pizzorno invoking chaos on their muscular indie anthem Fire.

West Lothian rave duo LF System headlined the King Tut's arena with a sustained 90 minutes of hardcore dance attack for those with enough left in the tank, though they had a sound bleed battle on their hands when Main Stage headliner Sam Fender fired up his set, delivering the uncharacteristic two-minute nosebleed punk thrash of Howdon Aldi Death Queue.

This was a rare moment of invigoration in a more considered set with a brace of slower tunes at a time when the sodden crowd needed an excuse to party. A cover of Frightened Rabbit’s The Modern Leper, sung by his Scottish guitar tech Fraser, was well intentioned, however, and the crowd reaction just about carried Fender and band through to the celebratory, brass-soaked Seventeen Going Under.