Strawberry Fields Festival has bags of room to expand

A visit home on Sunday morning to feed the cat (euphemistically speaking - there is no cat) means I'm late back to the party on Sunday afternoon arriving in time to catch the last tune from The Draytones before Manchester band The Last Party turn up the tempo on the main stage with some catchy timeless rock/pop, followed by Modern Faces, who aren't from Manchester but sound a tad like Oasis with shades of Big Country - I like 'em a lot but some disappointment is evident at the lack of audience - it's back to the sparsely populated field for the afternoon acts on the main stage again.

Things pick up for Kyla La Grange and I'm a sucker for female-fronted guitar bands and enjoy her set - someone to watch out for. Much of the line-up this weekend is new to me and Hadouken! was another act I only managed to 'youtube-for-clues' the week before the fest and I was a lot more impressed by the in-the-flesh experience - lively, rocking and engaging they stir the now swollen crowd into celebratory action in good style (but I'm still not sure what 'grindie' is...). There's a respectable crowd now for the evening acts (relatively that is - there's still room for twice as many) which makes me wonder where they've been all day - lounging in the campsite or day-tripping locals perhaps? The biggest act of the day is of course The Charlatans who as always put on a solid show in an hour-long set with songs from their extensive back-catalogue and best known hits bringing the main stage to a close in good crowd-pleasing style. The crowd soon dissipates but the bars remain open and the dance village once again continues on with the late night beats and a chance to reach for the lasers until the final curtain at 2am.

Now in it's 3rd outing and growing every year SFF feels in some ways like a new festival still finding it's feet, but with plenty going for it in terms of music content, bags of room to expand and a growing reputation for putting on a well organised event that mixes a village fete feel with an eclectic mixture of well known and up and coming bands, and a rave thrown in for good measure - all on a pretty green field site in the Leicestershire countryside. It deserves to thrive.

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