Review - Day 3

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Wireless Festival 2005

Friday 24th to Thursday 30th June 2005
Hyde Park, London, W2 2UH, England MAP
£35 for each day

Out of the four days over which Wireless took place, today was worst hit by the severe bout of line-up famine. Although headliners Keane pulled an impressively large crowd (sadly leading to the conclusion that they are more popular than New Order), few energetic bands were booked to get people’s pulses running, meaning the level of excitement in the air was more akin to that of a funeral than a festival.

Opening up on the Xfm stage, Shout Out Louds did their best to tame their cacophonous Scandinavian clutter-rock, but the noticeably apathetic gathered mass were positively unmoved. Not quite sure how to take what they’d seen, people filtered out to catch Echo & The Bunnymen preview tracks from their forthcoming album, ‘Siberia’, on the main stage.

Events took a turn for the bland as James Blunt flaunted his prototype Damien Rice warblings to the swooning housewives, collected at the front of the arena, but it was only a cover of Pixie’s ‘Where Is My Mind?’ that caused ears to prick right across the trampled grasses of Hyde Park. Thankfully, Do Me Bad Things were patrolling their one-band Croydon-Rock movement across the Xfm stage and recent single, ‘What’s Hideous?’ offered eager punters their first chance to jump and dance for the day.

The pressure was on for Supergrass to get the party started over at the main stage. With a back catalogue of bona fide hits it was going to be them – if anyone – who was going to save the day from passive indifference. Sadly, last year’s Greatest Hits tour set-list has been retired and plenty of new material and forgotten album tracks had seeped back into the mix. They put on a great show, regardless, but they missed their chance to steal the day’s thunder.

Keane’s ballads wafted across Hyde Park like a super-strength stink bomb, but some people enjoy the smell of farts so they managed to get away with it. Well-tempered and polite, Britain’s musical equivalent of a School Parent’s Evening tiptoed through the hits at a hypnotically dull pace that so drained you of life that you’re left wondering if it’s even worth living in the first place. A duet with Rufus Wainwright should have been great, but some how it too fell flat.

At the end of a day so uneventful it was tiring, hopes ran high for Thursday’s grand finale.