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Kate Tempest - Extraordinary


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When almost on a whim, a couple of us decided to pop over to W Holts between Kris Kristofferson, I knew a few things about Kate Tempest.  I knew she did spoken word performances backed to music.  I knew that I quite liked some of the 5 minute video pieces I'd seen, but was worried that it would go on a bit and I might get a bit bored. How wrong I was.

From the opening lines, I knew that this would be far more more politically incisive than a re-purposed football chant:

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Strong and stable into ruin.
school kids on the hunt for lunch
cut the apron strings
at least it keeps the bastards lean
and gets the scroungers off the crouch.

She told heart-breaking stories of people struggling in a society pitted against itself, culminating in a glorious "I. LOVE. PEOPLE.".  The 'big moments' in this set were not met by hands in the air or whooping, they were met with looks of intense contemplation on the faces of the crowd.  A very unusual juxtaposition, like a solar eclipse in its strangeness.

I witnessed a lot of great performances at this year's festival, not least the xx and Radiohead directly afterwards, but nothing quite like Kate Tempest.  Whilst she hasn't invented the idea of spoken word over a musical backing - slotting somewhere between straight poetry and rap - I have never witnessed anything that succeeded quite on this scale.  A truly unique talent, with such intensity and so many words!  Expect copycats at Glastonbury 2019

The raving egotist that I am, I'll end by quoting my own first post about the 2017 festival:

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Kate Tempest. I knew she would be good, but that was an electrifying, emotionally intense performance.

Nearly moved to tears several times, I left feeling like I'd been whalloped across the face

Extraordinary.

 

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Was a really special performance, I think I spent the majority of the set mouth open wondering how does she remember all the words and when does she take a breath. Felt like she hardly paused for a moment during the hour.

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Phenomenal, she knocks it out of the park every time I see her. The purely spoken word set she did in run shack still rings in my ears, it was like that old Maxwell advert, non-stop incredible. The speech at the start this time was a great addition as well.

Her albums are really worth checking out as well, first albums a great story and the second albums many great stories coming together beautifully, I think she's top.

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yeah Let

16 minutes ago, priest17 said:

Her albums are really worth checking out as well, first albums a great story and the second albums many great stories coming together beautifully, I think she's top.

Yeah Let Them Eat Chaos is an extraordinary album, and is what the format that her glasto set this year was based on. The stories of strangers.

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Gutted i missed her.

Don't know if she still plays Circles, but i have had that as an earworm for the last 30 minutes, 

I go round in circles
Not graceful, not like dancers
Not neatly, not like compass and pencil
More like a dog on a lead, going mental

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Big fan of both albums and saw her at the park in 15 (Saw Halsey this year as I hadn't seen her before). She was amazing two years ago and looked amazing on the coverage when I watched it back. 

 

I describe her musis as the most accurate social commentaary out there. Read her book, it's really good. 

 

Impressively, she went 41 minutes without acknowledging the crowd between songs. Just went from one straight into the other. I didn't see her taking a drink on the footage. Impressive stamina. 

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6 minutes ago, MrPink said:

Big fan of both albums and saw her at the park in 15 (Saw Halsey this year as I hadn't seen her before). She was amazing two years ago and looked amazing on the coverage when I watched it back. 

 

I describe her musis as the most accurate social commentaary out there. Read her book, it's really good. 

 

Impressively, she went 41 minutes without acknowledging the crowd between songs. Just went from one straight into the other. I didn't see her taking a drink on the footage. Impressive stamina. 

Read her book earlier this year was a really great read, she is definitely one of the most underrated social commentators of our time!

Going to go home and listen to Let Them Eat Chaos turned up to 11 this evening!!!

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She was unbelievably good. Have seen her a couple of times before with Sound Of Rum and a spoken word set but it came across perfectly on the big stage with the band behind her. So passionate and raw. It was a bizarre feeling in the crowd after the show, not a dry eye in the field and everyone lost deep in thought. Think I've watched the set back twice and listened to the record 3 times since getting back. 

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