Green Man 2025 (see also Sat/Sun)
Bannau Brycheiniog (Brecon Beacons) National Park
14th-17th August 2025
‘Is this the way they say the future’s meant to feel or just twenty thousand people standing in a field?’…. asked someone once. Keith Goldhanger makes his Green Man Festival debut and witnesses his dreams coming true before his own eyes and ears. Four days and nights and two reviews covering some of the acts he’s always expected to see in situations such as this and one or two that were never really imagined would be contenders when they first arrived inside the small venues he often visits. The past can be Googled, the future is here.
Twenty Five thousand people snapped up tickets for this festival in under an hour eleven months ago. As we wait patiently for the queue to start moving as we leave on Monday we have our first moments of peace and contemplation since we arrived and feel we can now start piecing the events of the previous four days together and understand why.
This picturesque location set in the Bannau Brycheiniog (Brecon Beacons) National Park provides a beautiful backdrop, the line-up gives us another reason to be proud of the quality of acts available to us all in the UK at the current time and the enthusiastic crowd seem to be as excited as we are in regards to what we’re standing in front of, dancing in front of or in one or two cases sleeping under a tree in front of.
It helps that the weather couldn’t be better of course. It’s a scorcher and it’s mentioned that there will now be a lot of festival goers in this country at the current time who may yet to have experienced a wet and muddy festival. Their time will come no doubt and weekends such as this will be the envy of anyone in the future struggling up slippery slopes in their Wellingtons with one hand holding a roast dinner that’s about to have a dripping wet muddy garnish arrive in the middle of their Yorkshire pudding.
The line up on Thursday comes with a warning sign from our healthy music obsessive knowledge not to peak too early. The Mountain Stage, a breathtaking amphitheatre, has space for thousands but won’t start providing entertainment until Friday.
There’s no lack of entertainment around the site today however. The Far Out Stage hosts six acts who are all worthy of our attention today but our indulgences are limited due to the distractions in front of us on our way here; the rolling hills, the narrow, long and winding lanes, the sheep that casually wander into the road seemingly not bothered by the big metal machines travelling at thirty miles an hour, the friendly car park stewards and the responsibility of making sure our tents won’t fall down over the weekend are all to blame for us deciding that a triple bill of Gurriers, Kneecap and Factory Floor looks more than a promising start to the weekend and a decent way to begin four days of quality music, not just from bands we’ve already seen a few times over the year already, but one or two we’re excited to be catching up with again.
Gurriers tear straight into Nausea and it’s noticeable that the hundreds inside this vast tent are not just curious onlookers. Fists are in the air as lyrics are chanted back and a massive mosh pit seems to have opened in front of us. Kneecap‘s skill comes from a varied set list of banging beats, cheeky lyrics and reminders of the atrocities going on in the outside world. The temperature inside this huge tent is as high as it will be all weekend. Everyone seems to be here for the same reason, everyone has a pint, no one is acting like an arse and one of the biggest and rowdiest parties one can be at in 2025 is definitely in full swing.
The excitement seen around the country from individuals who have paid hundreds of pounds to see Oasis this year is matched by at least one of us ready to disappear into the industrial/techno/fucked-up-disco world of Factory Floor for the first time in around a decade. Over this weekend we know that some of our dreams of seeing certain acts in certain situations will come true. Bands we are guilty of annoying the neighbours with at 2am after a night down the pub will be standing on large stages, in a field, well after our bedtimes, at ear splitting volume in the open air, not just in front of a few dozen onlookers but hundreds (sometimes thousands) of raging party people who, like us, have spent far too much time hoping (and in one or two cases expecting) situations such as this will one day become a reality. Peak too early? Of course we have. It’s never too early, it’s why we’re here, it’s why we spend our lives doing what we do, and it’s what we do sometimes tell some of the people committing their own lives to constructing this music that we believe it will one day be possible. Factory Floor merging tracks such as Two Different Ways, Fall Back and Between You into the air at the start of a festival is more than anyone could ask for. We could go home already and reminisce about the past few hours, but there are hangovers to recover from and three days of further potential highs to experience. We’re off to a pretty good start.
When moments of unexpected utter joy are experienced by those of us walking into small venues on wet school nights, the finishing line is sometimes to be proved right in the assumptions made that, one day, the same show will be seen by a huge crowd, at a festival, after sunset with flashing lights. And, if we’re lucky, some audience will provide some bubbles.
Friday night is when Leeds outfit Adult DVD tick every box and become the band we knew they already were two or three years ago. But before this, there’s a visit to the main stage to see London electronic trio Wing!, who open the main stage (which itself is about four times the size of the actual venues we’ve caught them in already this year) having won this years Green Man Rising Competition. It’s not yet midday, but the beats are a welcome introduction to the day before five-piece, multi-vocal, Australian heavy guitar-based garage-punk outfit Delivery unblock our ears playing tunes from their Force Majure album that includes Operating At A Loss, a tune that is not only simply amazing in it’s own right but is now available as a remix by Adult DVD that needs to be included in everyone’s life. This is followed by the first of many secret shows at the tiny Round The Twist tent by (the mentioned too many times already) Adult DVD, and later on Wet Leg who get ringers in to soundcheck before arriving onto the tiny stage to perform their first of two shows this evening.
Ditz on the large (Far Out) stage works even better than on any of the small stages we’ve seen them play on. It’s just as manic and chaotic to witness, and today it’s difficult to see vocalist C.A. Francis, who is spending a lot of the show in the mosh pit before becoming the centre of attention again by climbing one of the metal towers holding the tent up. BC Camplight appears unannounced and John Grant (also on the Mountain stage) is distracting us from the intense early evening heat. Wunderhorse are throwing yet another strop about something (just as they seemed to at Truck Festival a few weeks ago) and at least one guitar is sacrificed as they leave the stage, stamping their feet like upset teenagers, having just performed a monstrous show in front of another huge appreciative crowd. What were they upset about? Who knows? Does anyone care or is this orchestrated?
Adult DVD are a three minute walk away, and the dreams we once had become a reality as Dogs In The Sun (that one day may or may not replace the awful Freed By Desire as the dad dancing anthem to ruin any sporting occasion – a road we’ll be ready to cross if it ever happens) fills the air with joy as an audience of a few hundred are enjoying one of the weekend’ highlights by throwing themselves into the raviest indie tunes we’ve heard since Klaxons split up. Do Something and the infectious Bill Murray are show highlights, the latter being the only song witnessed when we first walked into a small East London pub a couple of years ago (you want winners, we can provide them) and decided there and then that we’d just seen our new favourite band.
We’ve not had a break for over three hours as the entertainment is coming thick and fast tonight. Wet Leg appear on the Mountain Stage just as we get there too. For ninety minutes or so we’re treated to tracks from the band’s two highly acclaimed albums. Their first hit, Chaise Longue, as always, is left for the latter part of the set, but is followed by Mangetout and CPR from the recent album. It’s always a healthy sign when we see headline acts play some of their more recent songs as a finale and not rely on decade-old songs that many bands have later struggled to equal. Wet Leg have huge sing-a-long lovable pop/rock songs in abundance nowadays – as many as, if not more than, The Strokes provided us with when we had to reach out to the United States for some indie floor fillers a couple of decades ago. We get a well-deserved headline performance from a band who played on the Far Out Stage back in 2021 and seem to be playing in front of five figure audiences on a regular basis nowadays. Always with a smile, and already established as festival headliners, the band never seemingly take for granted the situation they have found themselves in as they stop for a minute or two during the show to take in the enormity of the crowd in front of them. We stand at the back looking around at where we are too, remembering the days before this band began and how we’ve see Rhian Teasdale transform from a piano playing crooner to fronting one of the UK’s biggest bands. This, we have to confess, is a situation we didn’t ever consider happening – but it has and we stand here tonight, observing from a distance, raising a glass yet again to someone we always knew had a voice of an angel but were never quite sure where it would eventually fit into the world around us.
It’s a funny old world we live in sometimes, but once Wet Leg have finished there’s more dancing to be done and, if we can find time, maybe some sleep.
And we’re only half way through all of this.
Photos (supplied): Main stage – Kirsty McLachlan
Kneecap – Nici Eberl
Factory Floor – Patrick Gunning
Wet Leg – Kirsty McLachlan
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