Festival Flyer’s editor reflects on a year of live music – both in fields and grass-roots venues

I don’t think I’m the only person who finds it harder every year to get excited by new music.

Bands have to work really hard to get onto my Christmas list.

So it’s with absolute delight that I can say that 2023 has proven to be a vintage year of amazing live discoveries – as well as affirmation that bands I’ve been following and championing recently are proving worthy of the praise Festival Flyer has thrown their way…and I rediscovered a few older gems along the way too.

VLURE – HotWax – SNAYX – Personal Trainer – Funke and the Two Tone Baby – Viagra Boys – About Bunny – Gurriers – Scustin – Victor Ray – Blue Orchids – The Bevis Frond – Noah and the Loners – Enjoyable Listens – Georgie Boyd

Our top-three tips for 2023: where are they now?

Let’s start with looking at what has happened with the three acts we’ve worn on our sleeves at Festival Flyer throughout 2023: VLURE, HotWax, and SNAYX.

VLURE

Unless you are three months dead and buried VLURE will have you up on your feet from the moment they hit the stage. I’ve seen the band about half a dozen times this year (three of those sets being at Glastonbury), and I’m never disappointed by the sheer passion and energy they put into every show.

Their music crosses over genres, conjuring up echoes of Nitzer Ebb and The Chemical Brothers.

It’s bold, brash and proudly Glaswegian, and the band have quite rightly won the accolade of ‘best live band in Scotland’ – although in truth that should have been best live act in the UK.

They won huge praise from the BBC Introducing team at Glastonbury (where they came in on the back of the annual emerging talent competition) – who said after the set in the BBC tent that it was the best show they had ever seen there… and Music Venues Trust CEO, Mark Davyd, is also a massive fan, with the Trust having teamed up with the National Lottery to put the band on a UK-wide tour of grass-roots venues.

If there is a future for the live music industry in the UK, then VLURE at the sharp end of the spear.

HotWax

HotWax take the place in 2023 of being in our crosshairs in the same way that Nova Twins were the year before. And those are big boots to fill, given that Nova Twins went from relative obscurity last year to an Other Stage set at Glastonbury this summer, along with tour support slots with Muse, and now The Foo Fighters.

Back in May at The Great Escape I spoke briefly to an excited agent after one of HotWax’s weekend performances, and he hinted heavily at a tour announcement for the band that was in the pipeline.

Roll forward a month or so, and the teenage darlings of the Hastings live scene were on posters across the West Coast of America as the tour support for Royal Blood.

With an ever-growing catalogue of songs, the band fitted in a few headline shows of their own whilst stateside, and returned to play a celebratory hometown gig at the De La Warr pavilion, to a packed house of fans.

This rounded off a year when HotWax also broke through into the festival circuit in a fairly significant way, and their media profile has blown up phenomenally at the same time, thanks in no small part to John Robb from Louder Than War making comparisons with early Nirvana.

Their faces have appeared on the cover of the NME, and their name is now on the lips of most of the movers and shakers in the industry.

With a sound that careers between pop-punk and grunge and has a lyrical nod to the (horribly named) ‘crank wave’ genre that is exemplified by bands like Squid, Sports Team, and Yard Act, HotWax’s youthful energy is being channelled into what promises to be a long and fruitful career.

SNAYX

Of our top-three pop-picks of 2023 SNAYX are still proving to be the slow-burner of the bunch… but we still predict they are going to explode into the public consciousness given the right spark to light their blue touch-paper.

The Brighton-based three-piece have a similarly fierce delivery to VLURE, but musically and lyrically they sit closer to their Hastings contemporaries, Kid Kapichi.

Festivals love SNAYX, because they have the stage presence (and the songs) to delight any crowd fortunate enough to stumble on them…and having been watching them develop over the past few years it’s certain that if they can hold their current course they will soon get picked up for some bigger shows and larger stages.

If you are a booker starting to fill dates for 2024 then I highly recommend you check this lot out.

Three already established acts from 2023 who’ve really impressed us

Here are three acts who I’ve seen play several times throughout the year and who you need to know about.

One (Funke and the Two Tone Baby) is someone we’ve been heaping with praise for many years, but 2023 seems to have been a pivotal year. Another (Personal Trainer) was a more recent discovery, but in the short time they’ve been on our radar they’ve become a must-see at any festival we’ve seen them on the bill at.

And however much you think you know about music there are always surprises around the corner – and the one for me this year was stumbling on Viagra Boys for the first time…since they formed in 2018!

Funke and the Two Tone Baby

In any one-man-band contest, Dan Turnbull (AKA Funke and the Two Tone Baby) would walk away with the best in breed trophy.

I can’t remember which corner of a festival field I first stumbled on him…but I’m so glad I did, because he’s been a continuous thread running through all the best festivals I’ve been to over what feels like the thick end of a decade.

Armed with a guitar, a keyboard station, some loop tricks and a couple of microphones, Funke and the Two Tone Baby belts out a truly original set of electro-blues anthems that range from heartfelt to whimsy, with some astute observational content thrown in for good measure.

But what changed in 2023?

Well finally the world seems to have woken up to his prodigious talent – that’s what.

At Bearded Theory he knocked it out of the park to a delighted capacity woodland crowd.

At Glastonbury his Greenpeace Stage set was enormous.

And at Beautiful Days he was finally elevated to the main stage – and he owned it from start to finish.

That, plus the fact that he released a new album, the remarkable ‘Reacclimate’, and took the brave step of touring it in it’s entirety, with hardly any additional songs from his back catalogue in the set.

And that gamble paid off, because his new songs are all instant crowd-pleasers, and that’s a true measure of musical maturity.

Personal Trainer

Sitting at the heart of the musical spider’s web that is Personal Trainer is the loveable Willem Smit, who, since 2018, has been gathering a gaggle of musicians from other bands to surround him for his on-stage antics.

The Amsterdam-based collective have been nibbling away at the corners of the industry with the tenacity of a beaver, and they have now firmly established themselves as champions of ‘that genre’ that I prefer to leave nameless, but that has been dubbed ‘Crank Wave’ by a well-meaning (if misguided) NME hack. You would probably file them alongside Bodega if that was how you sorted your record collection.

The sound is spiky and quirky in equal measure, and the band’s stage performances generally involve a lot of band members taking off (most of) their clothes.

Notable for a 24-hour continuous performance back in 2021, Personal Trainer certainly don’t lack energy and stamina.

I think I first saw a brief part of one of their sets a couple of years ago, and was mildly intrigued at the time, but for whatever reason didn’t follow up on the lead.

But during 2023 they have become a reason to go to a festival in the first place – not just a band worth seeing once there.

I’ve just ordered their LP, ‘Big Love Blanket’ and I’m looking back to lying back and absorbing the raw music without the added live seasoning. I don’t think I’ll be disappointed.

Viagra Boys

For a band formed five years ago it’s surprising how few people seem to know much about Viagra Boys…especially as their debut album ‘Street Worms’ won IMPALA ‘album of the year’ and this year they picked up a Grammi in their home country of Sweden for ‘best rock act’.

Think a socio-politically-driven Presidents of the United States of America fronted by a cross between Henry Rollins and Shane McGowan…with a great horn section… and you are in the right ballpark.

There’s actually a strong chance if you are a 6-Music fan that you’ve heard them without picking up the band name…because if you give their debut single ‘Sports’ a listen you’ll almost certainly hear a loud penny drop as it was on heavy rotation at the time.

As well as the Grammi award, 2023 also saw them hit the UK festival circuit with a set at Bearded Theory and another at Glastonbury’s Park Stage, which was televised by the BBC.

I hope that this brace of brilliantly received shows heralds more exposure for the band in the UK over coming years, because they deserve every second of stage time that anyone cares to offer them.

Four brand new finds for 2023

Unsurprisingly three of these acts are festival finds…but one snuck onto my radar as support for Noah and The Loners at their single launch gig in Brighton a month or so ago. That was About Bunny. Elsewhere, 2000Trees introduced me to Gurriers, who I also saw at Latitude, alongside follow Irishmen, Scustin, and the lone-wolf, Victor Ray.

About Bunny

Another female-fronted band looking to redress the music industry gender imbalance, About Bunny are set to take the HotWax/Nova Twins position in our 2024 ‘ones to watch’ list.

Immediately after their Brighton set I tracked the band down outside their dressing room and I explained why…quite simply – they could hold their own on pretty much any stage at any festival I can imagine…and I’ve been to LOADS.

I do love a good cooking analogy when describing music… after all, music is to your ears what food is to your taste buds.

And About Bunny nail that quintessential ‘flavour balance’ that TV chef competitors always seem to be striving for by bringing together hard and soft and sweet and sour into one harmonious whole.

Britney Spears meets Transvision Vamp anyone?

Named for the ‘Bunny’ character in The Big Lebowski, the band have roots across the UK and Sweden, but have called London their home and are now burrowing their way through the tough independent guitar band scene…but I for one see them coming out on top before very long.

Gurriers

One of two Irish bands on this part of my list, and the first to grab my attention when I caught their set at 2000Trees Festival earlier in the summer, Gurriers are new to the music scene but are already gathering all the right press cuttings to impress any potential promoter.

“…enraged, frenetic…something special…be warned” are the words that regularly jump off the page at you as you read their biographies.

Songs like ‘Approachable’ and ‘Sign of the Times’ are real giant slayers. Fast-paced slices of raw passion that throb with rhythm but eschew stealth, for in-your-face, balls-to-the wall intensity.

I’m not going to say anything more here…just listen and learn for yourself.

SCUSTIN

Ireland has a knack for this sort of thing… ‘louche funk’ would be a good genre name.

Scustin pick up where Republic of Loose left off many years ago, although they walk on a sunnier side of the street by and large…with storytelling central to their theme.

And whilst those stories have dark roots, the delivery lifts them to a joyfully toe-tapping level that puts smiles on faces and lightens the hearts of all who hear them.

Their biography references Jamiroqui and Mike Skinner, and it’s hard to ignore those influences…but they are disparate enough to ensure that whilst familiar, the Scustin sound is at the same time fresh and new.

Their two sets at Latitude were like two chapters of different books by the same author, and looking around the crowd at the later show of the day it was telling that many faces were familiar from the earlier one…and also that despite a different musical vibe, the reactions were equally gleeful.

Festival and gig bookers who ignore Scustin do so at their peril.

Victor Ray

Victor Ray was playing at Latitude to a small but appreciative crowd when I saw him for the first time…an intimate gig that belied the fact that he enjoys millions of streaming plays across each of his most popular songs and is currently racking up around ½ million plays on Spotify alone each month.

And you only have to listen for yourself to understand why…because this is such listenable music that it simply speaks for itself.

Are you a fan of Rag’n’Bone Man? Does Ed Sheeran float your boat? If so then Victor Ray ought to be on your playlists.

Ray’s rise to the attention of the masses is a product of the blip-vert-hungry short attention spans that propel instant gratification content to the top of the charts in a Tik-Tok dominated world.

After a few years of hard graft it was an 8-second cover of a Hozier track that blew up in literally a few hours to see his viewing figures go through the roof on all platforms.

But unlike some people who achieve virality by accident, Ray earned his moment through talent, and it is that inherent quality that has allowed him to capitalise on that moment of luck and he can now sell-out headline shows in a matter of hours.

His back-story is one of a man striving to be the best he can be…and I hope his future history will see him rise to the place he deserves to be.

It almost feels to easy to include him in our 2024 ones to watch, but we do like to be able to say ‘told you so’… so his name will probably feature.

Old gold – a rich, deep seam of uncharted music rediscovered in 2023

When the festival season is at an ebb it’s time to start exploring grass-roots music venues again to see what gets brought to town that might not have been on my radar before.

And this year there were two notable shows that stand out as having introduced me to phenomenal bands with a long – but to me at least – unknown history.

These were The Bevis Frond and Blue Orchids.

The Bevis Frond

Here lies one of the great mysteries of modern music. How can such an influential and respected band have existed for over 40 years almost completely unrecognised by the mainstream industry?

I first caught them live some four or five years ago…but somehow lost touch with their music, despite having been impressed on the night. I think because at the time I had no idea of their impressive pedigree.

My second live experience came with more of an insight into where they had come from and what they had done…and with that in my mind I realised just exactly what I’d been missing out on for so long.

The Bevis Frond seem to deliberately defy genre categorisation by constantly re-inventing their sound. You could find them variously listed under pop, punk, psyche, folk, blues, or guitar rock.

…and some songs seem to shimmer with all of the above.

Their music has been covered by The Lemonheads, Teenage Fanclub and many more.

They are referenced as pioneers by the likes of Pavement and Dinosaur Jr.

The Bevis Frond will NOT win any beauty contests…but their music is perfectly gorgeous whatever your taste.

If your festival has an audience who appreciate fine things give them a treat in 2024 and book The Bevis Frond.

Blue Orchids

Formed in 1979 (after the band’s founding members split from Mark E Smith and left The Fall), Blue Orchids sit somewhere between the swirling organ sound of Inspiral Carpets and the shouty angst of their former anti-protagonist.

Half sung, half spoken lyrics paint observational vignettes of life on the edge of society, and avid followers of the indie charts during the 80s will find plenty of familiar songs in their back catalogue.

And I walked away from the first gig I ever saw them play clutching five vinyl albums…all of which I listened to back to back twice over, and none of which I had any inclination to put up for sale on Discogs as a result.

It’s mildly irritating when your new (almost) favourite band turns out to be one you could have been listening to for years!

A nod to an eye for good music: End of the Trail Creative

Lastly here, a quick mention for End of the Trail Creative – a management and promotions company who’ve been putting some of the most entertaining bands we’ve seen onto stages from Glastonbury to SXSW for the last few years.

With acts such as Noah and the Loners, Enjoyable Listens, and Georgie Boyd under their belts they are more than likely to have some big successes on their hands…so keep an eye on their roster for a few more ‘most likely to succeed’ names…