End of the Road Festival 2022 – a music-lovers paradise
End of the Road is definitely a music lovers festival – with a heavy emphasis on the musical road less traveled.
Even seasoned festival-goers will find themselves turning to the programme descriptions of bands they have only half heard of previously to inform their decisions about which of the stages to head to next.
Having said that its also a festival for food lovers, shoppers, and parents with young kids…or adults who just never grew up.
Although the food circle at the top of the Woods stage isn’t huge there’s no ‘fat’ – just quality traders serving up as wide a range of dishes as you will find at festivals three times the size.
And the non-food stalls seem to manage to absorb a lot of retail therapy time despite there not being that many of them…again, a well-curated and hand-picked set of products…with strong themes of vintage chic or natural materials.
Arts and crafts
For those with a little spare time on their hands Wayne’s Wood spoon carving workshops were an excellent way of spending two productive hours and creating a nice little unique souvenir of your time at End of the Road.
Other crafts activities could be found in the winding network of forest paths… along with games, peacocks, and the opportunity to hunt sticks in their natural environment and enter your captive twigs and mini-logs into the Sunday ‘best twig’ competition.
Overall the site hits that sweet-spot in terms of size and charm… in fact we’d say that of the many festivals we’ve been to, it ranks among the very best.
And that musical diversity we mentioned is another of the strengths of End of the Road. That, added to the fact that it attracts a crowd that clearly responds to new bands.
Pretty much every set we went to was well-attended, and some were packed to the rafters, even for bands who were far from household names.
And on that score, who did we find that we loved?
Best bands of the festival
KEG
Well, Keg for starters were a brilliant opening to the festival in the Big Top. This is another of those ‘genre with no name’ bands who sit alongside the likes of Squid, Dry Cleaning, and Warm Duscher and bask in a sea of quirky observational wit. I wish a single label would snap them all up so that we could have a new Two Tone movement.
ENGLISH TEACHER
English Teacher (who got a main stage gig to follow up from the John Peel stage show they won at Glastonbury through the Emerging Talent Competition, and although they don’t quite have the impact of Keg, they definitely sit in the same category of new-no-wave or whatever we are supposed to call it.
FAT DOG
For sheer exuberance Fat Dog totally rocked our planet and gave a nice punky seasoning to a line-up that otherwise is dominated by ‘dreamy-alt-pop-folk’ stylings…and the younger element of the crowd definitely responded with the sort of wild abandon that indicates this is a band with a future.
That said – if you want to find out anything about them online they are a bit of an enigma… definitely seem to be South East London based given the smattering if gigs showing on YouTube. But other than that there is an internet radio silance that tells us one thing… they are getting poised for BIG THINGS.
We shot a bit of footage but it was all randon clips so just check out the crowd reactions then go do this yourself if you see them playing a gig near you. Festival bookers…do your homework and get them on your stages next year!
AUDIOBOOKS
Right towards the end of the night we were delighted to rediscover David Wrench in his new duo project, Audiobooks. David’s former career came to our attention well over 15 years ago, and if you look up his ‘Atomic World of Tomorrow’ LP you will find a soaring pop classic that should be on everyone’s list of favorites. He takes second seat in this new format, but we loved the vibe and snapped up the vinyl LP we found for sale in the Rough Trade tent the next day.
GROVE
File Grove alongside Lynks – see below… and for very good reason.
Both acts are blasting out of the UK queer scene and gaining fans of every possible persuasion along the way.
Grove are a singular they…causing all the usual confusions and grammar convulsions for old gits like me when reading or writing about them… but to be honest they make such a multi-layered sound they might as well be a full band rather than a solo show.
In fact they started out in a rock band, and that early stage in their career shows through in stagecraft… and, of course, the are happy to collaborate, having put down a great track with Lynks – ‘BBB’ (Big Bad Bitch) – which they delighted crowds with on the Tipi stage later in the day.
If we could set up a really cool gig it would be Nova Twins supported by Grove and Lynks… wow… how mental would that be!!!
TV PRIEST
Here’s a band I’ve always somehow managed to accidentally find myself avoiding at numerous festivals over the past few years.
Finally getting to see them in the Tipi tent showed me how much I have miss…so once the gig was over I scampered quickly to the Rough Trade tent to snap up a couple of their albums – ‘My Other People’ and ‘Uppers’.
We are talking about something very reminiscent of Mark E Smith fronting Joy Division.
And that is a VERY GOOD THING.
Watch them. Listen to them. Enjoy them.
LYNKS
OK – wow.
Lynks have been on my radar through local gig reviews for a little while, but only from a purley visual angle…and I’d written the band off as a bit of a joke act.
How wrong I was.
With hyperactive dance routines and a huge wardrobe of gimp masks, this electro-punk 3-piece are bursting out of the London gay scene and are about to inflict their unique and passionate charm onto an unsuspecting global audience.
From a life-long fan of indie guitar music take it from me – Lynks will win you over within the first few bars and leave you wanting more as the echoes of their last track reverberate around a venue that will be bursting with applause.
URAL THOMAS
Ural Thomas and The Pain is a proper old-school soul outfit fronted by the happiest guy at the festival – and that’s saying a lot given how much fund everyone was having all weekend. Totallu authentic and original, this is proper music performed the way it should be, with style, passion, and grace.
We loved every second of this show, including is laughing anedotes between songs.
PURLING HISS
Terrible, ugly, name, and Purling Hiss sound like an angry American Oasis…but actually both of these facts are OK by me, because it turns out I actually quite like a bit of angry transatlantic Oasis.
YARD ACT
This late-night set in the big top was almost washed out as a thunderstorm hit the festival just minutes before Yard Act were due to hit the stage.
For almost 30 minutes the audience hung around outside, either getting drenched in the open or sheltering under a nearby open-sided tent that had been a sun shelter for the rest of the weekend.
But undaunted and only about 10-15 minutes later than advertised, the band hit the stage with their usual cheerful ferocity.
Although a handful of lightweight fans had made a run back to their tents the big top was still almost full to the seams, and this was a truly perfect end to the festival in our book – although that said if we had any energy left there were other acts playing later into the early hours of Monday morning.
But we didn’t, so this was our farewell to end of the Road 2022 – and we wouldn’t have chosen a better band to send us on our way…clutching a couple of choice pieces of Yard Act vinyl to act as part of the soundtrack to writing this review.
