GRustonbury loves secret sets. God only knows why. From the outside, they seem more trouble than they’re worth. It’s a tough balance to strike; if the people you pick are disappointing, your special guest won’t seem so special. But to get someone really important, especially at a big festival, you have to deal with crowds, staff and all sorts of logistical issues. Plus there’s the small challenge of keeping it a secret; festivals are the leakiest, most gossiped about places on the planet.
Certainly not Kasabian’s unannounced early evening set at Woody’s, which everyone apparently knew about for weeks. So you might think this would be a case of the special guest being too special. After all, won’t Kasabian be totally faded by 2024? They’ve weathered the departure of Tom Meighan in 2020, after he was convicted of assaulting his partner, and it seems like a lifetime ago when they were pounding out dance-rock hits like it was the easiest thing in the world.
Wrong. Woody’s is the busiest it’s been since The Killers played a secret set here in 2017. The whole field, not just the tents, is full, and most attendees can only follow the show by craning their necks to watch the screens. The dominant mode is youth. Nearby, a Celtic fan is singing rude songs about Rangers, and a man beside me is explaining to the person next to him how to distill his own vodka. (“No, it’s fine,” another man says sagely, when offered a glass.) The mood is boozy, good-natured and, above all, excited. It’s clear that Kasabian still matters quite a lot to a lot of people.
As the opening thud of Clubfoot rings out, Serge Pizzorno bursts onto the stage. Despite his public reluctance to take over as frontman after Me’gan’s departure, he’s clearly been the band’s frontman long enough to make the role his own. He’s more puppy-dog-like and energetic than his scowling predecessor; he sounds like a juvenile camp coordinator as he tells people to “mosh pit, mosh pit, mosh pit.”
Kasabian’s biggest hits, Clubfoot, Shoot the Runner, and LSF, sound as if they were machine-made to be played on a warm day in a big field, and are packed with riffs and refrains that even the most drunken audience can sing along to. But there’s another kind of Kasabian song, unmemorable and boring, that falls a little short here. The mediocrity of these moments is further accentuated by the odd decision (a long-standing Kasabian tradition) to incorporate intros to other songs into the setlist, such as Prodigy’s “Breathe,” “Groove is in the Heart,” Beastie Boys’ “Intergalactic,” and “Praise You.”
But in the end, it doesn’t really matter. It’s 6pm, and the excitement of the night is such that everyone is in a generous mood, sitting through the weaker parts of the catalog and savoring the hits. As the caffeinated Fire starts to chug along, the roof of Woody’s tent threatens to come off. Come to think of it, a roof would have been a lifesaver for those of us left outside craning our necks to peer inside.
