Worshipping Temples at Leeds Festival
From hotly-tipped, emotional singer-songwriter Natasha North from Buckinghamshire with tracks like The End, shortly to be taken from her forthcoming EP Fire - which might have done better at Ronnie Scotts than on the on the BBC Introducing Stage - to noisy Michigan five-piece La Dispute on the NME/Radio 1 stage.
Led by screaming singer Jordan Dreyer, it’s hard to tell if tracks from this “post hardcore” outfit’s recent album Rooms of the House are creatively ambitious or merely pretentious.
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Hide AdOne thing’s for sure, they’re certainly powerful, packing a dramatic punch from start to finish.
Temples, on the other hand, take a more cosmic if no less dynamic approach on the same stage.
Just about this point last year at Leeds Fest I was watching Tame Impala wow the same venue with a 21st century update of psychedelia based as much on rhythms as guitars.
Although more traditional, the Kettering-based quartet Temples’ anthemic songs, grandoise guitars and long hair seem to make more sense live than on their debut album Sun Structures.
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Hide AdMain man James Bagshaw and his colleague’s medium-paced, modern-day psychedelic songs ripple through the booming canvas in a flood of meaty guitar hooklines the Stone Roses would have been proud of in their heyday, all the way out into the crushed, trampled grass outside.
Mesmerise indeed!