Triumph for North Yorkshire indie festival full of music highlights plus Andy Burnham and Simon Armitage
“I thought I would start with my biggest disco bangers”.
With a dry slice of Yorkshire wit Simon Armitage sums up the atmosphere of the 14th annual Deer Shed Festival near Thirsk.
Well-organised, civilised and serious but not THAT serious.
Coming after two low key ambient songs where the Poet Laureate’s three-piece band LYR sounded like Mogwai with Ted Hughes on lead vocals, the laconic remark earned a big laugh from the crowd who were gathered all around the open-sided canvas of the Lodge stage.
Armitage then hit the hushed audience with The Enlightenment, a brilliantly moving written number for the Festival of Libraries 2024 summing up how important libraries are.
This was by far not the only surprising hit of this year’s Deer Shed, the wonderfully eclectic independent festival launched in 2010 by Kate Webster and Oliver Jones.
"When we started Deer Shed, we did it with the intention of creating the kind of festival we would want to attend – a combination of great music and great family entertainment with neither detracting from the other,” said Jones after the dust had settled.
Attracting 8,000 people to a sunny Baldersby Park last weekend, as well as indie stars such as Bombay Bicycle Club, BC Camplight and the Mercury Prize-nominated CMAT, it was the lesser known acts who shone brightest in the fields of North Yorkshire.
Red shirt, dark shades, excellent guitar playing, the perfectly-delivered retro soul of American-born Jalen Ngonda saw the crowd build up in front of the stage one song at a time as his understated brilliance worked its magic.
A London resident recording for cool New York label Daptone, Ngonda may sing falsetto but there’s nothing false about his talent.
Dublin-based female four-piece Pillow Queens proved classic guitar bands are not a thing of the past, even if the songwriting tailed off.
As well as the music, comedy, spoken word and outdoors activities kept the atmosphere vibrant with Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham even making an appearance.
Best of all was the circus psychedelia of brilliant headliners The Coral, a band better now than at any time.