Review: Reading Festival 2012, Sunday

The last day of Reading sadly arrived and to start the day Pulled Apart By Horses were on the Main Stage. I’m not a massive fan of theirs but the crowd seemed to relish to opportunity to see this band, despite them being on so early in the day; I’m sure a lot of fans dragged their hangovers with them to the Main Stage. I watched the next few bands on the Main Stage. Eagles of Death Metal were entertaining as were The Gaslight Anthem but the band that I was particularly excited about were a personal favourite of mine All Time Low. They were awesome despite having technical difficulties, it didn’t affect their show at all apart from the spontaneous cover of ‘Dammit’ by Blink 182. They played a show that demonstrated all their greatest hits, instead of showcasing what’s to come in their forthcoming album Don’t Panic. They didn’t even play new singles ‘Reckless and The Brave’ and ‘For Baltimore’. Instead they played crowd favourites such as ‘Jasey Rae’ and ‘Dear Maria, Count Me In’. With the usual toilet humour the crowd of teenage girls went nuts, especially when Jack (Barakat, guitarist) offered an orgy at the noodle bar at 5pm that afternoon.

Next on the Main Stage were Bullet For My Valentine followed by Kaiser Cheifs who rattled through their hits. Frontman Ricky was particularly charismatic, this sone through when he would flirt with the cameras and bound around the stage to the crowd’s delight. I head over to the NME/Radio1 stage to catch the last of SBTRKT, managed to see them perform hits ‘Wildfire’ and ‘Hold On’. They sounded incredible live and the tent was packed with people enjoying their sound. Having being told I must see them I watched The Black Keys on the Main Stage and they were really good despite not knowing the majority of their songs. Once again, they received a very good reception from the Reading crowd, especially single ‘Lonely Boy’ was played.

Now for the headline acts. I am probably going to get a lot of outraged responses when I say that I didn’t watch all of the Foo Fighters set. I’m not a massive fan, however I do appreciate Dave Grohl as a legend in the music scene. I watched the start of the set and they seemed to please the crowd to say the least. As it was their ‘last live show for a while’ they played a whopping almost 3 hours of hits. I snuck out of the crowd and headed over to the NME/Radio1 Stage where Two Door Cinema Club were starting their headline show. It was a delightful mix of the brand new album Beacon and their outstanding debut Tourist History. I left Reading a very happy person.