End of the Road (EOTR) festival was overdue a bad weather year. The last time the rain truly came down in the ornate grounds of Dorset’s Larmer Tree Gardens was eight years ago, and even then, the shower felt less like an inconvenience than a paid-for prop to shine Perfume Genius’s leather pants. Thanks to its perennial dryness, this de facto end-of-summer weekender has often stirred some hazy, communal belief that our long, warm days might last forever. But it’s a belief misplaced this year; the rain comes early and doesn’t leave.
Thursday night, despite its gloomy shadings, rumbles in with colour. The crisp hills of last week, now damp and in shadow, house a leftfield utopia – a summer night’s dream of eclectic artistry and imagination. Down the A354 from Salisbury to Rio de Janeiro, the scruffy Brazilian soul of Rogê – both boyish and weary-eyed – is a mesmeric start to the Folly stage with hints of Sessa and Arthur Verocai, before the world and its dog withstands the elements for indie-rock heavyweight Sharon Van Etten’s very first festival headline set, playing with her new band the Attachment Theory.
Van Etten is an inspired booking, true to everything a festival of EOTR’s size should be in the making of all tomorrow’s headliners. She fills the promise with power and humility, stumbling through some audience conversation (“It’s hard to collectively laugh, but I know you’re here with me”) before beaming, more resolutely: “Women can headline festivals!” It’s hard to believe this is her first time. Her songs sound undeniably massive on this stage, raindrops dancing around the lyrics of her pseudo-hits, as she cracks a smile through a chorus of “every time the sun comes up I’m in trouble”. She’s safe as houses.
The morning after, Dublin songwriter Ellie O’Neill trials a track that’s not fully finished, glancing out from under the Folly’s veranda: “I wrote this in equally bad weather, so maybe it’ll make sense of itself now.” Every song sits in conversation with itself, her deep finger-picked guitar straight from the Leonard Cohen songbook, swapping avalanche for oblivion. “Peter’s Song” is a highlight, about her best friend from home: “I miss you most with my boy’s clothes on.” Strolling into the woods, O’Neill plays again – a secret set in a painted pink box – crouching at the piano to cover Nina Simone’s version of “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?”.
There are plenty of other surprises this year. The rain has mostly scared off the peacocks – one pokes its head sheepishly into the art pavilion where Babak Ganjei’s mainstay exhibition remains a delight of “Fragile” dad caps and holographic-print notebooks reading: “When I do it it’s good, when you do it it’s not good.” Podcaster Adam Buxton fronts three quarters of Metronomy for the first of the festival’s acclaimed late-night secret sets; raucous Stockholm punks Viagra Boys pledge mid-strip to donate their Garden Stage headline fee to Doctors Without Borders; and London six-piece The Orchestra (For Now) – winners of last year’s Green Man Rising competition – cover The Last Dinner Party and MJ Lenderman.
Last-minute scheduling changes put West Country-born slowcore post-rock trio Glasshouse Red Spider Mite in the Big Top, and their triumphant slow build crashes like a wave, part Low, part Godspeed!, part Andy Shauf. Dressed in his Sunday best, Mohammad Syfkhan has the same upgrade, playing Kurdish dance music on his Bouzouki to an ever-quickening backing track – “Are you all OK with this?” – before new Rough Trade signing The Sophs make their blistering UK debut, as the first band signed to the label from an unsolicited demo tape since The Strokes.
The big stage delivers, too. Saturday night’s headliner Self Esteem, is born for this – switching innuendo-heavy Carry On film antics for slick sloganeering pop the night after Caribou’s indie electronic euphoria was interrupted only by wafts of The National’s Matt Berninger covering “his favourite band” (The National) through the trees. Former Fleet Foxes drummer turned eccentric crooner Father John Misty brings us to a soft landing, playing out his Sunday headline set like a sermon. New musical-theatre adjacent single “Summer’s Gone” makes for a fitting singalong finale: “Wish it all away/ the heat of the day/ until summer’s gone.”
Larmer Tree becomes everybody’s playground in the mud: grandparents slide through the forest, cheering on marbles down a 10-metre-long run; adults fall over a giant papier-mâché yeti’s mouth for a photo op; children congregate for tea and cake in a double-decker bus with a fiver in their pockets and a different curfew from their parents. End of the Road may not have been blessed by the sun gods this year, but the rain reveals the resilience at the heart of this little oasis in the trees – and highlights what’s really important about one of the most unmissable weekends in music.
