Haim

Photo by Tom Spray

Connan Mockasin

I can’t watch Connan Mockasin without thinking, ‘this guy is creepy as fuck’. Maybe it’s the haircut, or the glasses, or the weird pyjama waistcoat combo, or that smile, but I’m pretty sure it’s mostly because I keep having flashbacks to his video for ‘I’m The Man, That Will Find You’, where he stalks a woman around her house and then when they meet it’s all very uncomfortable, like a 70s soft porn. And although the Pavillion doesn’t have quite the same soft lighting scheme, it’s still an awkward experience to watch him. But at moments, I set my awareness of rape culture to one side, and appreciate the brilliant pop-psychedelia of Connan Mockasin’s echoing, twang guitar and overly vocoded falsetto over the bass on the track, and it’s suddenly a far more pleasureable watch. But it’s also massively repetitive, and combined with the unspeakably hot weather outside the tent, gives everyone a pounding headache. Connan Mockasin manages to compel the audience with his seductive tones, but wholly engaging them is a different prospect.

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Photo by Tom Spray

Warpaint

Warpaint are cooler than you will ever be. With baggy t-shirts, pink hair and hotpants, they look like the poster girls for the Coachella look, which combined with their heavy dose of talent and skill, and desire to be sexy in sound and persona, puts them in control of their set like it’s a ball of putty. They pull you into a punch-drunk state of awe with dizzy, whirling melodies and effortless vocals that slip and slide through golden high pitched moments, and low, more brooding vocals. Frontwoman Theresa Wayman asks the Danes to party and clap, then tells her audience and band members that it was “the sexiest clap” she’d ever seen. They then move into the shiveringly good harmonies of ‘Undertow’, shredding on a single note, with the stage lights behind flashing up with a matching velocity. ‘Intro’ from their eponymous, sophomore album is played mid-way through the set rather than at the start, making the music feel continuous rather than disjointed. Wayman then starts making cat claws during the chorus of ‘Love is to Die’, then immediately laughs them off; she’s relaxed, comfortable, effortless, and hypnotisingly beautiful to watch and listen to.

Photo by Morten Aagaard Krogh

Photo by Morten Aagaard Krogh

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Haim

Haim are like the big sisters every ten year old girl dreams about, who want to teach you how to play the guitar and the drums and tell you to not care what other people think. Their live drummer plays a low, rumbling line in anticipation before Danielle, Alana and Este run and jump onto the stage like a group of excited puppies (probably a long haired breed. They shake their hair A LOT). After opening with ‘Falling’, the girls move into ‘If I could Change Your Mind’, shredding to the end. They then take a pause to ask permission to jam like they’re at home, as “Roskilde is our home now.” The crowd goes nuts. Este pulls the most fantastic bass faces throughout the set. For reference, see the Jenna Marbles video ‘How To Avoid Talking To People You Don’t Want To Talk To’, add some jerking chicken neck, and you get the idea. Alana ‘Baby’ Haim looks confused, potentially stoned, and when she does open her mouth, has a voice so squeeky it’s hard to decipher what she’s saying. But her skills as she rotates from drums, guitar and keyboard mid-way through tracks suggest that she knows exactly what she’s doing. As the set draws to an end with ‘Let Me Go’, each member bounds over to a large tom-tom and smashes it in time for a drumming trio. The stage explodes with silver confetti, the crowd cheers, and the chirpiest girls in California depart.

Photo by Morten Aagaard Krogh

Photo by Morten Aagaard Krogh

Photo by Morten Aagaard Krogh

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Deftones

The only survivors of 90s “nu-metal”, and for good reason, Deftones have something of a split personality: on record they can be dark, introspective, full of subtleties to balance the heaviness of the guitars; live, subtlety goes flying off the stage. Frontman Chino Moreno bounces up and down as if the stage were a trampoline, simultaneously attempting autoerotic asphyxiation with his microphone cord.  This, combined with jaunty banter and Chino’s Beyoncé t-shirt, proves that Deftones have developed an effective, if rather blunt, formula for playing festivals. Songs like “My Own Summer (Shove It)” are made for places like this, full of exaggerated swagger. It might not be enough to fill the field in front of Orange Stage, but with the likes of Haim and Damon Albarn playing at Arena, it is significant.

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Photo by Tom Spray

Photo by Tom Spray

Photo by Morten Aagaard Krogh

Damon Albarn

There are two Damon Albarns: cheeky Damon and mopey Damon. You see the latter in interviews all the time, looking a bit wistful, a bit troubled, singing songs that largely reflect what Blur said in 1993: modern life is rubbish. I don’t know where that guy was on Friday, but he wasn’t in Denmark. Instead we got Damon the cockney lad, grinning so broadly you could see his gold tooth from half a mile away. Whatever you might think of Damon’s solo record, Everyday Robots, there is very little of that downbeat meditative quality to the set. Arena is jam-packed and Damon & co. are happy to oblige the mood of the crowd with a set that spans Damon’s career almost in its entirety: Blur, Gorillaz, The Good, the Bad and the Queen, even Rocket Juice & the Moon, his collaboration with Flea and Tony Allen.

By the time the band gets to “El Mañana” and “Out of Time”, this is already one of the great Roskilde gigs. Damon drenches photographers with water, discusses the differences between British and Danish princes, tells us of his Danish ancestry, and generally has a good time. But as the encore reveals, he has a few surprises in store. The band launches into “Clint Eastwood” as Damon introduces Kano, the London-based rapper who had a guest spot on Plastic Beach. It’s the moment when the set moves up a notch into proper crowd-pleasing frenzy. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a great closer for the set, but not so. Damon has another set of friends to play with. They’re in a little group called De La Soul, perhaps you’ve heard of them? It’s a moment of genuine surprise and excitement as the newly augmented band launch into “Feel Good Inc.” and from this moment on it is sealed: for today at least, this is the highlight.

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Photo by Tom Spray

Photo by Tom Spray

Photo by Morten Aagaard Krogh

Darkside

No one really sees Darkside. Appropriately to their name, the duo spend their entire set in the shadows, only emerging as silhouettes when the lights behind them flare up. Avalon is packed with people awkwardly swaying along to a ten minute simmering overture. I suppose this is the one set that I was most curious about on this day. Having enjoyed their debut’s brooding, low-key menace, full of muted vocals and Chris Rea-style (ask your parents about him, they’ll know) slide guitar, it wasn’t immediately apparent how Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington were going to translate this into a festival setting. The answer is by emphasising a very basic, heavy, four-on-the-floor drum beat. The crowd was certainly jumping, but the effect was to turn these wrought soundscapes into dance tracks that bordered at times on the formulaic.

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Photo by Tom Spray

Photo by Tom Spray

Future Islands

Respect to those lucky people who managed to get into the Avalon tent to see Future Islands. Those of us who calmly strolled in fifteen minutes before the beginning were confronted with an ocean of people in the field outside of the tent, trying to peer in. Everyone wants to catch a glimpse of Samuel T. Herring’s already semi-legendary dance moves. If Future Islands are overwhelmed by all this, it certainly doesn’t hinder their playing. Herring invites people to crowd-surf, although we cannot confirm that anyone took him up on the offer. Instead he likes telling us what the songs are about, which would be a mark of awful pretension if it weren’t done with such openness. The great quality of the band is to sound unaffected and completely theatrical at the same time. Songs like “A Dream of You and Me”, “A Song for Our Grandfathers”, “Doves”, are instant synth-pop classics, full of bounce, poise and precision. But if we are going to be honest with each other, it is obvious that most people are at the gig for one song, and one song only. “Seasons (Waiting On You)” is not a fast song, but it comes on like a rush. Herring growls and wails does his dad-dance and mimes the song in sweeping gestures. Though at the back, you had to imagine this more than you could watch it.

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Photo by Tom Spray

Photo by Tom Spray

Photo by Tom Spray

Photo by Morten Aagaard Krogh

Photo by Morten Aagaard Krogh

CC = Charlie Cassarino
HT = Helen Thomas