Many impressive bands played this festival, yet most failed to stir the soul. Hatred and woe were peddled with noisy indifference by the furious metallers, and self-pitying shoegazers.
These artists were surpassed by those able to convey subtlety; able to express a feeling without resorting to conspicuous melodrama.
King Adora were one such band.
Lead singer Matt Browne (Maxi), six feet tall and skeletal, was a compelling presence on stage. He was beautiful with vivid hair and smudgy made-up eyes. He moved with poise, oozing sexuality; spoke with warmth and force.
Where others substituted machismo for charisma and drab chords for sentiment, King Adora's songs were passionate, heartfelt, strong. Pain and pleasure were explicit, elegantly transmitted.
It took three minutes for the band to send the crowd delirious. Into the second song, Bionic and half the crowd went into orgasmic overdrive. White Noise Babies was next, reminiscent of early Manic Street Preachers. With the newly-released single Friday Night Explodes, crowd surfers surged everywhere.
From this frantic high, the comedown was After Time. A lament for lost love, it began with peaky guitar and a keyboard melody that was lonesome, shrill and distant. Maxi's voice was fractured with emotion. Sorrow gave way to a heaviness, the sound of burning anger.
Then came Suffocate, sounding something like Placebo, about a destructive, undying love. Effervescent but never lightweight, King Adora evoked darkness and agony with humour and delicacy.
Looking a million dollars and sounding tight through the feedback, they did high-class, trash-free punk.
Sensuality and up-yours attitude captured the senses. The words of the tortured artist touched the heart.
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