The Great Escape 2018

I think this might have been my favourite TGE so far. The weather was brilliant, including the sea at its lowest level I have ever seen. Musically, the festival was packed with some great new bands and an excellent headline set from the amazing Idles, which was just full of love.

The festival introduced a new beach area. The area, near Concorde has three stages. A big headline stage, and second stage and an acoustic stage, along with space for food trucks. It is a nice space, if a little out the way which meant you really had to have a reason to trek down there. Luckily, the weather was great which helped. I’m not sure this will be the stage to be at if it rains.

Idles were the main draw on Day 1 playing a headline set. There were queues to get into the space. Luckily I managed to get in just before they started and oddly, without any pushing, there was a space at the end of the barrier. Idles went down really well. The audience loved them and they seemed to love the audience hanging around taking selfies and signing merch.

There was also a New York band, Bodega, who had made some serious waves at SXSW with several people telling me I had to catch them. My first try at catching them was at the Green Door Store but this was packed and one in one out. I managed to squeeze in at the back for the last few songs and it was obvious how good they were. Luckily they were playing the Haunt later in the festival with Warmduscher on straight before. So I got there early and made sure I was down at the front. Oh my, Bodega are very good.

There was other interesting and hyped music around. Other highlights, The Ninth Wave, Warmdusher, Drahla, Nelson Cann, Hotel Lux, Hatis Noir, Life and Veronica Bianqui (who played a venue the night before)

There was so much good music around. Most of the bands I saw were enjoyable, some like Amyl and the Sniffers, I thought were overhyped, but they were still good. Others like Pip Blom and Sister Talk always put on good shows. This year was pretty much a perfect festival.