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Rhian Teasdale swaggers onto the main stage at Wilderness Festival, turns her back to the audience and flexes her muscles like a prize-fighter. The Wet Leg singer has every reason to be feeling cocksure, given that the band recently topped the UK album charts with their sugar rush of a second album, ‘Moisturizer’.
Drawing a huge crowd on the Sunday evening of this fabulous weekender, the reigning indie champions leave no doubt as to why they beat Oasis’ best-of ‘Time Flies’ to the top spot. Their muscular guitar anthems are so full of wit that the audience responds in kind: one little kid down the front waves a sign that reads: “I’m your smallest fan.”
The band’s gritty performance shows how many ways you can ‘ave it at Wilderness. Held on the picturesque Cornbury Park and now in its 14th iteration, the festival has cultivated a reputation as the glammest on the boutique circuit. Yes, there’s a Veuve Clicquot champagne bar. And, yes, there’s a spa (and another champagne bar) beside one of the two lakes sunk into the site. Here pampered punters watch on as families enjoy a spot of wild swimming, minding not to disturb the people doing yoga on a cluster of paddle boats.
So, much of it’s very genteel and this is a distinctly family friendly do, with parents weaving kids’ trolleys around the throng (Wilderness has a capacity of 30,000 but it feels like the enormous site could accommodate double that number, which prevents any chance of overcrowding). At night, though, the freaks come out to play in a designated dance section that begins roughly at a secret garden-themed bar called The Riddle and leads to The Valley, an expanse of woodland that’s been transformed into a vast dancefloor.
Vibes-wise, this side of Wilderness is Charli XCX in her shades and Vivienne Westwood wedding dress, demurely smoking a Vogue. Late on Saturday night, Confidence Man move a packed crowd with their DJ set at The Valley, lasers zinging overhead as the Aussie dance dons pump out the likes of ‘Gossip’, their sassy, Spanish guitar-adorned collab with JADE. The freewheeling atmosphere is pretty well summed up by the lad good-naturedly dunking his fox tail-wearing mate face-down into a recycling bin.
There’s decidedly less neon on display at The Dive, a small venue that’s new to Wilderness this year. With an exterior that’s styled to resemble an American roadhouse, this gloriously dingy bar hosts scuzzy indie bands such as Goodbye, a five-piece who blend fragile, Cocteau Twins-style vocals with a guitar tone that’s by turns dreamy and full-on grunge. They’ve yet to release any music but are clearly one to watch.
If there’s a single band that embodies the louche side of Wilderness though, it’s Air who grace a main stage framed by a white oblong box. The minimalist set-up indicates the effortlessly cool approach that the French space-pop duo (rounded out by a live drummer) take to noodling through their 1998 masterpiece ‘Moon Safari’, which they began to play in full last year.
The band’s crisp beats, snaking basslines and neon-hued synths conjure images of, well, people sipping champagne in a hot tub overlooking a lake, which you couldn’t quite say of Kent ravers Orbital who obliterate the same stage with a sonic assault later in the evening. At one point the pair – cast in shadow, with flashing white lights affixed to their heads like eyes – are accompanied by a pre-recorded video of Sleaford Mods’ Jason Williamson, who barks class war missives during their pulverising collaboration ‘Dirty Rat’.
Norwegian singer AURORA is also outspoken the following evening, as she intersperses arty synth-pop with pleas for a better planet. “We see the world in so much pain and we want to do so much,” she says, “but it’s hard to know what to do.” In the end, she concludes, “our voices help and everything we do matters so much”. In that spirit, she dedicates the delicate, heartbreaking ‘Through The Eyes Of A Child’ to “the children of Palestine”.
She’s followed on the main stage by local lads Supergrass, who batter through their sensational debut album ‘I Should Coco’ to mark its 30th birthday. Peppering the set with other classic tracks that didn’t appear on that record, Gaz Coombes and co. put on a weekend highlight for all-ages audience who prove the Britpop revival continues apace.
After Wet Leg display their mettle on the final night, with Teasdale at one point dousing her hair in water, looking like a boxer who’s just floored the competition, Basement Jaxx close the main stage with a truly jaw-dropping show. The London dance duo rock out from a circular hole cut into the floor, aided in their big beat bonanza by a rotating cast of vocalists and dancers in space-age silver tutus, all of whom strut fearlessly down the tilted stage.
After a 10-year break from performing, the lads are certainly back with a bang. It’s yet another KO at a triumphant Wilderness Festival, the heavyweight glamp-ion of the UK.
NME is an official media partner of Wilderness Festival
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“I received plenty of comments saying it was far too soon to ‘go solo’,” Geese frontman Cameron Winter told NME last year while reflecting on how people initially reacted to his decision to branch out on his own. “Most likely because a lot of folks assume that ‘solo albums’ only happen once a band has passed its peak and that they usually feel like uninspired cash grabs.”
Honestly, everyone is trying to earn a living however they can these days, yet no one expected a Geese side project to generate any real financial payoff in 2024. “Just so you know,” he went on, “my solo album is different: because barely anyone knows my band, I am young and comfortable living with my parents and I have the freedom to follow any ideas that interest me.”
Brooklyn indie followers and former NME cover stars Geese were gaining real momentum when their second album ‘3D Country’ mixed cowboy psychedelia with a jazzy, art-punk energy that had already captured the attention of many UK 6 Music dads back in 2023, but who could have predicted what came next? Geese have become one of the most talked-about bands of 2025 and are expected to dominate multiple end-of-year lists with the ambitious and full-range rock of ‘Getting Killed’. Yet the moment that set the stage for this rise was Winter’s Lou Reed-inspired debut solo record ‘Heavy Metal’.
A handful of late-night US television appearances and a spot on Jools Holland acted as a welcoming doorway for the world to see what this 23-year-old can do far beyond what many twice or three times his age are capable of. Now the sold-out Roundhouse audience made up of indie teens, art school regulars, fans who traveled across Europe and seasoned listeners reacts with a collective breath as a slight opening in the stage curtain reveals the silhouette of Winter seated at a piano. First comes a spark of excitement, then a sudden hush.
There is no flashy social media moment, no chatter overriding the music and almost no sea of raised phones. There is a sincerity to how the night unfolds. The Geese singer barely turns toward the audience. “Turn around!” someone calls out from the balcony at one stage. “Is this not enough for you all?” Winter teases back. For some, maybe it was more than enough. At least four people appear to faint around the warm and crowded Roundhouse while the room stands in absolute focus as Winter moves through the dreamlike storytelling of ‘Try As I May’, the emotional swirl of ‘The Rolling Stones’, the bright lift of ‘Love Takes Miles’ and the sermon-like stomp of ‘Nausicaä (Love Will Be Revealed)’. When he reaches the intense and spiritually charged ‘$0’, even the most skeptical hipster might be convinced that “I’m not kidding, God is actually real”. In that moment, it feels as though we all understand.
The entire performance can be summed up in how ‘Drinking Age’ unfolds. It starts softly with a gentle touch on the keys before erupting into a thunderous attack on the Steinway that could echo into next year, followed by a long, open cry aimed toward the sky. Winter somehow manages to blend something minimal with something enormous, something grounded with something cosmic, a delicate approach that hits with staggering force as he reaches toward ideas of existence, heaven, hell and everything surrounding them.
Winter could recite the phone book and still leave a crowd stunned. He carries the spirit of a post-punk Rufus Wainwright you can play alongside The Strokes and Arctic Monkeys, a Gen Z Tom Waits for listeners exhausted by TikTok overload, a new Nick Cave who arrives at exactly the moment he is needed. His voice feels older than his years yet perfectly suited to express the concerns and emotions of his own generation.
We will continue praising Geese endlessly because they deserve it. They are an extraordinary burst of musical creativity that goes far beyond what their lineup would ever imply, and along with Fontaines D.C., they are poised to become one of the decade’s essential bands. Still, tonight offers something quieter and more intimate. Cameron Winter stands completely on his own power, talent and magnetism, proving himself a rising force who can hold an entire room with only his voice, a piano and an entire future waiting for him.
‘Try as I May’
‘Emperor XIII in Shades’
‘The Rolling Stones’
‘Love Takes Miles’
‘Drinking Age’
‘Serious World’
‘Nausicaä (Love Will Be Revealed)’
‘If You Turn Back Now’
‘Vines’
‘Nina + Field of Cops’
‘$0’
‘Take It With You’
‘Cancer of the Skull’
