“Just pulled in – crazy drive,” says a flustered-looking Ezra Feinberg, opening proceedings on The Boat stage. Luckily, his music has an instantly soothing effect on him and us. On excellent 2024 album Soft Power, his acoustic guitar-playing is deliberately unobtrusive, almost functional in its calm precision. But his performance here is much more passionate, to match the breathtaking runs of flautist Adriana Tampasis. He even pauses to throw some amusing shade at Stewart Lee who, according to Feinberg, delayed their arrival onsite because of a demand for “three backstage jacuzzis”.
At the opposite end of the volume spectrum, Chicago scruffs Ratboys kick up some dust on the Woods stage with the kind of vigorous, countrified indie-rock for which the word rollicking was invented. But however loud, fast and messy they play, they keep the melodies sweet.
Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band occupy similar territory, but with Ratboys’ bushy tailed enthusiasm replaced by wry, world-weary regret. Fans cheer Davis’s best lines – “Sometimes the view of the chapel from here is enough to make your genitals ache” – in the same way they cheered Tampasis’s flute solos earlier. The bursts of electronic oddness are a bonus.
White Denim’s considerable Woods Stage flow is rudely interrupted by an unspecified technical glitch. When the band return after a ten-minute delay, making furious mental recalculations as to how much fun they can still cram in, it only serves to heighten the intensity of their attack. The closing “At Night In Dreams” is really ten songs in one, each more stupendously entertaining than the last.
They’re followed by Super Furry Animals, making a triumphant return to Larmer Tree having headlined the second ever End Of The Road, 19 years ago. After a slightly wobbly start, the Furries hit their stride with the shaggy glam stomp of “Golden Retriever” and a genuinely moving “Hello Sunshine”, which Gruff Rhys stops halfway through to acknowledge their rustiness. “That was just us soundchecking,” he deadpans. “We’re starting now.”
They proceed to remind us just how many fantastic songs they’ve written, many also doubling as pithy life lessons about doing or dying, and tolerating those people that you hate. It all builds inexorably towards a spectacular 15-minute version of “The Man Don’t Give A Fuck”, complete with a techno breakdown that allows the band to reappear for in their yeti costumes for one final sweary refrain.
ØXN offer a different kind of catharsis. “This is a song about murdering yer man,” says Radie Peat, before another beautifully bleak ancient ballad is slowly consumed by malevolent electronic fuzz and death-march drums.
Headlining the Woods stage, CMAT proves to be an all-round entertainer, combining her theatrically OTT heartland rock with stand-up comedy routines. Her ad-libbing is impressive, especially when she has to restart a song because her bra gets caught on her costume. “Cameron Winter would never,” she notes drily.
Kurt Vile’s charmingly self-referential rock provides a dreamier alternative on the Garden Stage. The fact that most of his songs seem to be about the process of writing songs creates a pleasant feedback loop that pulls you gently into his world.
But it would also be remiss not to check on the progress of famous festival-phobe Lawrence in the Folly. Mozart Estate are the best live band he’s assembled for years, their perky basslines and golden harmonies transforming his songs from novelty rock into something that normal people might even enjoy – even when they’re about forgotten 70s pop groups or trying to survive on “a tenner a day.”
Clad eccentrically in a Lidl T-shirt and a denim jacket with a giant price tag attached to the sleeve, the usually downcast Lawrence even has a crack at communing with the audience. “It’s a really beautiful part of the world,” he opines, of the festival’s surroundings. “Do you all live here? No? Oh, forget it then.”
Back on the Garden Stage, Kurt Vile is still in his gold zone, sending us off to bed in a pretty daze. But it’s not quite the end of the road. Three hours after the headliners have finished, we are awoken from our slumber by the sound of White Denim playing the last of the festival’s secret sets, still going absolutely full pelt at 2am. Like every artist playing End Of The Road, they instantly recognise it as a gathering of genuine music freaks, deserving of the most committed performance they can possibly summon. Here’s to another 20 years.
We’re off to End Of The Road Festival 2026
Ty Segall: “Timothy Leary lived in some caves near my parents’ house”, End Of The Road 2026, Day 2
Beverly Glenn-Copeland: “There is life after death”, End Of The Road 2026, Day 3
Super Furry Animals, Colombian Militias and lost chords: End Of The Road 2026, Day 4