On the third day of the festival rap came to the forefront and one of the biggest artists on the planet came to town.

After the weeks of dry weather, the Reading Festival Arena was starting to resemble a post-apocalyptic future where nomadic humans travel dusty tracks going from shelter to shelter. Other than that, everything was going well.

There were a couple of new bands we absolutely had to see today. Both Cliffords and Wench! really impressed us when we were researching bands on the BBC Introducing Stage and both absolutely delivered live. Expect separate write ups for these and other new artists.

After Cliffords, we had to get down to the Main Stage to support the local lad. Songer is so Reading his video for recent single Alive was shot entirely around Reading Station. This set cements him as a rising star of British rap. He also coped really well with the emotions of this big moment, taking it all in his stride. He has a great flow, and the teenagers down the front absolutely loved him. We also appreciated his use of a full live band that a lot of rap artists eschew.

Waterparks are a bigger deal in the US than in the UK. However, this was clearly a band who were used to bigger stages and commanded the Main Stage with ease. Their brand of punk-pop went down well with the crowd. Awsten Knight tells us he has been learning some British words before dedicating a track to “All the Chavs.” I don’t know who is going around teaching US bands out of date UK slang, but keep it up, it made for a funny couple of minutes where he was trying to decide just how offensive a word it probably was.

After catching a couple of tracks from Indoor Foxes we had every intention of going to watch Sea Girls, however the BBC Introducing Stage blackboard was being updated and the secret set was none other than Reading’s finest, The Amazons! We dashed straight back to the stage and got a spot front and centre. This was kept very secret, and barely anyone was there until a couple of minutes before the start. The crowd quickly swelled and was far larger by the time they finished. They were performing as a full six-piece band today and sounded great. We only got ‘Black Magic,’ ‘In My Mind,’ ‘Junk Food Forever’ and ‘Wake Me Up’ but it was a fantastic twenty-five minutes.

Suki Waterhouse confirmed herself to be as much of a star as we had expected, taking it all in and delivering a strong pop performance. Her band sounded great, and she is creating some interesting music.

We left Suki early to go and catch the second half of Antony Szmierek’s set. We enjoyed his album earlier in the year but weren’t entirely convinced. However, we had heard great things about him as a live artist.

Sadly, we missed both ‘The Great Pyramid of Stockport’ and ‘Yoga Teacher’ as he front-loaded them in an effort to get the crowd going. What we did witness was the honesty and passion that he brings to his performances.  Despite the short length of time to perform, he delivered impassioned speeches on Gaza and the state of the world. Jumping the barrier, he dived into the crowd and invited everyone to come and dance with him. The energy was spectacular, and the peace and love vibes were far higher than we would have anticipated.

The choice of Amyl and the Sniffers or Luvcat was one of the toughest all weekend. We decided there would more opportunities to catch Luvcat next year, and who knew when the Australian garage rock band would next be back?

Despite generally being fans of big dumb garage rock, we have always struggled to connect with this band. This was their chance to win us over, and they absolutely took it. The energy radiating off of the Main Stage was intense. It also does them a disservice to call their music dumb. There is a clear degree of calculation in everything they do. Despite sounding like they have just wandered into a tatty shack of a pub on the edge of the Outback lead singer Amy Taylor takes a few moments to eloquently discuss the wrongs of the world, though ends it with a slightly less eloquent, “Oh, and f**k Trump.” I guess we won’t be seeing them on tour in the US anytime soon!

Recent album Cartoon Darkness made up 50% of the set with 6 of the 12 tracks. ‘Big Dreams’ shows they can be a little bit slower and more thoughtful, though the majority of tracks were foot to the floor rock-outs.

Whilst being fans of rap and hip hop, the Main Stage run in of Trippie Redd, D-Block Europe and Travis Scott did not hold a lot of appeal. The Festival Republic offering of Nieve Ella and The Dare was far more our scene.

Nieve Ella really impressed with a big performance, even if she was struggling a little from a sore throat. She had been enjoying her summer of festivals and was having a great time with her band. Most recent single ‘Good Grace’ sounds phenomenal and was very good live.

We could have caught a bit of Sammy Virji but wanted to be down near the front for The Dare. Virji bought out Skepta which sent the place wild. There was a brief stoppage after a crowd crush threatened safety. A few festival goers had to be treated for minor injuries and shock, it was the only safety incident we were aware of over the weekend and was handled promptly.

We haven’t witnessed this level of control freakery on the Festival Republic Stage since Sleep Token in 2023. Huge amounts of lighting and two massive stacks of Marshall Amps were wheeled in to form an immersive set for The Dare. Due to the complexities, the set started a good ten minutes or so late. It was worth the wait. Harrison Patrick Smith is an odd combination of music geek and cool kid but was by far the best thing we saw all day.

He has a couple of keyboards/devices on stage to fiddle around with but mostly runs it as a backing track while he dances around in the front of the stage with a microphone as a one man show. The dancing is quite something, kind of how Thom Yorke wishes he could dance rather than how he actually does. There are often comparisons to LCD Soundsystem, but these are starting to seem a little bit lazy. With a lot of recent material hinting at more of a bigger interest in dance music it is more James Murphy’s production skills as the DFA, rather than his work with LCD Soundsystem, that form the better comparison.

He breaks out an excellent run of hits with ‘I Destroyed Disco,’ ‘You’re Invited,’ ‘LCA’ and ‘Girls’ all sounding particularly fine. He tells us next time he will have lots of new music to share with us. He gives the impression of being something of a workaholic so I wouldn’t be surprised to see him popping up everywhere as a producer, collaborator and artist in his own right over the next couple of years.

Whilst The Dare finished late, we were still out in time for Travis Scott. After he cut the set short by half an hour at Leeds he is tonight scheduled to start later, so as to finish at the originally suggested time. What is there to say? There were no alternative options scheduled so we were watching whether we liked it or not. He is clearly an enormous artist, and the show was very slick. There were a sea of smart phones out to record tracks like ‘Sicko Game’ and ‘FE!N.’ There was a constant flurry of fireworks and pyrotechnics. He did enough to keep the crowd on-side but when given a 90-minute prestigious festival headline set cutting off after your minimal contractual hour reeks of an extreme level of arrogance and disrespect. Neither would he permit any official filming or photography.

It wasn’t a terrible note to end the festival on, but it certainly didn’t match the effort and high points that had occurred elsewhere across yet another spectacular Reading Festival Weekend. Bring Me The Horizon and Chappell Roan were the stand out highlights and the BMTH set will go down in Reading Festival legend. Whilst it was a bit smaller this year in terms of live music options it remained very well organised. Huge props to the BBC Introducing Stage who had a stunning line-up this weekend of genuine talent. There was a lot of positive feedback over the new camping areas that were introduced this year. Apparently, two headliners for next year have already been booked. Roll on December!