It’s a big ask. On a night when temperatures outside are soaring, it requires something pretty special to entice us indoors. And that something turns out to be MGMT miming ‘Kids’ with Milli Vanilli style precision. It’s a brilliantly crap entrance from an act embracing the inherent frivolity of their vocation.
All of which means The Futureheads, who are next up, are a rock band in a hard place – this is neither the time or the place for a bunch of vaguely melodic songs about life in Sunderland. The individual tracks merge into a choppy, bouncy blur (think The Proclaimers covering the Blankety Blank theme), while their standout moment remains a not particularly futuristic Kate Bush cover.
It’s equally difficult to say what connection CSS have with spanking newness. Although the band are keen to air tracks from the forthcoming Donkey, the crowd have come expecting to hear the hits. You sense that CSS need to disappear for a while or risk having their omnipresence met with a wave of indifference.