Readipop Festival Highlights

We headed down to this year's Readipop Festival, and with a heavily improved lineup from former festival seasons, we were delighted to be catching what Saturday had to offer.

Tyrants are a great example of the type of bands Readipop love to support and the tracks from their new EP vibed well with the crowd of bands and their friends and family. Draw The Shades then featured on the Main Stage and drew a sizeable crowd in from the soggy field and Drug Store Romeos quickly became a personal favourite. With their Casio centre stage they gathered a chilled out crowd that were ready for some kind of romantic trip. These guys were DIY on every level and their sound ranged from Archy Marshall to Black Honey to Yonaka definitely filling a void we didn't know there was.

We finally caught Vinyl Staircase after several attempts at getting to their local gigs in and around Reading and they were well worth the wait, so hopefully this will force me out to more of their gigs in the future! Valeras killed it as usual and the intimate and dark Purple Turtle tent was just the perfect setting for them.

After some overpriced food and drinks we headed back into the Purple Turtle tent and Vienna Ditto was our next discovery. With burlesque and cabaret style vocals over experimental Palm Honey-esque guitar, maybe they're not something I'd listen to everyday, but worth visiting a live show if you can. Then off we went to the smallest stage where Lucky Punks drew in their regular crowd and we all got bopping along. And finally the main event for me was Spring King, they've recently toured with Cage The Elephant as well as Kaiser Chiefs so they're no stranger to the larger stages now although, with the sparse crowd it all felt a bit lifeless. Cosmo Pyke chilled it all down before I left with heavy King Krule vibes. Overall the lineup wasn't outstanding, and there just weren't enough people in the crowds to hype up with. I left early and disappointed, but for £15 I don't know what I was expecting.