Pyramid stage
With euphoric alt-rock anthems up against atmospheric ballads, this set shows the ground the headliners have covered – but doesn’t always bring the crowd on the journey
“The Monkeys are back on the farm!” bellows Alex Turner. “Wow!” Indeed, a day ago, it seemed fairly dicey as to whether Friday night at Glastonbury would have a headliner at all thanks to Turner being struck down with laryngitis – presumably, the worst-kept secret set by the Foo Fighters would have been shunted up the bill had the Arctic Monkeys frontman been unable to perform. But he sounds in remarkably good voice. He looks good too: shirt open to reveal a silver chain, foot on the monitors at the front of the stage, emphasising lyrics by raging his right hand in the air, index finger aloft in the manner of John Travolta on the cover of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.
But Arctic Monkeys are a conundrum. On the one hand, they are probably the biggest alt-rock band in Britain: in an era when alternative rock doesn’t really sell, their albums consistently remain in the charts. On the other, only some of their albums are consistently in the charts. Their 2006 debut Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not and 2013’s AM seem to have achieved the kind of sales ubiquity usually reserved for best-ofs by Fleetwood Mac, Elton John or Oasis. But there have clearly been substantially fewer takers for the band’s more recent excursions into more expansive and serpentine realms, Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino and last year’s The Car. You suspect that may be the point – they’ve successfully rid themselves of the beer-chucking lads in their audience, who were frequently the subject of much mortified eye-rolling on Turner’s part – but it makes for a curiously uneven headlining set. The response to the opening Sculptures of Anything Goes – a single from The Car – is decidedly muted. And the crowd only respond in the way the crowd are supposed to respond to a Glastonbury headlining set – ie rapturously – when they play AM’s Snap Out of It.
