Anyone who has attended the Brighton four-dayer will be familiar with that unique buzz coursing through the streets, the delegates swarming the streets with their lanyards, the bands taking pictures around every corner, spotting a favourite artist in the audience at another favourite artist’s set, having to deal with seemingly endless stage clashes because there is simply so much to see and do – the feeling, in short, that literally everyone is there, all at once.
Especially for alternative music lovers and the artists that make it, so frequently sidelined in favour of mainstream pop and its big acts, events like this are crucial in that they create an opportunity for people who too often are made to feel like outsiders to be a community, to exchange ideas and impressions, and to discover each other. Any attempt to experience The Great Escape is inevitably but a scraping of the surface – there is simply so much on that encompassing it all would be a pipe dream – but even so it is practically impossible to come home without a newfound love of something you didn’t know before. After being plagued by diatribe and cancellations in 2024, this year’s festival was back in top form – and the weather helped to, gifting the Brighton crowds with three days of glorious sunshine; even on the Thursday, the one overcast outlier, there was no rain, which was welcome news considering the sometimes lengthy treks from one venue to another.
The impressive roster of acts both domestic and international that took to the festival’s many stages delivered emotions and experiences in spades, and even just by running through the list of artists there was a feeling that the range of genres being represented had never been as broad in the past as it was at this year’s edition. This is excellent news, marking perhaps once and for all the end of the era in which melodic indie-rock seemed to be the only driving force in British alternative music; the fact that this year’s festival truly had something for all tastes is a clear showcase of the growing variety of voices in the grassroots scene, and of the rise of an audience that is increasingly varied in its components and eclectic in its tastes. This is more than a positive sign: it is a sign that, in spite of all the difficulties and opposition it is facing, in spite of venue closures and the struggle in breaking through the walls of the mass media, this community of the arts is more than alive, and increasingly ready to rise to challenges and take bold steps forward.
Our Great Escape adventure started on the Wednesday with a visit to Patterns, a beloved seaside haunt with the feeling of a true local venue: low stage, cosy room, huddles of people commenting the last act to perform over a cigarette on the terrace outside. Festival crowds were already lively, as shown by the queues gathering outside – one of the few moments of true congestion in an otherwise very well-handled event. It was worth making it through the queues to catch the opening of the proceedings with local darlings SLAG, a new outfit with an already well-deserved reputation with the Brighton crowd – which flocked to see them in spite of the early set and were rewarded with smooth vocals and charmingly convoluted riffs. It was in a way the perfect opener to a festival increasingly comfortable with pushing boundaries: a charismatic take on math rock may not be what you’d expect to deliver a hugely successful afternoon set, but there was no mistaking the excitement in the room by the time the last few chords faded. ChitChat – also local newcomers with a well-deserved following – took the next set with a somewhat more conventional, but still engaging sound, a generous sprinkling of dirty guitar, and a very welcome sense of humour.
The highlight of the evening, however, undoubtedly came when Bighead Tea Drinkers came to the stage. Be wary of using the ‘local’ denomination with this band, as members came to Brighton to study before being adopted by the thriving music community there: they brought along suggestions from further afield and these have seeped into their sound, making their music the exact opposite of cookie-cutter indie rock. Favouring broad sounds, big choruses, introspective lyrics and overall the kind of songs that seem conceived with the deliberate purposes of getting the audience to sing along, it could be argued that they are the perfect band for a late set at a festival.
There was an endearing – almost touching – sincerity to this set too: every lyric felt genuinely meant, which led to a couple of moments bordering on emotional. Hearing from the Brighton band on the opening night of the festival felt correct, too: and the home team delivered a very strong performance overall before one ventured further afield on the following days.
The Thursday weather may have been glum, with low-hanging dark clouds and a nagging cold breeze, but this did not deter the crowds from flocking to the beach, where some of the bigger stages had been set up as the beating heart of the event – and the spot with the strongest festival energy. Popping into the somewhat more intimate Soundwaves stage offered an opportunity to open the day with Ireland’s Kean Kavanagh, who lent his smooth vocals to one of the most intriguing sounds crafted by a singer-songwriter at the festival – take his music apart and you might find elements of soul, country, stoner rock, blues, and even psychedelia. Charming and tongue-in-cheek as well as technically proficient, this was an excellent set to wake up the sleepy afternoon crowd. For those who still needed a bit of an energy injection, Balancing Act took to the stage next – defying genre definitions with a sound that can only be described as the love child of classic indie rock and more recent post-punk, the Manchester band leaned into a confident, magnetic stage presence: no need for tricks or fripperies here, just unadulterated charisma. There was some new music in their set too, which felt rather intriguing, a little sharper, and perhaps a touch more danceable than their previous offerings: enough of a taste to leave you wanting for more.
Moving on to the Deep End stage, it was then time to get moving with a half-hour of high-octane folk rock, courtesy of Brògeal, who may have opened their show with their recently-released single ‘Friday On My Mind’, but rapidly proved that they had a lot more to offer, including frantic banjo-playing, some of the most inventive use of a tin whistle ever seen on a punk-adjacent song, and a set that moved at such a relentless pace that once it got going, it simply did not stop.
There has been quite a bit of experimenting with grafting folk sonorities on rock music in recent years, but what Brògeal have been doing feels like the opposite: rock is the innovation here, but Scottish folk is the backbone, and the band’s clear love of traditional music the conduit for making it all feel so fresh and engaging. It was riotous good fun and just not long enough – the room could easily have kept going for two more hours and danced itself raw, and it was hard to shed the feeling that the band could have, too.
For a complete change of setting, we ended the night at One Church, to catch two of the more experimental acts of the British contingent at the festival. Of all the Great Escape venues this may have been the one furthest off the beaten path, but it was worth the detour to catch Van Zon – also Brighton locals – deliver a very different take on folk hybrids, here constructing atmospheric harmonies out of an unexpected but highly effective blending of violin and electronica, plus a tapestry of engaging vocals. In spite of some minor technical difficulties, they lent a lovely playfulness to a complex, deep sound.
The nightcap was provided by Bishopskin – one of the highlights of this year’s festival and a band that simply defies all definition, blending a high-concept approach, striking aesthetics, roaring vocals and an almost performance art-like delivery to a heady blend of rock, folk, jazz, punk, and even Medieval hymns – such an idiosyncratic sound that you might think it shouldn’t work, until the band takes to the stage and the crowd inevitably finds itself enraptured. There are some big personalities on the stage, and it is not often that you will see a frontman climbing on top of a pulpit to deliver the final track in a set from up high, but with this band this is not simply a case of clever antics: it is all part of the soul of the show, which is both visceral and technical, as exemplified by the mixing of raw vocals and painstakingly precise guitar-playing (almost pizzicato in places), smooth clarinet and manic violin, and woven throughout with an unrepentant desire to feel and make the audience feel. An excellent set to send you to bed still buzzing.
Friday opened with a highlight on the Revenge stage. Straight from New Zealand Borderline channelled the true rock spirit, bantering with the audience, getting everyone to sing along, and delivering a truly impressive save when a guitar string snapped mid-solo and the band took it in stride without stopping one of the more energetic songs in their set. A very different soundscape, but a very similar spirit, with the same love of performance and the same ability to create an instant, playfully confrontational connection with the audience was on offer on the Charles St Tap stage, courtesy of TTSSFU, easily one of the more interesting new voices on the British DIY rock scenes with a distinctive stage presence and confident aesthetic, a cutting sense of humour which manifested into a series of snappy remarks peppered throughout a surprisingly intimate set, and a well-rounded manifestation of a style of performance that doesn’t yet have a name but is rearing its head more and more with new acts throughout the country, something we might perhaps call ‘romantic rock’ for lack of a technical term (is TTSSFU the first of the New New Romantics?).
A quick dash over to the beach was then in order to catch KEO on the Soundwaves stage and relish their peculiar brand of shoegaze-with-a-sharper-edge. Differently from other outfits with similar sounds, this is very much of a live band, and proved it easily by taking control of the stage and leaning into the elements of their performance which are more garage rock-adjacent. It was an intimate set with a grunge soul, bold and entertaining.
A short step away at the Deep End stage, Courting offered something more established and a little more traditional, proving that there is still something to be delivered within the confines of the more canonical indie rock sound that feels fresh, relevant, and genuinely emotional.
The last venue on the Friday menu was Chalk, a bigger stage that was home for the night to some harsher, sharper sounds. Those looking for a dose of the good old punk spirit were in for a treat as Transgressive Records, true to their name, brought to the stage in rapid succession two acts who most certainly did not pull their punches. Hot Wax are an old-school garage rock dream with a classic stage presence and a very sharp edge, with a stage presentation that sat squarely in the hard rock traditional and an unconstrained love of beautiful noise. The set that gave everyone something to talk about, however, came courtesy of The Moonlandingz: long-term fans of the band may have walked in with an expectation to witness some unrepentant chaos, but not even in their wildest dreams could they have imagined the absolutely manic show they got, flouting all rules and making up some new ones just in order to break them. Frontman Lias Saoudi dove into the audience early in the set and resurfaced only occasionally, whipping everyone – and himself – into a frenzy while delivering a somewhat unexpected mix of tracks old and new; add some very cutting bantering between band members, an energy that would not have been out of place at some of the rougher punk shows of the late 80s, and a frenzied closer to the note of a multi-movement gabba suite (yes, this is a thing that exists), and it might be fair to say that this was the most unique thing to happen at this festival - for better or for worse, we’ll leave it to those who found themselves on the receiving end of it to decide.
You may be running out of energy by day four of a festival like this, but the Saturday acts most certainly were not, and their enthusiasm certainly proved contagious. Martial Arts swept down from Manchester to deliver a set that felt more like an evening closer than an afternoon opener, both thanks to their ability to draw a packed audience to the Dust stage and to the no-frills, guitar-powered energy of their delivery.
This is one of those bands clearly showing that guitar rock is very much not dead, whatever commentators might say – and the enraptured reaction from the audience is proof of it. Where Martial Arts were channelling new energy into classic sounds with their delivery, a quick detour to the basement room at Patterns provided an opportunity to engage with something altogether more experimental: first through the stylings of Eterna, coupling the darker tones of something very close to goth-rock with a backbone of industrial sound, heavy on the noise and the distortion, for an intensely atmospheric result; and then with the following set delivered by London’s Y, one of the most interesting new bands to have emerged on the alternative scene in recent years.
Y have already made a name for themselves with those in the know for their live shows, even before their recently-released EP, and this set very quickly proved why: not only can they boast some of the most impressive female vocals in a new British band, and not only does their songwriting have an impressive knack for taking elements from genres which are at times very distant from each other and successfully grafting them together, but they also have true range – an ability to be in turn sultry and energetic, riotous and intense. They are having so much fun doing it, too, and it is therefore very hard not to have fun with them: you’d have to try and you’d probably fail.
Another band that’s clearly having fun while on stage is Alien Chicks, also out of the same, extremely lively London community – the one with Brixton’s Windmill as its beating heart – and also sharing in the same healthy distaste for genre labels, which provided our final stop on this year’s Great Escape.
By the time we caught them on the Revenge stage, they were on their fourth set of the festival, but you would never have guessed it judging both by the precision with which they delivered their – sometimes very technically challenging, especially in terms of guitars and vocals – tracks and by the amount of energy they kept going for the whole time. There were mosh pits, there was crowdsurfing, there was rapping delivered over an otherwise almost psych-rock base, there was a release of entropy that is perhaps the best testament to the liberating power of music. A better conclusion could not be had for a festival that was packed with events, sounds, voices, ideas.
And yet, as always, this was only the tip of the iceberg: take a different path through the festival and you will have had a very different experience, will have engaged with other nooks and crannies of the wonderful labyrinth that is alternative music, with its almost endless possibilities, its many languages and many worlds. This variety, together with the sense of community it fosters, is the thing that lingers the most when thinking back on this year’s Great Escape. More than in previous iterations, perhaps, it really gave a sense of a community coming together to enjoy the many different faces of music and performance outside of the constraining boundaries of the mainstream. The creativity of this scene has never been this explosive, and the 2025 Great Escape more than proved it.
Chiara Strazzulla
Images: Aoife Hyland and Chiara Strazzulla
