Festival Review: Live At Leeds in the Park 2022
In its fifteenth year, Live at Leeds brought a cohort of fan favourite and up-and-coming acts to a new location - a park!
The day festival took place at Temple Newsam, just east of the city centre, on a typically British June day. I arrived nice and early, at around 1pm, just in time to catch The Royston Club kick things off at the Hill Top stage. This band brought high energy with their formulaic indie rock, reminiscent of The Kooks and The Wombats.
I then wandered down the hill to the MTV Main Stage where quirky indie-pop princess Lauran Hibberd brought some off-kilter, grungy noise. Aesthetically, she’s like if Phoebe Bridgers had a rebel phase - dressed in an orange two piece, Lauran stomped around the stage to a short but sweet set that quickly saw passersby gathering around the stage. She had a great stage presence, and knows her audience. “We’re gonna play a song called ‘How Am I Still Alive?”, she says, “Dedicated to the Queen!”
Over in the Dork Presents tent, I caught Molly Payton’s set. The New Zealander has an excellent voice, though her band were a little lackluster. She makes generic sad girl music, which is my niche, so I enjoyed her performance, leaving slightly early to make my way to the opposite side of the festival to the DIY Big Top tent. Here, jagged punk trio Dream Wife put on an exhilarating show to a crowd whose diversity surprised me, from kids on shoulders to groups of teens to older, solo fest goers. Dream Wife had great crowd control and left me wanting more - they also left me with this nugget of wisdom that I rushed to write down: “To be or to identify as a bad bitch has nothing to do with gender”. In that tent, in that moment, we were all bad bitches. That’s the beauty of festivals!
At this point, I was feeling the effects of the overpriced pints I’d been slowly supping, so after grabbing some food I found myself back at the Main Stage for Holly Humberstone. Pop’s latest sensation, this singer songwriter has a lovely voice and really wooed the crowd (which was huge, might I add). I hung around the Main Stage for a while longer, dancing along to Sea Girls (whose lead singer looked like he was cosplaying Vector from Despicable Me) and their catchy indie pop repertoire, before popping back over to DIY Big Top to check out Arlo Parks. Poetic, soft spoken Parks took to the stage and enchanted the crowd with hit songs like ‘Too Good’ and ‘Black Dog’, which I let wash over me like a warm hug.
Then, back to MTV Main Stage I went! I’d been looking forward to The Vaccines hour-long set all day as I’m always looking for any excuse to relive my teenage youth. The Vaccines’ 2011 debut record What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? was my religion at fourteen years old, so to hear classics like ‘If You Wanna?’ and ‘Post Break-Up Sex’ was a real treat. The audience around me obviously agreed as we all screamed along.
The last two acts of the day were Easy Life and Bombay Bicycle Club. Both bands were brilliant in their own right, delivering chilled out performances to the biggest crowds I’d seen all day. Watching Easy Life in the DIY Big Top tent was a vibey experience, and I think they would have been a better choice for a headline act, though I still enjoyed Bombay Bicycle Club’s set. Their live band is insane, and the brass instruments were a nice touch.
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed myself at Live at Leeds in the Park. The sun came out, the drinks were flowing, and there were some amazing acts across all the stages throughout the day. The festival itself was clean, spacious, well-equipped and genuinely felt like a safe space, so kudos to the organisers!
Tickets are available for their next two editions here.