Glastonbury loves a secret set. Lord knows why. To the outside observer they look far more trouble than they’re worth. There’s a tricky balance to maintain: underwhelm with your pick and that special guest isn’t looking that special. But land someone truly major, especially at a massive festival, and you have all manner of logistical problems to navigate: crowd crushes, staffing and so forth. Then there’s the small task of keeping the secret, erm, secret, festivals being the leakiest, most gossipy places on earth.
Certainly that is the case with Kasabian’s unannounced early evening set at Woodsies, which seemingly everyone and their cat has known about for weeks. You might think then that this will be a case of the not-so-special special guest: after all, aren’t Kasabian firmly on the slide in 2024? They’ve weathered the departure of Tom Meighan after his conviction for assaulting his partner in 2020 and it seems a long time ago that they were banging out dance-rock hits like it was the easiest thing in the world.
You’d be wrong. Woodsies is the busiest it has been since the Killers played their own secret set here in 2017. Not just the tent but the whole field is full, with most attendees only able to follow the gig by craning their necks to look at a screen. The dominant mode is lad: in the near distance Celtic fans are singing rude songs about about Rangers, and one man by me is explaining to the person next to him how he distills his own vodka (“nah, you’re all right”, the other guy wisely says when he is offered one). The mood is boozy and good natured, and above all excited: Kasabian still clearly mean a fair bit to a lot of people.
As those opening whomps of Club Foot boom out, Serge Pizzorno bounds on to the stage. For all his stated reluctance around taking over as frontman following Meighan’s departure, he’s clearly by now been doing it long enough to make the role his own. He’s a more puppyish, exuberant presence than his glowering predecessor; he almost sounds like a cub camp co-ordinator when instructing people to “mosh pit, mosh pit, mosh pit”.
Kasabian’s huge hits – Club Foot, Shoot the Runner, LSF – seem machine-tooled for warm days in big fields, full of riffs and refrains that can be belted out by the most well-lubricated of punters. But there’s another class of Kasabian song – unmemorable, plodding – that drifts over the crowd a little here. The mediocrity of these moments is made even more conspicuous by the strange decision – a longtime Kasabian tradition – to knit intros of other songs into their setlist: the Prodigy’s Breathe, Groove is in the Heart, Beastie Boys Intergalactic, Praise You.
But in the end it doesn’t really matter. At 6pm, with the excitement of the evening to come, everyone is feeling charitable enough to sit through the weaker moments in their catalogue and revel in the hits. As the caffeinated chug of Fire cranks into gear, the roof nearly comes off the Woodsies tent – which, come to think of it, would have been helpful for those of us stuck outside craning to look in.