‘What a wonderful festival. We’ve been here all day. We swam in the lake. This festival is fucking excellent — and believe me, I’ve seen quite a few.’
In this case, how special those words are is mainly determined by the person who pronounces them: Thom Yorke (53), the Radiohead frontman who functions here, in Beuningen, as the predecessor of his new band The Smile.
Yorke usually doesn’t say much. He rarely uses superlatives, but at Down the Rabbit Hole – because he is talking about that festival – he apparently still feels like a fish in water after swimming.
Love comes from both sides. The fact that it is such a wonderful festival is also thanks to The Smile. The English trio delivers sparkling highlights for an hour in the ‘golden hour’ on Saturday evening. Disruptive, perverse, elusive music, more expansive and warm-blooded than recently in the Amsterdam Paradiso.
The Smile brings experimental Radiohead rock with a good splash of jazz rhythm, lifted by a phenomenal singing and music-making Yorke. Rarely have we seen him enjoy himself so much on stage: he demonstrated for an hour why his band is called De Glimlach, with the setting, copper-red sun as a spectator.
It can be this beautiful, a pop festival in the open air, spending a weekend with musically like-minded people. Jump parties. Listening concerts. Here and there a hard eruption of rock ‘n’ roll. Overwhelming light shows that cut through the darkness. We had almost forgotten what it feels like after two festival-free ‘corona years’.
Cancellations
Not that the virus has been defeated, it’s just flaring up. DTRH was firmly pressed with the rabbit nose on that fact, much more firmly than Pinkpop, for example, a few weeks ago. Kae Tempest, Maribou State, Clairo – they had to cancel, the latter on the day of her performance. Sleaford Mods was added to this, not because of contamination, but because of the crisis that pushed behind the pandemic like a demon: that of staff shortages and disrupted air traffic. The ‘Mods’ were stuck somewhere at an airport and had to send Beuningen their apologies.
DTRH appears to be well prepared for it. Personal Trainer and Eefje de Visser fill in (excellent), just like Son Mieux from The Hague, who steps off the stage on Friday around 4 p.m. at Concert at Sea on the Zeeland coast, to show up four hours later, 150 kilometers to the east. as a replacement for Clairo.
The 45 thousand ‘rabbits’ are hardly concerned. It even has something beautiful: we fix this, together. Tickets, food and drink have become much more expensive and we believe that staff is difficult to find on the grounds: the stalls sometimes seem a bit understaffed, resulting in long waiting times.
It doesn’t matter, because the terrain is a dream, the weather is fine and the programming is top notch. Shame about the dropouts, long live the invaders! We all make it something unforgettable.
Starting shot
Around 4 p.m. on Friday afternoon, the swinging Jungle by Night instructs the audience in front of the main stage Hotot to split like the Red Sea. From your one, two, one-two-three-four – and there the two audience halves slosh against each other. To jump. hug each other. It feels like an official kick-off to the weekend.
On Friday there is already a lot of good to see, such as the cheerful French neodisco by L’Impératrice, a moody and beautifully sung performance by S10, the engaging British rapper Loyle Carner and the excellent Molchat Doma from Belarus, who perform icy on the Fuzzy Lop stage. , plays very tight electronic new wave, like the early Depeche Mode with a Russian singing Morrissey, but more grim.
Problem on opening day is that the big names evoke mixed feelings after 9pm. The Californian rock sisters Haim remain a curious case. They deal in exaggerated poses, songs that seem catchy, but are actually not real and a rather theatrical and rehearsed kind of free spirit. Only during Summer Girl the recreational beach in Beuningen will change into Malibu Beach for a while.
The classic, traditional American guitar band Wilco turns out to be an unfortunate anachronism on Down the Rabbit Hole, especially when Jeff Tweedy and his men also opt for a quiet, acoustically set playlist. Great, but the Teddy Widder tent is half empty during the performance. The people flock to the plain in front of the Hotot stage, where Disclosure, the hit machine of British dance, is allowed to usher in the first DTRH night: spectacular light show, many jumping moments, but at Disclosure little or nothing exciting happens musically.
Sunny lounging
The eye-catchers on Saturday evening are much better: The Smile, but also Moderat with its thunderous electronic performance and headliner Gorillaz, with his now well-known pop revue with many musical guests and songs that shoot in all directions.
Damon Albarn (after Thom Yorke the second icon of the British nineties on the Hotot platform) enjoys walking around in the universe of animation and kaleidoscopic pop music he has created, but he is a bit too phlegmatic (stoned, perhaps?) to be a ringmaster. convincing after the intense musical masterclass of The Smile.
Even earlier on Saturdays, DTRH actually offers everything you could hope for from a festival. Sun lounge with the French duo Polo & Pan, with its non-descript but wonderfully amusing holiday house. Enjoying the excellent Little Simz, a smart British rapper with Nigerian roots and a great backing band. You marvel at Eefje de Visser: those songs, that singing, that enchanting choreography, everything is wonderful about it. Lying on your back, floating on the still piano pieces of Joep Beving; that worked wonderfully well in the Fuzzy Lop, while fragments of noise from other stages drifted through the tent like audio sheep clouds.
If you were looking for peace and quiet in the oasis called Eden at the right time, you could just fall into the performance of Moonchild Sanelly on the small Bossa Nova stage, South African maker of rattling ‘future ghetto punk’, with bright blue hair, extravagant movements and a catsuit in all colors of the rainbow.
Endangered species
Let’s not forget the rockers: they are now an endangered species at a festival like Down The Rabbit Hole. But oh, what you need every now and then during a weekend like this: just a hard, rough, flaming rock band.
And they were there: The Chats from Australia, complete with a performed Kiss cover, or the Viagra Boys, a Swedish combo fronted by a roaring American (Sebastian Murphy). They almost have to be the best rock ‘n’ roll band of DTRH 2022, or Amyl And The Sniffers have to top it all on Sunday evening – which is not even inconceivable.
At the start of Sunday, the euphoria has taken hold so firmly that you know for sure that it will all be beautiful: Goldband and Phoebe Bridgers in the sun, Bicep in the Teddy Widder, worn rock from The War on Drugs while the red sun sinks behind the shiny puddle.
Yes, Down The Rabbit Hole is 2022 fucking excellent† Thom Yorke was quite right about that.
To dance
You can dance all night long at Down The Rabbit Hole: in Teddy Widder cave (which closes at night like an immense snail shell) or the new dance stage Rex in the wooden shed The Barn. The programming is excellent (Joy Orbison, Upsammy, Sassy J, Carlos Valdes), but the lines at the door are so long that the Rex is more exclusive than is desired at a festival. ‘DTRH’ is a festival with many ‘secret’ parties, indoors and out, from The Bizarre and The Swamp to non-stop ‘Porto Parties’ in a building like an old-fashioned cinema.