All Together Now bows out for 2025
Primal Scream
This morning, thousands of groggy heads made the journey out of Portlaw as All Together Now 2025 came to an end.
It was a beautiful, (mostly) sunny day in the Sunny South East. In the early afternoon Blindboy performed in the packed out Something Kind of Wonderful tent.
The stage was home to later performances by veteran act The Boomtown Rats (reviewed here by Shannon Sweeney), followed by rap-rock duo Bob Vylan.
The British band have had a wild few weeks after their performance at Glastonbury. During their show they led a chant of 'Death, death/ To the IDF', which caused a wave of controversy at the BBC and led to multiple festivals cutting the them from their lineups. Lead singer Bob thanked the All Together Now promoters for 'having a f**king backbone' and for putting the band onto to a bigger stage. The show was a raucous, wild ride, as lead singer Bob railed against racism, sexism, classism and colonialism through songs like 'He's a Man', 'We Live Here' and 'Hunger Games'.
The duo showed a lot of love to the crowd, even hinting at moving to Ireland to get away from their 'wretched country' of England. Bob said: "As black people in England we understand that our struggle, as it is connected to our homelands, whether it be Jamaica or we trace it all the way back to the African continent ... is the Irish fight. And the Irish fight is the Palestinians’ fight. And the Palestinians’ fight is the fight of all people that have suffered under occupation, under colonialism, under imperialism."
After a low-key set by UK-Turkish singer Nilfur Yanya, we trekked over to the Main Stage for Primal Scream. The skies began to open, which was bad news for some people, great news for people jostling to the front of the stage to get a better view of Bobby Gillespie and co. The veteran rock act were a delight, with the backing singers, full band and dancers giving it 110%. When you're dancing to 'Loaded', Moving on Up' and 'Rocks' feet away from the legendary Scottish band, the sun might as well have been shining.
Sadly, that kind of intimacy between audience and performer couldn't be recaptured for the final headliner Nelly Furtado. Not through any fault of her own, just that the crowd had swelled up to such a degree that it was barely possible to see the lovely singer on the screens, let alone the stage. Thousands of people sang with her through songs 'Turn Off the Lights', 'Forcia' and 'I'm Like a Bird'. The biggest reaction came with the final two sons 'Maneater' and 'Promiscuous', still sounding as potent and electric as they did nearly 20 years ago.
The rain kept falling for the rest of the evening, so to finish the night we checked out Matador at the Belonging Bandstand, after which it was straight back to the tents to dream of chicken rolls and mattresses...
