End Of The Road Festival, Dorset

“There’s all these people with weird-ass hats on,” notes Micah P Hinson, de facto dean of controversial alt.popsters. “I tried on a top hat the other day. It did not suit me. My head was too big.” You can’t fault his powers of observation. There’s much indeed to paint End Of The Road like the beard-fingering, M&S-friendly Mecca for the critically acclaimed it is, but perhaps most telling is the sheer prolificacy of half-arsed headgear, fulsome facial hair and beige man-bags, swarming and multiplying left right and centre like evidence of collapsed shelving in an overstocked Rough Trade warehouse.

Hinson, who couldn’t be more at odds with End Of The Road’s pristine image if he was rubbing poo in his eyes, is a free-healthcare-opposing, Obama-is-murderer-of-American-Dream preaching zealot, but he’s also painfully hilarious and refreshing in the increasingly flaccid personality-landscape of music.. “[My wife of 3 years] Ashley Bryn Gregory hasn’t changed her [sur]name, the lazy cow. I guess she’s just gonna wait ’til I die, or divorce me and take all my… well, I don’t have any money… maybe she’s just a vindictive bitch!” Touché, you horrible, horrible man.

What with her militant brilliance, facial war-paint and knack for a wildly catchy avant-pop tune, there’s nowt to wind oneself up about with the act that follows on the Garden Stage, Tune-Yards. Irresistible as latest LP Whokill may be — and it must have done the trick, winning what looks like the largest audience of the afternoon — mere soundwaves simply can’t prepare for actually seeing Merrill Garbus, jamming her balletic voice box into songs as subtle as a cerebral battering ram with an all-consuming, lion-eyed intensity. But, as the preconception-free toddler prancing about a picnic mat (M&S) confirms, only the sturdiest rib-cage could reject the arms-in-the-air exuberance of Garbus’s tribal high art.

Over to the Tipitent and the set of the opening day belongs to thoroughly and enjoyably eccentric acoustic-monger Sam Amidon. The NYC-based folkie’s peculiar skill lies in his aversion to anything that traditionally makes for a good live performance, ignoring unignorable main stage sound-overflow, being generally unfocussed and distractible and enacting entirely disjointed snippets from a made-up film script. He’s kinda like the weird guy you might’ve made friends with in middle school, only to realise his parents believe in the ancient scrolls of Morlock Gwhylym… or whatever. “Shred!” he yells, incongruously, as if this were the height of normality, before diving into an only partially successful acoustic solo. We can’t shake the impression he’d be performing exactly the same set were he singing into his bedroom mirror or headlining the Woods Stage, which somehow makes it all the more special.

The Fall feel equally of a piece with the festival’s non-corporate (bring your own drink into the arena = godsend) vibes. But their Garden stage headline appearance is, dare I say, not quite my cuppa, and it’s with chasm-deep journo-guilt that I dart back to Woods to see out those sturdy international types Beirut. Backed by a sweep of veteran hostel enthusiasts and retired physics teachers, Zach Condon is a likable if uncommanding mainman, though the in-band equilibrium, ego-bereft, makes the almost Fratellis-alike singalong to ’Postcards From Italy’’s trumpet chorus communally warming.

It’s not until Saturday that the Big Top tent, camped up with a huge sunbeam disco ball, takes its first victims. First of these is Timber Timbre, who today sounds like he’s struggling for air underwater, rather than just wanting to be. Austra almost fall foul of the satge’s terrible sound, but with singer Katie Stelmanis dressed in sparkly jewels, opaque gold shirt and diamond-patterned tights gadding about the shop in brilliant fashion, the electro-spectacle is such that little else is of particular importance.  In case you were wondering, though, Austra sound like Zola Jesus belting out banshee-warbles from beneath Elizabeth Frazer’s dark cloak of whomping reverb.

Wooden Shjips summon a brand of cyclical heavy rock as rugged as their beards, unearthly monochrome thumbprints flicking hyperactively across the tent ceiling and sending the devil’s riffs shooting through the roof of hell and bang into this otherwise tranquil garden of musical Eden. Altogether more dainty are Wild Beasts, who, despite seeming like a band better suited to the cloistered intimacy of a strobe-lit tent, have grown mightily in presence since the almost apologetic Two Dancers tour. Hayden gently thrusts into his piano as a plane paints smoke loops across the easterly sky, before ‘Albatross’ sputters to an abrupt halt, allowing ‘Deeper’’s lusty refrain to make its own metaphors. The inherent humour in Wild Beasts’ music (“Watch me!”) could elude a hipster-happy London pub venue, but to a swollen crowd of tipsy semi-converts and zealots alike, the joke isn’t lost.

A secret set on a boat from Okkervil River has the superfans biting elbows, and their headline show could hardly disappoint. While Mogwai have the pyrotechnics, the Texans’ majestic I Am Very Far, bedecked with classic rock-leaning pomp, sets the alternative main event off superbly. To a confusingly sober audience, what quickly becomes clear is that, yes, Will Sheff can come across as the kind of guy so acutely aware of his own shortcomings there’s probably not much else he’s interested in. But stripped of emo shackles and apparently having the larks of his life, this makes him perhaps the most exciting and excitable — if not the most unhinged (hello, Ms Garbus) — stage destroyer of the weekend.

Yet further into the evening, 22-year-old Zola Jesus is generally a quite formidable prospect, as mythic as she is vulnerably human. Alack, as mentioned, the Big Top tent’s sound is cockarsed to the very core and this particular set wins top prize for rubbishness. Rumour has it the volume was clipped out of necessity, due to prissily enforced restrictions and regulations. Richard Hawley’s appalling golden-oldies early-hours disco remains unaffected. Have a look, organisers.

Ploughing a slightly rougher grain of Americana is Kurt Vile. What he shares with similarly bedroom-derived hip-hop and such is that he sings how he thinks, lacing atmosphere and intuition with a delicate twist on straight-up, outcast coherency. “What did the leper say to the prostitute?” offers Josh T Pearson, grinning like a dog with an unholy trinity of dicks and as many Fleshlights. “Keep the tip.” Rocking on the spot like a bone-sozzled Jesus, the guy never looks more at home than when twiddling himself a fingerpicked web of euphoric transcendency. The solemn looking fellow’s enthusiastic assertion that “this is my favourite part!” mid-song is ultimately just as hilarious as the pre-written banter, and everyone’s smiling.

There are, I shan’t deny, worse shortcomings than not being wholly familiar with the oeuvre of the band Midlake. Overhearing men and women of a certain age discussing the Texans’ return to Larmer Tree Gardens, however, many would beg to differ. It’s not hard to see why the band are clutched so firmly to the festival’s heart, these battered old sea captains sinking admirably with their vessel. Their enchanting and fulsome woodland-folk wanders are at once a fine warm-up for Joanna Newsom and hugely too magnificent to be mere support to anything at all.

The elven one’s humble entrance is that of a returning alumnus, a former star pupil showing off her learned wares to the school assembly. Considering this is her first solo show in 2 years, Newsom strikes a professionally impressive groove ’twixt intelligence and temerity, shyness and showmanship, and like, say, John Banville, her grandiloquence will surely be mocked, but it’s the undeniable and universal gust and thrust of those motown-catchy melodies and pleasing polyrhythms that truly excite the ear. Indeed, only the harp could entertain such fantastic nonsense and, lest we invoke the alarm bells of bitter cliché, the silver moon peeking through grey-on-black clouds (really!) lends ’Sawdust and Diamonds’ a particularly poignant immaculacy.

End Of The Road is, to conclude, the barnstorming apotheosis of every delight in UK festival-shire: well-behaved children and eminently annoying, child-conscious parents alike are entertained, variously, by circus workshops, lessons in drum/dough-beating and perhaps most famously, wild peacocks. The fundamental appeal, though, is its status as that rarest of utopias: a music fest as modest as it is precisely well-rounded; one where the dead-eyed, motormouthed, shit-faced insufferable gratifying an acoustic guitar didn’t actually bring an acoustic guitar — lord, no no no — he brought an accordion. Nobody plays ‘Wonderwall’ on the accordion. Suck up the capacity increase, because with your fill of hot spiced cider, it  quickly becomes apparent that you’ll scarcely find a more wonderful weekend countrywide. All hail the righteous folk! Just leave that Micah P Hinson well alone, eh.

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