Gig played on 26/06/06

And so a week of corporate shenanigans draws to a close in appropriate style. A faux-festival which has seen much high profile flopping (Dirty Pretty Things, The Strokes and Massive Attack leap to mind) and all too few highlights (The Raconteurs, The Flaming Lips) closes amidst substantial disappointment and a little stab of true excitement. Highly predictable, of course, with two headliners who belong in darkness as fish belong in water, but who spend the bulk of their sets squinting into the sun, and a list of support acts that are 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.

Mystery Jets are hardly crowd favourites, and a lot of the audience still haven't dragged themselves from the football screens across the park, but they beat the odds to deliver one of the week's surprises, a set as ragged, eccentric and - yes - charming as the band themselves. The band may look endearingly and enduringly English - more mad hatter's tea party than rebel chic - but their music is full of American inflections, from Grant Lee Buffalo vocal tics to some glowing guitar riffs that may have fallen off the back of Cheap Trick's lorry. And there's no doubting the sunny charm of "You Can't Fool Me Dennis", which wanders into Zutons territory but with none of the cynicism.

Next it's Goldfrapp, who seem to have been touring mainstream breakthrough "Supernature" since around 1972, although today is the first time this writer has seen them appear so bored by the chore. Alison looks quite fantastic and they may have rejigged songs like "Strict Machine" and "Ride A White Horse", but this evening the band just aren't the pop bomb they can be, horse headed backing dancers or no. And it can't just be blamed on the fact that songs with the sweaty sexual heat of "Train" just shouldn't be heard in bright sunshine. Nor can it be blamed on Alison's occasional stubbornness: if anything, tonight's set is overly populist, shunning dark jewels like "Lovely Head" or "You Never Know" in favour of bright pop baubles like "Fly Me Away".

Tonight climaxes with electro overlords Depeche Mode. Yet despite a heavily greatest hits set (a pummelling "Question Of Time", a squalling "Stripped") it takes a while for the Mode to really find their feet. Dave Gahan certainly has more energy than anyone ever declared dead should have, but there has always been an odd fit between his almost bullying bellowing and songs as downright dark and peculiar as "Walking In My Shoes".

But then the sun finally sets and things come together gloriously. "Personal Jesus" pops and grinds, and makes sense of Gahan's physical exuberance, while "Shake The Disease" is gorgeously sung solo by Martin Gore. And then there's "Never Let Me Down Again", which sounds monumental, indestructible, like a song that wasn't so much written as carved out of ancient rock. It ends the festivities on a far more powerful note than they probably deserve.

by Jaime Gill