Yahoo! Music Review

Gig played on 17/08/08

Pity bands who play early on the second day of a festival, competing with hangovers and the hunt for a bearable toilet for the crowd's fickle attentions. Pity them even more when that hangover includes the ketamine rush that was Muse's finale the night before, the kind of high that makes watching Squeeze or Gabriella Cilmi about as exciting a prospect as masturbation after sex with the young Marlon Brando.

Charitably, this could explain why The Delays audience is distinctly underpopulated and singer Greg Gilbert is forced to cajole them ever more desperately. But their weedy record sales would suggest their real problem is that - despite Gilbert's celestial falsetto, and an energetic set which closes with gorgeous versions of "Long Time Coming" and "Valentine" - this criminally underrated band just aren't as popular as they should be.

Girls Aloud, conversely, are very popular, though they repay this favour with one of the shoddiest performances in recent festival memory. It's hard to say which is worse: the hen night shrieking throughout, the lazy arrogance (at one point Cheryl Cole bellows "This dance is only for sexy people" - mysteriously, Nicola doesn't sit down) or the appalling covers, including GBH on Salt'N'Pepa's "Push It" and Aerosmith's "Walk This Way". Only restrained versions of the irresistible "Biology" and a propulsive "Wake Me Up" redeem their slot in any way.

Frankly, the crowd should fall to their knees and worship The Feeling after that, with their masterclass in how to deliver pure pop. A sunburnt, surprisingly muscular Dan Gillespie Sells is on rampant, guitar hero form throughout, and delivers a set of wall to wall hits. As well as an ecstatic "Join With Us" and a muscular "Thought It Was Over", they gift us with the day's most moving moment, when a crowd of beerily laddish Essex boys sing along note perfect to the explicitly gay love song "Sewn", just as the sun breaks through the clouds.

Amy Winehouse's appearance - amidst rumours of disaster the day before - should be a win win for the crowd. If she turns up in train wreck mode they have office gossip for Monday, while if she pulls herself together they have an hour in the presence of rare talent. So it's strange that despite the fact Winehouse seems entirely coherent today, dancing and smiling sweetly, with huge roses in her beehive, her set is anticlimactic. It's not that her very real personal drama is absent (only vultures would want that) but that she fails to invest her songs, even "Back To Black", with the musical drama they deserve. Only a final romp through "Valerie" spikes anyone's blood pressure.

It's left to The Verve to bring V to a real climax and while the crowd may perhaps envy their Staffordshire counterparts ending the weekend with Muse's histrionics, Richard Ashcroft's own brand of pomp and circumstance can still excite. Of the new material, only a strident encore of "Love Is Noise" carries any real punch, but the piercing strings and heartbreak of "History" can still sizzle the hairs on the back of your neck and even a decade of overplay hasn't dimmed the raw power of "Bittersweet Symphony" or the tenderness of "The Drugs Don't Work". No doubt they'll have split again by next Friday, but tonight at least they sound convincingly together, and deliver a fittingly rousing, crowd-pleasing finale.

by Jaime Gill