Foals play their only UK festival appearance, and indie legends Wild Beasts will also be whipping the park into a dark trippy frenzy, and the ubiquitous and brilliant Bonobo mixes things up. If you’ve tried to get tickets to see Laura Marling recently you’ll know that even selling multiple limbs won’t secure them, so the opportunity of seeing her on a (hopefully) sun drenched stage in summer is one not to passed over. Communion welcome to their stage soulful Michael Kiwanuka, Sylvan Esso, rockers Twin Peaks and Nadine Shah, whilst Clash & Last FM turn things up a bit with Vessels, and welcome Ben Howard’s new band A Blaze Of Feather.

You’ll also find Sunday Papers Live, Sofar Sounds and journalism experts The Frontline Club, as well as the Science Museum, FuturePlay and The Indytute offering creative exploration and events. All festivals these days need yoga and swing dancing, and Citadel is no different, bringing on board SwingTrain, Frame and the House of Voga for a dose of wellbeing. There’s also some acoustic sessions, the must see Roller Skating Fiddle Players, a family rave from Big Fish Little Fish, some sports games, theatre – and a ton of street food and craft ales.

All in all, they’ve proved me completely wrong. Nice one.

Buy tickets now.

As a child absorbed in Enid Blyton‘s fiction, I was desperate to go to boarding school, believing it to be a place of perpetual fun, ginger beer and midnight feasts. For Nadia Dahlawi and Sara Jade, the founders of Young & Lost Club, it was where they created a place of perpetual fun, full strength beer and all night raves. To celebrate their 5th birthday, Young & Lost Club have whittled down 32 of the singles that have defined their career thus far, and defined many a music fan‘s identity transcript. One can only assume that rather than ‘I heart Bob‘, their school journals were adorned with graffiti for the coolest of bands.
Listening to the 35 tracks on the album is like pressing the random button on my mp3 player, only without the embarrassing reminders of The Bravery purchases etc. Even if you haven‘t heard of Young and Lost Club, you will have heard, and I‘m 90% sure had a lustful moment over at least one of the bands on the roster.
What comes across is the sense of musical curiosity that Nadia and Sara have, bands ranging from the slow folk of Noah & The Whale with their whimsical ‘Five Years Time‘, to the energetic fractious Good Shoes and ‘Small Town Girl‘, and the chameleon like Bombay Bicycle Club‘s ‘Evening/Morning‘ representing their simple dense poetry that seems formed in intense unplanned flashes of inspiration.
Not all the bands have had the kind of success that some of those showcased at Young & Lost Club‘s early club nights had (heard of The XX, Klaxons, Friendly Fires, Jamie T or Laura Marling?), or indeed, lasted. Larrikin Love may have been short lived, but rather than funereal, ‘Six Queens‘ would feature at only the most raucous of wakes, with as much freshness as the day it was released. The shambolic and coincidental ‘Animator‘ is the contribution from ‘Pull Tiger Tail‘, a band who‘s cavorting and jaunty music made it feel ok to have gaucheries when feeling the way around the city.
Nadia and Sara clearly have an ear for something, but it‘s difficult to pin point what. A palette of instruments, genres and styles, the main thing that all the bands on the Young & Lost Club label have in abundance is the sound of being one of the steps on the uncertain adventure of life.
Happy birthday girls. But don‘t be in a rush to blow out the candles and tick off the years. Being young and lost sounds damn good.