Hop Farm Festival 2010 Part 1

When the thermometer pops past 25 degrees, it doesn’t take us long into the 40 minutes journey out of London to conclude that escaping to the country is certainly the way to go. Fortunately buried within the rolling hills of Kent countryside that now surround us is also, arguably, one of this summer’s best festival line-ups: Hop Farm.

In a staggering list of artists that cuts across sections of the populace as though to expose their musical bloodlines, our first port of call is the up-and-coming Imelda May. With a hearty caterwaul and an altogether Irish sense of fun, her set is a breeze of new-old rockabilly and blues air; distinctive if not wholly original.

The next act made for the first in a feast of folk-loveliness that scattered the weekend, in the same way so-called ‘nu-folk’ is scattering the traditional pop realms of charts and airwaves. Stornoway created a quietly growing storm of instrumental weight and popularity, but the likes of Mumford and Sons’ set on Saturday drew the biggest of the daytime artists to enjoy a banjo jig, which included a new song ‘Nothing Is Written’. The former group were charming with their blend of obscure lyrics – most notably “free the battery human” – which made a favourable divergence from the woes and rapturous choruses of love that permeate the Mumford songs.

Special mention must be given to Laura Marling, who we could wax lyrical about for the way her performance captured the lineage she has to Saturday’s headliner Bob Dylan. Where words have always been her forte, Marling’s voice now has the clout to match and hold its own in the fuller arrangements like ‘Hope In the Air’, but it was when she was left with acoustic in hand that she proved her real mettle. In her cover of Jackson C Frank’s ‘Blues Run The Game’ (to be released on Jack White’s Third Man, no less) she wore Ray Bans and an air of cool confidence, holding us all in a sense of reverence.