End of the Road 2024 • Festivals • DIY Magazine

It’s only right to start at the end. Not with Monday’s misty rain and the bereft zombies queuing for the 8am shuttle back to reality via Salisbury, but with Yo La Tengo - the New York trio whose predictably unpredictable performance at End of the Road 2024 beams over the Wiltshire countryside on Sunday night. When they whip up the shrieking feedback of opener ‘Big Day Coming’, a young woman jams her fingers into her ears. Shortly after, the soft organ murmurs of ‘Autumn Sweater’ are greeted with serene smiles and swaying. And when a young child named Arlo – a “new friend” they made at the festival – comes onstage to play second guitar for the high-energy fuzz-pop of ‘Sugarcube’, our goosebumps are almost audible.

Yo La Tengo’s set is a microcosm of End of the Road – its seamless juxtapositions, its something-for-everyone approach. Here is where strangers can make fast friends, like Yo La Tengo and Arlo; equally though, as one punter’s t-shirt announces, ‘Even the introverts are here’. It’s a place where Mary Lattimore’s harp - which makes us feel like we’re floating above the Garden Stage - can be traded for the experimental noise-making of Ex-Easter Island Head or the formidable, high-intensity rhymes of MC Yallah (or even for a bookbinding or spoon-making workshop).

Indeed, one could enjoy a weekend at Larmer Tree Gardens without watching any bands, as dozens of irreverent attractions and art installations wait in the woods for curious wanderers. There’s the woodland library encircling a venerable treetrunk; the Healing Garden, which offers different types of massages to ease camping cramps; and the do-it-yourself recording studio with an accompanying 'Christopher Walkman' – a car-sized cassette player that lets you revisit the off-the-cuff compositions made by festival-goers from summers’ past.

The big-name acts offer just as much choice. Friday night presents two options: get lost in Lankum’s transcendent doomsday sea shanties – which have been cannon-balled into exponentially more ears since 2023’s Mercury shortlisted 'False Lankum' – or don a dog mask and crowd-surf at IDLES. Despite a few cancellations (we missed you, Militarie Gun), 2024 is a good year to be a punk fan, with several female-fronted bands carrying the genre's incendiary torch.

Lambrini Girls give an as-expected riotous late-night show, while Hotwax upgrade their crowd size this year, thrashing through technical difficulties (“It’s not working, Steve!”) as sweat drips from the Big Top tent and new fans are picked up like paperclips to a magnet. Elsewhere, it's an apt coincidence that legendary Olympia riot grrrls Sleater-Kinney take on The Woods stage, the billing a serendipitous nod to their 2005 album of the same name. While showcasing material from their latest release, 'Little Rope', the set also confirms that earlier LP as among their most enduring. 'Jumpers', the twisted twee anthem 'Modern Girl', and 'Entertain' are all standouts which, more than anything, remind us that there aren’t many performers as effortlessly cool as Carrie Brownstein; she kicks and spins and, at one point, slams the headstock of her Gibson SG on the ground, continuing to whizz up and down the fretboard without breaking either her stride or her grin.

Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson - better known as the indomitable CMAT - has a similar spirit, albeit telegraphed via an ivory-white acoustic and funky rhythm section. She’s arguably the weekend’s funniest performer - and that's saying something, given Fern Brady was on the Talking Heads stage (“More like the Isle of Woman. Right, ladies?”, she quips after spotting an Isle of Man flag). Later, she gets everyone line-dancing for the duration of 'I Wanna Be a Cowboy, Baby!' and bemoans her band for not being sexy enough. But CMAT’s silliness belies her virtuosity; if there was any doubt that she deserves her widespread acclaim or main stage slot (at this point, there probably wasn’t), it’s extinguished in an instant by a jaw-dropping cover of Kate Bush’s 'Wuthering Heights'.

Beyond the big names, End of the Road is also a festival that “takes a punt on a small band with no management or organisational skills" (as admitted by garage rockers Fruit Tones). From here, Cambridge seven-piece Ugly inject a welcome boost into the lethargic atmosphere of Sunday's mid-afternoon, their choral-inspired epics landing like math rock takes on 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. Elsewhere, the meditative soundscapes of Ichiko Aoba elicit “meows” of approval from the roaming peacocks; when she imitates the site’s colourful residents, it’s as though she’s adapting her arrangements with live field recordings – just one of countless serendipitous moments sprinkled throughout the weekend.

And it's these lesser-known acts that represent the festival at its best; Palehound’s El Kempner cites their set here as one of their favourites ever, and most artists to play this weekend say something similar. It's not hard to see why: during the final song from sunshine-folk purveyors Bonny Doon, a little girl puts her red polka dot sunglasses on her dad’s head and dances in his arms, nose scrunched in joy. “You and all your summertime friends,” the band sings. “You know who you are.” Thanks to End of the Road 2024, indeed we do.