Roskilde, Sunday 4th July 2010

You’re an ironman if you aren’t totally shattered by Sunday; you accept this as you see the fields of Festivalplads littered with sleeping figures simply too tired to walk over to a stage to see another band. Inside is a touch of sadness, as you realise Roskilde Festival is almost over. But there’s still another full day of performances awaiting you, and this year, the 40th anniversary of Roskilde Festival, promises to be a doozy.

A good way to wake up the mind and body is with a mid-afternoon recital by Dulsori, a Korean music troupe of men and women. I say ‘recital’ because of all the bands you could see at Roskilde, they’re definitely the most traditional of folk acts, utilizing ancient Eastern instruments like the zither and large drums. They’re also dressed traditionally – rather unfortunate in this year of record high temperatures at the festival. But despite looking like they’re from another time, they’re extremely successful in marrying the old ways of playing music with a modern day feel. Martial art moves and dizzying sequences of drum solos wow the people gathered at Odeon to see them play, impressed by their showmanship.

After Dulsori has the crowd eating out of their hands, I decide to pay a visit to one of the few American bands I actually wanted to see at Roskilde. Los Angeles’s Local Natives are playing Pavilion, and the tent is packed from all sides, but I can’t tell if this is because the people are there to see them or were too tired to move after a set by UK band Nedry. I missed them but interestingly enough, Huw Stephens on Radio1 has championed them on BBC Introducing 2 weeks ago. Local Natives have just become popular in the UK, so I’m not surprised if the reason is the former. Rather than try to force my way into the stage, I instead take a lunch break – a not so quick lunch break turns out, as buying a burger and a drink, then lining up to get said burger and drink takes longer than the actual wolfing down of calories – but the location of the food stall and the wind direction allow me to hear the Californians’s set pretty well even if I cannot see them. I’m not terribly impressed: maybe there are just too many bands these days that want to sound like the Beach Boys. I don’t get excited about this kind of music.

From a distance I can hear the familiar strains of ‘Flake’, a song by Jack Johnson that was popular when I was at university and made the Hawaiian surfer dude a household name in America. So the Orange Stage beckons. His brand of surf pop is perfect for a lazy Sunday afternoon at Roskilde – this is unhurried, unpretentious music that you can chill out to. Johnson amuses the Danish crowd by noting that he and his band will attempt to play songs from his latest album, ‘To the Sea, but seeing that they haven’t played the new material much live, he’s expecting to mess up but hopes the audience will enjoy them anyway. He forgets lyrics when starting up one song, but he laughs this off and the audience isn’t perturbed; in fact, they join in with their own laughter.

I suddenly notice that the number of folding chairs has multiplied since the beginning of the festival. This phenomenon is directly related to the fact that by now everyone’s tootsies are hurting and have blisters. I myself at this point have already gone through a pile of plasters, as walking in wellies for 4 days can wreck your feet more than I thought possible. I look at the seated punters with envy, looking blissed out with their loved ones and a plastic glass of beer within arm’s reach. If I had a chair like that, I would have probably been tempted to stay in that one place and wait for Prince’s festival-closing performance.

But Odeon has an inticing line-up for the rest of the day. I am eager to see the Kissaway Trail for the second time this year. They are a Danish rock/pop band that has been touring the world with Melbourne, Australia’s Temper Trap, and their album ‘Sleep Mountain’ is well regarded in Scandinavia. The Temper Trap’s singer Dougy Mandagi, smoking a fag and dressed in a Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band t-shirt, watches the action from within the crowd and goes completely unrecognised. The local boys are so excited to be playing at home for their countrymen, and the feeling is mutual.

Their crazy roadie that I remember from their Washington DC show in April is back, still dancing and shaking tambourines. Maybe it is Roskilde magic, but this affair with multi-coloured lights and the band in front of a large and noisily appreciative crowd seems to be the best way to experience ‘SDP’, the single that introduced most Britons to the Kissaway Trail. It’s swirly and epic. You want these guys to do well.

The Danes are followed by an American (Andrew Wyatt) and two Swedes (Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg), aka Miike Snow, and their live band. Proud papa Winnberg tests his electronic equipment while carrying around his baby daughter, smartly outfitted with massive pink noise-cancelling headphones. Excessive amounts of fog billow out from and envelope the stage while the roadies are desperately trying to set up the stage despite not being able to see much.

Unfortunately, the white-out caused by the fog machines continues through the entire Miike Snow set. I haven’t seen such a gratuitous smoke display since watching the Big Pink at Washington’s Black Cat last winter. Smoke camouflage may have been the band’s intention; after all, they are known to take the stage in face-obscuring masks, presumably to allow for the music to speak for itself without regard for image. Wyatt introduces several brand new songs but it is old favourites like ‘Black and Blue’ and ‘Silvia’ from their self-titled debut that are the showstoppers. Wyatt asks the audience to sing along to ‘Animal’, and we oblige. Loudly and with conviction. It’s a wonderful feeling but you can’t help but wonder how much better the show would have been if we could have seen something.

Following another brief break, it is time for the Temper Trap. I make friends with two Swedish university kids who want to know what the boys from Oz are like live, as they love their debut album ‘Conditions’. I am happy to provide my relatively objective opinion, having seen them and the Kissaway Trail together at the 9:30 Club months before and being blown away by the Aussies, and predict they will kill it tonight. Happily, I am right on the money. Mandagi I’m sure is aware that the second half of his band’s set overlaps with the start of the one by Prince. They probably even had a pre-gig pep talk that they would have to pull out all the stops if they were going keep the punters at Odeon and not lose them to His Purple Majesty at Orange. ‘Drumming Song’ becomes an onstage party as the Kissaway Trail join the Temper Trap, singing and providing percussion. It’s as sweet of a display of affection as can be between grown men, and watching touring mates so obviously close to one another play one of the last shows at Roskilde 2010 is heartwarming. By the end of the Temper Trap’s set, most people have forgotten that they were supposed to leave earlier for the Purple One.

I depart Odeon with my new friends to head on over to Orange Stage. The two of them have exactly the same mindset as I do: we’re not terribly massive fans of Prince, but we want to see at least a couple of songs to say to our mates, ‘we’re special! We’ve seen Prince!’ Just like Gorillaz on opening night, Prince’s set is delayed starting as well. I’m not too happy standing near several trees (think about it) but at least we can see a jumbotron with no problem. The final show of Roskilde 2010 begins with an instrumental number sans Prince, and then he appears, looking gaunt in an artsy white jumpsuit. Maybe we set our expectations way too high, but we are completely underwhelmed by the start of Prince’s performance. The first couple of songs – ‘Let’s Go Crazy’, ‘Delirious’, and ‘1999’ - have been revamped into terrible, drawn-out versions of their former tightened pop selves. ‘Little Red Corvette’ suffers the most; anyone who remembers when the song and its accompanying sexy video first came out in the ‘80s wants to reclaim the feelings of dirty sensuality that the original brought out in all of us when we were young and shouldn’t have been listening to such dirt. Has he lost the plot? Or maybe too many reinventions along the way has confused the man.

At some points I laugh because he is trying too hard to engage the audience and he’s doing it in such a way that is to anyone but the most obsessive Prince fans completely insulting. He asks us to shout his name multiple times (sir, we know who you are, you are Prince, that’s why we have come to see you), or he asks us to sing lines from popular songs so he doesn’t have to. I’m not so bothered by the latter since make no mistake, he is technically gifted on guitar and the man can certainly play like nobody’s business.

But later he gets mad as us when he encourages the crowd to follow his lead in arm gestures and many including us refuse; I felt like I was being talked down to like being back in grade school. Blimey. I feel bad writing this because Prince is Prince, and Prince is such a beloved musical icon to so many. But we weren’t the only ones who left early to get some well-deserved rest or catch trains home. Looking back at all the amazing bands I have seen in the last 4 days, this disappointment is minor. Thank you Roskilde Festival for an incredible line-up and happy 40th anniversary, here’s to many more.