Welly, Chloe Qisha, The Itch and more: DIY’s best sets of The Great Escape 2025 

Playing to a packed out Beach Stage on Thursday afternoon, Florence Road are barely out of their teens but already sounding like a surefire bet for Ireland’s next great musical hopes. Fronted by Lily Aron - a magnetic centrepin with an easy, natural on-stage confidence - the quartet are a proper rock band, swaggering through moments that suggest they’ve likely had Queens of the Stone Age on rotation, before serving up a newly-written slice of cheeky ‘90s pop-grunge that would find a home on the Clueless soundtrack. Breakthrough single ‘Heavy’ lives up to its anthemic billing, while at least three songs of their short set could already be transposed onto festival main stages and sound totally correct. They end with ‘Goodnight’, but Florence Road are clearly only just getting started.

The surroundings for Nectar Woode’s performance on The Great Escape’s second day feels rather perfect, with the church of Fabrica giving her set a feeling of both grandeur and intimacy. It’s a vibe that matches her offerings perfectly, for what’s a truly joyful set from the British-Ghanaian singer. Her first set of the weekend sees her backed by an accompanying band in a gorgeous display of her soulful prowess, with the likes of ‘Only Happen’ and ‘30 Degrees’ shimmering warmly.

To describe Falkirk five-piece Brògeal as Scotland’s answer to The Pogues - or indeed as the Lowlands lovechild of Fontaines DC and The Mary Wallopers - feels somewhat obvious, and yet their electric hybrid of trad Celtic folk and punk sensibilities possesses precisely the same vitality that makes these Irish counterparts so compelling. In their hands, The Deep End’s tented beach stage is transformed into a riotous, low-ceilinged pub, wherein seemingly no crowd member is immune to the unfettered joys of a tin whistle-flecked, banjo-led indie banger. 

Anyone who saw Youth Man during their explosive tenure will know what a formidable force Kalia Whyte is as a performer, and that’s no different in this newest guise. Taking to the grand confines of Paganini Ballroom, The NONE - also made up of a more-than-notable line-up of Bloc Party’s Gordon Moakes, Cassels’ Jim Beck and Frauds’ Chris Francombe - offer up a jagged, adrenaline-fuelled take on punk that’s equal parts exhilarating and threatening. The fact that their lighting accentuates their profiles and shadows even more intensely against the ballroom’s back wall simply adds to the darkened demeanour they so effortlessly display.

Prime contenders for the busiest band of the weekend, to say Manchester quartet Westside Cowboy are in high demand after their recent Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition win would be an understatement. Playing a rumoured five sets across three days, the self-dubbed ‘Britainicana’ band emphatically deliver on their burgeoning reputation with quiet self-assurance and genuine heart. Though the opening wail of debut single ‘I’ve Never Met Anyone I Thought I Could Really Love (Until I Met You)’ is an obvious highlight, so too is their now-signature set closer - a near-accapella, gang vocal delight of a track that showcases everything that makes them such an exciting proposition. 

As the queue for Chloe Qisha’s set downstairs at Patterns snakes around the block, it’s hard to believe that her performance as part of DIY’s First Fifty show back in November marked only her second live outing ever. Inside, the room is fit to bursting as she takes to the stage for a slick, accomplished preview of her newest EP ‘Modern Romance’, which doubles as one of the most anticipated sets of the festival. Even though most of the crowd have to crane their necks to get a glimpse of her on the venue’s tight stage, there’s no denying that the sparkle of her retro-flecked electro-pop is a giddy delight (‘Sexy Goodbye’ especially), even if you can’t actually see her.

Rounding off BIMM Music Institute’s showcase at Dust on Friday afternoon, London student Finn Mungo manages to channel the cheeky chappy-cum-poet energy of Jamie T, all while wearing a massive grin on his face. With his set today expanded to include a full band back up, recent tracks ‘Stand For You’ and ‘Come Thru’ are given a heftier energy - one that has the room dancing along with the young songwriter in a way that’s truly heartening.

Possibly the funniest set we see all weekend comes courtesy of Paige Kennedy, who intersperses their tight collection of alt synth-pop earworms with a steady stream of whipsmart quips that even the most serious of industry audience members can’t help but chuckle at (“I don’t care if you work for Sony,” they grin as they encourage the crowd to get grooving, “...actually Sony aren’t here, it’s fine”). But in all seriousness, it’s no mean feat to get a room full of lanyard-wearers crouched on the floor in anticipation of the drop in an unreleased track entitled ‘Finga’ - clearly, Paige is an innate entertainer. 

Taking to the stage in their hometown, Brighton collective Ideal Living cut a formidable figure at Horatios this evening. A searing blend of jagged post-punk and doom-fuelled art-rock, frontman Billy Marsh sits somewhere between Shame’s Charlie Steen (thanks, in part, to his closely cropped blonde hair) and Tom Waits, with his beat poetry-esque lyricism packing quite the almighty punch. Flecked with moments of sharp, crystalline brass, their shadowy melding pot is fierce and intoxicating, with tracks from their recent EP (or indie opera, as their press release purports) ‘This Big House’ sounding ambitious but atmospheric. 

Six months on from the release of their debut album ‘bruises’, total tommy’s visit to the end of the pier provides an exhilarating rush of all things alt-rock. Landing somewhere in the middle of a venn diagram of Paramore, Fontaines DC and Wolf Alice’s gnarlier moments, in Horatios tonight, the Sydney quartet - as led by the project’s pioneer Jess Holt - sound like they could take on arenas with the best of them. The likes of ‘Losing Out’ and ‘ADELINE’ provide a cathartic blend of arms aloft singalongs and headbanging breakdowns, which has the pier bouncing gleefully by the end of their set.

Having spent the past few years peddling their mind-bending wares around the grassroots venues of London and beyond, Mandrake Handshake’s is a name which should already be familiar to anyone who’s been paying attention. Tonight, though, their seaside (sea-top?) set feels like something of a lap of honour, an unrestrained celebration of their recently released debut LP, ‘Earth-Sized Worlds’. There’s no doubting that space is at a premium both off stage and on - there is, by our count, eight band members up there - but the tracks themselves are wonderfully expansive; when rendered live, their on-record meanderings become thrillingly unpredictable, and the psych-rock collective draw us unanimously into another realm entirely. 

The Moonlandingz might be significantly more seasoned than most on today’s bill but, returning with new LP ‘No Rocket Required’ a full eight years after their debut, it’s with no small amount of glee that we welcome their uniquely plastic-based brand of chaos back to Chalk’s live stage. With a stage uniform based around various food products cellophaned to his naked torso, today Lias Saoudi opts for what appears to be a couple of cans of beans, strategically placed in a Madonna cone bra homage. The rest of the show, unsurprisingly, bears little resemblance to the Queen of Pop. Instead, Saoudi spends half the set in the crowd, stalking and convulsing through the paranoid weirdo-disco of ‘Black Hanz’ and ‘Sweet Saturn Mine’ with all the outsider spirit of his other band Fat White Family, but also a handful more ridiculous, danceable fun.

What better way to round out a Friday night than with a good old fashioned dose of chaos? Luckily, Welly know how to rise to the challenge, and by the time they play, they’ve already managed to shut down Brighton pier as people try to cram their way into Horatios for the final set on DIY’s stage. Just two months on from the release of their debut ‘Big In The Suburbs’, the South Coast band are already pros at whipping up their gathered audience, with Elliot Hall wasting no time in grabbing onto the venue’s decorative rope ceiling and using it as a a makeshift climbing frame, all while orchestrating their witty brand of rabble-rousing. All in all, their set is deliciously fun, with closing cut ‘Me and Your Mates’ providing just the right amount of carnage to see them embedded in TGE lore (and not just because the venue’s decorations take a bit of a battering). 

By this point, English Teacher could play pretty much any festival and rank among its best performers, so the Mercury Prize-winners’ inclusion here will come as a surprise to precisely nobody. And yet, what is notable is how, over a year since its release, their breakthrough debut ‘This Could Be Texas’ still sounds so fresh: live, frontwoman Lily Fontaine’s vocals on ‘You Blister My Paint’ and closer ‘Albert Road’ are nothing short of goosebump-inducing. This headline appearance on TGE’s biggest stage is, we assume, likely their last at the new music-centric festival - until, of course, they get the call to return for a prestigious Spotlight Show at Brighton Dome. 

One of a handful of names that seem to be on everybody’s lips this weekend, Silver Gore are perhaps the most elusive of the bunch. With only a sole 2024 single and a hefty dose of word-of-mouth hype to go off, reams of festival goers have made their way to the pair’s late night set at The Prince Albert to see what all the fuss is about - and, once you’ve elbowed your way into the midst of the throng, things quickly become clear. Where frontwoman Ava Gore is commanding in one way, all ethereal vocals and Kate Bush-like cadence, her musical foil Ethan P. Flynn has something of a mad scientist about him - orchestrating a symphony of glitchy electronics and vaguely unsettling dynamic shifts, he’s utterly absorbed by the constituents of his own creation. As, to be fair, are we. 

Cramming into the downstairs room of Rossi Bar for a last minute Alternative Escape show on Friday night, The Itch make a solid pitch for Band of the Weekend. With only a trio of songs in the world, their LCD Soundsystem-recalling indie-dance-punk hybrid already sounds tight and direct; recent track ‘The Influencer’ jerks and thrusts like the spirit of indie sleaze come to shake Brighton alive, while heady AA-side ‘Co-Conspirator’ is made for whipping tightly-packed basements into a loose-limbed frenzy. It’s loud, sweaty and very, very good. 

Tags: Brògeal, Chloe Qisha, English Teacher, Florence Road, Ideal Living, Mandrake Handshake, Nectar Woode, Paige Kennedy, Silver Gore, The Itch, The NONE, total tommy, Welly, Westside Cowboy, The Great Escape, Festivals, Reviews, Live Reviews