The Great Escape 2018 comes to a thunderous close with help from Demob Happy, Bully, ALASKALASKA and more

Australian singer-songwriter Stella Donnelly’s bedroom folk-pop is full of wit and feminist messages and she shines in her engagement with the audience during her early set on the final night of this year’s Great Escape, mixing up banter, meaningful messages and genuine thankfulness at different points throughout her show. Before standout song ‘Boys Will Be Boys’, she addressing the crowd with a moving speech which is met with applause, before tackling victim blaming and sexual assault on the slow, acoustic track with a remarkable amount of confidence.

Bully’s second album ‘Losing’ was one of last year’s most satisfying returns, a relentless thrash of ’90s-indebted punk. Today, even at the sober hour of 3pm, it’s even more wild and untamed. Alicia Bognanno is a simply brilliant frontwoman, thrashing her way around the stage with relentless energy. Closing with an enraged cover of Mclusky’s ‘Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues’, the final day in Brighton can be considered well and truly started.

The sun may be blazing outside, but in the boiling hot upstairs room of The Western, Londoners Sistertalk are conjuring up the kind of jagged magic that’s more suited to far darker surrounds. Impeccably tailored and with the ominous aura of a bunch of next gen mafia men, their whirling keys and harsh guitar slices are part brooding Specials lurch, part early Horrors drama. Still in their most formative of stages, it’s already an alluring combination.

Brighton boys Demob Happy have been playing The Great Escape for years now, so it’s with no little amount of righteous vindication that they take to the 700-capacity Beach Club stage with a queue snaking out the door. It may have been a slow and steady route here, but the trio’s intoxicating blend of filthy riffs and heady harmonies are undoubtedly picking up pace and rightly so: the likes of ‘Fake Satan’ and ‘Loosen It’ are saucy things that pack a hefty punch in the most melodic of ways. The crunching bass stabs that open up old single ‘Succubus’, meanwhile, are still as deliciously dirty as they come.

Continuing today’s selection of hometown boys coming good, The Magic Gang take to a heaving Beach Club like returning heroes. Swinging by the festival for a brief victory lap after the release of their recent debut, the quartet don’t need to be touting their wares at new band festivals anymore but there’s something special about the fact that they’re here on home turf today. Joking about their hangovers, they’re still a ray of harmony-laden sunshine and the crowd clamber on each others’ shoulders and sing-along accordingly. With only a short half-hour to hand, it’s a succinct run through the bangers, of which they now, of course, have many. From ‘Getting Along’ to ‘All This Way’ to oldie ‘Jasmine’, you’d have to be the biggest of grumps to not come out with your heart a little bit warmer.