Critiques

Fri 2 Sep – End Of The Road Festival
So joyfully varied is the lineup at the much-loved End of the Road festival that themes emerge by chance. So it proved this year: where one visitor might have seen it as an event strong on acoustic Americana, another would left convinced it had been focused on goth women and bands who'd paid a lot of attention to the Hawkwind back catalogue.

The Hawkwind tendency came with the Fall, who were implacable, uncompromising and, dare one say, a little dull; and from Wooden Shjips, whose drone rock took a long, straight drive to euphoric emptiness. The goth women were particularly strongly represented. While Zola Jesus's late-night Saturday set was a disappointment ("That is the worst life act I haf effer seen," one jovial German told a steward), Lykke Li's twilight performance on the main stage on Friday was the production of the weekend. She and her band were clad in black and swathed in dry ice…