Godiva Festival 2016, Coventry – Day 3, 3nd July 2016
For day three of the Godiva Festival 2016 the sun was out and it was everything a festival day should be with some great bands with an amaxing climax of Leed’s The Pigeon Detectives, reunited Sheffield Indie -rockers Milburn and London’s own Scouting For Girls. Again the highlights were many. Here are a few.
Somone who gained his main stage place though success in Godiva Calling was Louie Forde, who opened proceedings. . I’m not going to lie here, acoustic I love and although there was not an awful lot going on and Louie seemed little shy and quite deep into his music, this did not detract from the quality of his songs.
Things were hotting up; the Sun was burning hot, and the crowd was warming up for the up and coming act Emma McGann described by “Fantastic” by none other than Kylie Minogue. Asking if everyone’s having a good time so far she opened with Little White Lies. A fine set, finishing with Second Chances, showed she could be the next big pop star playing near you!
Stuart Wolfenden popped up at the Free Radio tent. Each time I see this guy he gets better and better. Normally delivering punk and rock in the style of Frank Turner and Billy Bragg, he was armed only with his guitar today, running through the expanding repertoire of his own material, delivered with a his unique voice and style.
Cliff writes music that is honest, if a bit moody with sharp lyrics; good stuff but not really my cup of tea. However for one particular fan this seemedthe best band of the day as she dances away in the sun.
Sound of the Sirens are a foot-stomping, crowd-engaging female duo with an on-stage chemistry that chemistry is a pleasure to see. Their performance was full of banter and playful mocking of each other. individually their voices sound great but together they sound at one, having been apparently been dubbed “the female Simon and Garfunkel”.
I have come to the conclusion that leaad simger of The Pigeon Detectives, Matt Bowman is completely bonkers. On stage he’s like a child having fun runnign around, spitting and squirting water at the hot crowd and working his way to the destruction of yet another microphone, throwing it about all over the place. The band are just back from an extended break, but there were no signs of ring rust. Favourites like I Found Out, Take Her Back and I’m Not Sorry hasd the crowd wound up and lookign forward no doubt to the the release of their fifth album, currently in the pipeline.
Indie Rockers Milburn seemed to give it all up in 2008 but they are back, reunitied and, from the look of this performance, enjoying themselves. Not necessarily looking to apture any new hearts they were still quite humble about hte whole thing: “For those of you who don’t know, we made a couple of records about 8 years ago, then we split up but for some reason people kind of like us. Nice one; thank you!”.
Multimillion album selling Scouting For Girls had the crowd of all ages screaming as soon as the introductory Superman theme saw them arrive on the main stage. A better band couldn’t have been chosen to close the festival on this glorious sunny day and the hits were on show: Elvis Ain’t Dead and She’s So Lovely being the highlights.
It was a great way to end the 18th Godiva festival. A great success and well attended in spite of the early patchy weather, it was a pleasure to cover the event. We’ll be back next year!
Words and photographs: Chris Bowley