As usual, the Green Man Festival, taking place in a rainy, mud-soaked paradise known as Glanusk Park, provided a veritable and varied feast of top-notch sounds to delight of any discerning festival-goer. Let’s get that one nailed from the off. And no number of sound problems in the newly sited Folky Dokey stage, semi-detached festival-goers (get those people with deckchairs out of the bloody marquee) and occasional below-par performance could put a stop to that.

It’s true that things got off to a bit of a slow start. On that first afternoon, only Gilbert (who I’d wrongly expected to be a multi-instrumentalist armed with a computer full of samples and effects) provided anything genuinely surprising and different and it wasn’t until Dead Meadow took their honed-over-a-number-of-years intense three piece sound into the same marquee venue that evening that this year’s Green Man Festival really found its feet. The festival’s mini-programme had quipped that we might find the skies clouding over when Dead Meadow took the stage. …

The Green Man Festival 2007

The big discovery for me at this was the excellent Joanna Newsom, harpist and singer, who would appeal to any fan of Kate Bush, and indeed to anyone with ears to hear. I'm more than a little embarrassed that I hadn't noticed her before.

The very same evening, the magnificent Tunng rose to the big-crowd challenge perfectly, managing to include a cock-rock guitar solo and a bunch of bouncing beachballs into their triumphant set. Their new album, Good Arrows, was on sale early, and certainly lives up to expectations set by last year's Comments of the Inner Chorus, while also making new moves.

Tunng seemed very pleased, and at first a little daunted, to be returning to the Green Man, having played much lower down the bill two years earlier. Maybe the excellent Monkey Swallows the Universe will get the same royal treatment at a future Green Man after this year's delicate yet resounding performance. They even made the rain go away. For a while.

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