Festival N°6 | 2015

Currently touring the world in support of their superb new LP Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance, Belle and Sebastian have already delivered sterling sets at Glastonbury, Fuji Rocks, Øya, Flow and Way Out West. Saturday’s headline show in Portmeirion will be one of the sextet’s final festival performances of the year. Head straight to the front to witness a career-spanning set of perfect indie-pop, and perhaps even to partake in the traditional stage invasion during set-closer ‘The Boy With The Arab Strap’.

Where most artists would happily luxuriate in the glory of a Mercury Prize win, Edinburgh’s Young Fathers simply headed straight back into the studio and set about writing the follow-up. In March this year – a mere six months later – they unveiled White Men Are Black Men Too, and won unanimous acclaim for their restlessly innovative, politically-charged approach to electronic pop. This insatiable energy spills into the trio’s live performances too, making Friday’s show on the i Stage a must-see.

In a development nobody foresaw, ex-Pipette Gwenno Saunders has quietly crafted the best concept album of the decade. Inspired by Owain Owain’s 1976 sci-fi novel of the same name, Y Dydd Olaf is sung entirely in Welsh – with the exception of Cornish-language closer ‘Amser’ – and sets critiques of technology, patriarchy and propaganda to silver-suited Kraut-pop, sprinkled with ray gun synth effects and dreamy vocal harmonies. You can hear Saunders’ beautifully nostalgic compositions first hand on the Sunday.