Introduction
Festival season is upon us once again and we’ve compiled this handy list of six-string savants for whom it’s worth enduring your annual dose of gig-leg.
Rather than roll out the usual tired gags, in which we make the obligatory nod to baby wipes, wellies and #HatBantz, we’ve picked 20 acts with innovative, entertaining or otherwise ‘brow-raising guitar talents.
Some are household names, others very much not, but as you tread paper cup underfoot, we ask you keep the members of this bizarre and brilliant collective in mind…
Bombino
Festival: WOMAD
Date: 27-30 July
Bombino came to our attention thanks to a winning endorsement from Dan Auerbach, who produced second album Nomad. We can see why the Black Key got excited - Bombino’s colourfully gritty electric playing seems to incorporate both the Niger and Mississippi deltas.
Ex-Easter Island Head
Festival: Supersonic/Liverpool Psych Fest
Date: 16-18 June/22-23 September
Ex-Easter Island Head essentially play guitars like people who have never seen people play guitars – laying their instruments flat and striking them with mallets. There’s a classical-meets-Krautrock atmosphere in their expansive, cycling arrangements, which build and fall with a practised sense of scale.
Satchel, Steel Panther
Festival: Download
Date: 9-11 June
Sure, they’re sexy guys with a stripper support act and thought-provoking lyrics about glory holes, but what you might not know about the 80s throwbacks is that, in Satchel, Steel Panther have a fretboard flamethrower hotter than Leppard’s mid-set lycra.
James Bagshaw, Temples
Festival: Glastonbury/Latitude
Date: 21-25 June/13-16 July
From the ridiculous to the sublime, UK psych-rockers Temples enter summer having released one of the year’s finest records. Singles like Certainty have the widescreen wonder of Tame Impala meshed with a potent MGMT-like swagger, while Bagshaw has a bag of tonal tricks bigger than Mary Poppins’ carry-on.
Jack Bottomley/Sam Macintyre, Marmozets
Festival: Reading/Leeds
Date: 25-27 August
With a second album in the pipeline and still young enough to make us double-check our calendar, Marmozets’ Jack holds down the complex rivers of runs in 13/8, while Macintyre generally makes it his mission to do himself and his gear a total mischief. Whatever happens, it’s usually riveting.
Marmozets' guitarists on inspirations, live energy, rigs and more
Tom Peters, Alpha Male Tea Party
Festival: ArcTanGent
Date: 17-19 August
Alpha Male Tea Party and ArcTangent go together like tea and crumpets. Guitarist Tom Peters is a bit of a whizz when it comes to channeling a “glutinous” pedalboard into alternately touching and exhilarating instrumentals. Also keep an eye out on the same bill for GUG, in which Tom plays sticksman to (Bad Grammar frontman) Ben Forrester and ex-Cleft riff-meister Dan Beesley.
Oumar Touré, Songhoy Blues
Festival: Glastonbury/Liverpool Psych Festival
Date: 21-25 June/22-23 September
The Malian desert blues punks return with their Nick Zinner-produced second album Resistance this summer. Lead guitarist Oumar Touré is a player intertwining hip-hop, funk and, as ever, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, but still asserts the addictive circular rhythms and sub-Saharan crispness, so indicative of his homeland’s famed players.
Mike Sullivan, Russian Circles
Festival: ArcTanGent
Date: 17-19 August
Thunderous instrumental three-piece Russian Circles make the kind of glorious instrumental racket that’s most at home soundtracking dystopias. As the band’s only guitarist, Sullivan is the melodic lynchpin and is a master of the post-rock dark arts of interwoven metallic riffing, tuneful tapping and effects manipulation.
Russian Circles' Mike Sullivan: the 11 records that changed my life
Oli Brown, Raveneye
Festival: Reading/Leeds
Date: 25-27 August
Raveneye’s Oli Brown is the teenage bluesman gone wrong. His band’s boisterous debut Nova shows a player finding his feet in a riff-heavy arena rock mould that’s part Pearl Jam, part Royal Blood. It’s compelling, much more convincing and, when Brown does deign to drop some chops, he fights dirty.
Richard Dawson
Festival: Supersonic Festival/Green Man
Date: 16-18 June/17-20 August
The Tyneside folky has steadily established a unique brand of broken guitar music that’s part trad., part thought experiment. If you’re looking for an unusual player who’s found a voice on the instrument that few can impersonate, look no further than this North Eastern songwriter.
Tom Morello, Prophets Of Rage
Festival: Download
Date: 9-11 June
Prophets Of Rage may have failed to stop Trump in his pre-presidential tracks, but if there’s ever been a time for drowning all self-serving establishment voices in a cleansing tidal wave of righteously funk-laden anger-riffs, it’s now. Morello remains the leading distributor of this brand.
Tom Morello talks finding your tone, jazz lessons and the future of Prophets Of Rage
GOAT
Festival: WOMAD
Date: 27-30 July
Mentalists GOAT are the kind of band that immediately cause people to quizzically ask, ‘Err, what are we listening to?’ To which the reply is usually, ‘Well, they’re sort of this mysterious band that claim to be voodoo-worshippers from Sweden’s northern provinces, but are probably former estate agents.’ Not that they can’t be both.
Brent Hinds, Mastodon
Festival: Download
Date: 9-11 June
Fresh from laying down solos INSIDE the moon on recent album Emperor Of Sand, the expansive metal minds head to Download for what you just know is going to be a triumphant set, featuring Brent Hinds on pan-dimensional, spider-handed widdly bits.
Christian Bland, The Black Angels
Festival: Liverpool Psych Fest
Date: 22-23 September
The US stalwarts founded the Austin Psych Fest (AKA Levitation) back in 2007, now they head to their pan-Atlantic spiritual home the Liverpool Psych Fest. We have, to be honest, a major jones for their newbie Death Song and are eagerly anticipating the chance to catch Bland’s Rickenbacker wrangled fuzz tones live.
The Black Angels talk fuzz selection, Phil Ek and crafting Death Song
Ryan Jarman, The Cribs
Festival: Liverpool Sound City
Date: 25-28 May
It’s easy to take The Cribs for granted. UK indie-pop’s itinerant grafters have consistently delivered thought-provoking lyrics, killer choruses and foot-in-the-face live shows for nigh-on 15 years. Jarman is a killer lead player and an expert on weird Fenders to boot.
The Cribs talk signature Squiers, guitar geekery and lessons of longevity
D.D. Dumbo
Festival: Green Man
Date: 17-20 August
D.D. Dumbo is the live moniker for remarkable Aussie one-man band Oliver Hugh Perry. The guitarist has taken the loop song to elegant new heights, juggling muted delays, jumping rhythms and dynamic 12-string tones on a jaunting safari through Dirty Projectors-like art-pop, indie jams and desert blues.
Jack Sharp/Joe Hollick, Wolf People
Festival: Green Man/Liverpool Psych Fest
Date: 17-20 August/22-23 September
Drawn from various corners of the UK, Wolf People champion the under-appreciated corners of British rock history, jamming elements of Wishbone Ash-esque folk rock, Ground Hogs proto-metal and Fairport rootsiness into enthrallingly powerful fire-lit sagas. We’ve seen Hollick literally play until his hands bleed before now.
Andy Bell, Ride
Festival: Glastonbury/Latitude
Date: 21-25 June/13-16 July
The reappraisal of shoegaze continues apace and Andy Bell’s phenomenal contribution to the world’s private poetry-scrawling mopers is now rightfully cemented in the great rock narrative, influencing a whole new generation of lace-checkers. New album Weather Diaries, their first in 20 years, suggests their timing has improved.
Andy Bell talks returning to Ride and his Rickenbacker'd rig
Omar Rodríguez-López, At The Drive In
Festival: Reading/Leeds
Date: 25-27 August
The El Paso post-hardcore crew are reunited and it feels so good. Sadly, there’s no Jim Ward in tow, but Rodríguez-López has always been more than enough player for all but fans of the most mealy-mouthed music. New album, Inter Alia, shows him in bolshy full flow.
Mike Campbell, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
Festival: British Summer Time
Date: 9 July
The Heartbreakers celebrate their 40th anniversary this year and head to the UK for a one-off festival appearance at British Summer Time in Hyde Park. It’s a rare opportunity to catch one of the world’s economical and effective guitar heroes in the flesh.