Live At Leeds in the Park 2022 – Review
When you think of the Leeds music scene, you may think about Leeds Festival, Headrow House or a little indie music festival called Live At Leeds in the City. Well, from the makers of that festival comes Live At Leeds in the Park, a brand new festival for indie music lovers everywhere. Performing is the very best across the British indie music scene including Easy Life, The Vaccines, Holly Humberstone, Sea Girls and Arlo Parks, headlined by the sensational Bombay Bicycle Club. Based on the lineup alone, this is an indie kid’s dream and Live At Leeds in the Park 2022 will be a festival to remember.
Like with most new festivals, there are always teething problems, and this one had some quite major ones and it’s all within the ground on which Live At Leeds was held. The hills across the festival made it hard for disabled customers to get around the festival, and as someone with physical disabilities and mobility issues myself, this is something that was a big red flag for me. The ground had played host to Slam Dunk Festival the day before and You Me At Six’s headline show the day before that, so with one of the stages closed off, the site was essentially ready to go.
Now split into four stages (or five if you count the Dork Stage Left / Right set up), the second stage was relocated to the back of the site located inside a marquee meaning that while primarily still the same layout as for the previous day’s Slam Dunk, it took a little while for punters to get used to which stage was which. However, with the site being nice and compact, this was a minor gripe and one that was quickly resolved with a wander around the beautiful location.
Despite those issues, the festival was fantastic. It was filled to the brim with some great performances from indie legends to up and comers. Some personal highlights for me included Lauran Hibberd, who opened the MTV Stage and brought a tonne of sass to it, Dream Wife, who provided some great festival vibes with a mosh-worthy performance, Kynsy, who is now one of my favourite up and coming acts, as with Dylan John Thomas, who is now my one to watch. Sea Girls gave the strongest performance I have ever seen them do, improving heavily on the last time I saw them (review here) and Arlo Parks, who provided the sophistication, love and poetry to the festival. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to catch Bombay Bicycle Club’s headline set, but from what I have heard from others that went to the festival, they were excellent.
Overall, Live At Leeds is a fun, energetic and passion festival filled with as much care for its customers as possible, and has provided us with a lineup that I believe is the strongest of the UK festival season. I loved how many vegetarian and vegan food outlets there were throughout the festival’s choice of vendors and I enjoyed the vibe of the festival as a whole. Unfortunately, work must be done to utilise how great this festival could be, and I believe that can be fixed by finding a new ground for the festival next year, but besides that, to say that this was the first year this happened, its a very strong start to a festival that I don’t doubt will be one of the best in the country in a few years.
