Festival season is very nearly over and out, but with No Bounds on the way in October and a weekend of raucous guitar bands at Float Along just gone, Sheffield just doesn’t know when to let the festival season drop.
Launched in 2022, post-pandemic, Float Along Festival has steadily built a reputation for its mix of post-punk, psychedelic rock, indie and alternative music. This year, the team behind Sidney & Matilda took the reins and put together its most ambitious programme yet, including a headline set from late-noughties indie favourites White Lies at the Octagon.
Like Get Together in the spring, Float Along is a chance to catch emerging bands before everyone else does. We arrived with a list of acts we’d been meaning to see and started at Sidney & Matilda with Sheffield’s own Cinder Path.
Cinder Path is the latest vehicle from Sheffield songwriter and all-round top guy Dan Whitehouse. Their singles ‘Fall Forward’ and ‘Slip’ offer perpetually moving post-industrial shoegaze grandeur that you should all get very excited about. And bassist Angela Holland’s bass posturing is unrivalled on the day!
Despite the Sidney team trying their best to avoid clashes, the day’s first tough choice comes next: Hard as Nails at Sidney’s or TTSSFU at Corporation. We head uphill to Corp for the start of a strong run of bands, reasoning that we’re more likely to catch Hard as Nails in Sheffield again.
Singer-songwriter Tasmin Nicole Stephens, better known as TTSSFU nowadays, although you may remember her from her time in Duvet, announces with a couple of songs left to play that ‘it’s time to have fun and stop all the depressing shit’. She’s clearly never been on a night out in Corp, as she proceeds to get into the crowd and lie on the floor. Hope there’s disinfectant on the tour bus!
In the second room, it’s the turn of Maximillian Tanner, former Sheffield resident and Black Waters member. He’s now playing solo with backing tracks of tunes he wrote in his shed. It’s super ’80s-inflected pop and there are more than enough hooks to keep you interested. I just can’t help thinking this would be even better with a live band and a few guitar lines. One to keep an eye on.
Back in the main room, it’s time for the band I’ve most been looking forward to: Opus Kink. Their collision of post-punk, country, Celtic folk and brass doesn’t disappoint, even if the singer nearly decapitates me with a water bottle after the first song. It hits my shoulder instead. In fairness, I wasn’t looking – and he apologises outside afterwards. A sweaty mosh pit forms and Float Along starts to heat up.
It’s then the turn of Oslo Twins, whom I’d missed when they played The Washy last year. Claudia Vulliamy’s vocals are reminiscent of Portishead’s Beth Gibbons and float over synth-driven dream pop. They kinda straddle moody synth soundscapes and upbeat dance vibes.
It’s another sweaty one back in the main room for the irrepressible Warmduscher. In recent times, they seem to have blown up, and with tunes like the Soulwax-remixed ‘Big Dipper’ and ‘I Got Friends’ going off, a lot of Radio 6 dads are having the sleaziest disco of their lives!
Finally, it’s a schlepp up the hill to the Octagon for White Lies. This means missing out on Man/Woman/Chainsaw and Sprints but, again, the calculation is that we might catch them another time, whereas White Lies haven’t really toured for years.
It’s a wholesome vibe in the Octagon, with a lot of grown-up indie kids having a lovely cuddle with their mates to songs they were probably off their faces to at festivals in 2007. They’re good value and lead singer Harry McVeigh comes off as a genuinely lovely and appreciative man. Could do without the slap-bass solo, but an otherwise top way to round off an excellent day’s festival-going.
