REVIEW: Get Together in Kelham Island

Get Together festival returned to Sheffield on a sun-soaked Saturday afternoon in May, this time with an all-new home. After two hugely successful years at the student’s union, the festival spread its wings to Kelham Island for an all-dayer that boasted some of the best up and coming bands from around the country, as well as a headline set from noughties indie darlings Friendly Fires. Sounds spot on, right? Exposed web editor Ash Birch headed down to find out…

Last year’s edition of Get Together was one of my personal highlights of a packed Sheffield summer festival season. The likes of Confidence Man, Squid and The Blinders tore up the Octagon and Foundry stages, so when the announcement came that for their third instalment, they would be changing things up and heading down to Kelham Island, I was more than a little intrigued to see how it would work.

Photo credit: Lindsay Melbourne

This had always been the plan, apparently, as taking it to Kelham affords them more scope to host more stages, and therefore put on more acts. It also gives organisers the opportunity to increase the line-up of food vendors with a sort of a mini-Peddler, as well as allowing artist Corbin Shaw to run wild, plastering witty and poignant slogans all over the area.

How did it work then? Well, the main stage was in Peddler’s warehouse, which was also where wristband collection could be found. The wristbands got you into the six participating venues: Peddler, Yellow Arch, The Antiques Emporium (next door to Yellow Arch), Alder, Neepsend Social Club and Heist. A bumper cast of bands were billed across the six stages, and all you were left to do was figure out an itinerary and make the short trips between each venue to catch your faves or, as was often the case for me, discover something new.

Part of Corbin Shaw’s Neepsend takeover. Photo credit: Jacob Flannery

It’s worth noting that, with the move, there seems to be more of a focus on up-and-coming acts, and fewer household names (except for maybe Friendly Fires and CMAT) are on the line-up today, which, in its own way, made it even more exciting. There were a lot of bands on the line-up that I would be seeing for the first time and it will be interesting to see if this continues in the coming years.

The union-defying Mickey Callisto kicked off proceedings at 1pm with his first of a few shows throughout the day. Unfortunately, we didn’t quite make it in time for this one, but I’m reliably informed he opened the show ‘like it was Live Aid ‘85’, despite the early start! Missing him the first time around wasn’t too much of a disaster, as the sky-blue boiler suited singer was seemingly everywhere all day, and even made a cameo in the set of the first act I did manage to catch, Anthony Szmierek.

Mickey Callisto and Antony Szmierek. Photo credit: Lindsay Melbourne

Callisto added backing vocals to Szmierek’s indie/hip hop closer, a cover of Sugarbabes’ ‘Overload’. Prior to Callisto’s appearance, Antony primed the early-comers with a Mike Skinner-tinged set of originals, including standout track, ‘Hitchhikers Guide to the Fallacy’.

Following Anthony, it was a short hop to Yellow Arch for Butch Kassidy. The West Ealing five-piece are a far cry from indie hip-hop! Leaning more on metal acts for their epic sound, they blast out massive walls of distortion, utilising a mastery of minimalism and dynamics Stuart Braithwaite would be proud to tuck under his kilt for safe keeping.

Butch Kassidy. Photo credit: Jacob Flannery

Next up, back to Peddler for H. Hawkline and a lovely looking tape deck and standout pair of red socks, before heading to Neepsend Social for one of my highlights of the day, Drastic Automatic. A Sheffield-three piece who I’m ashamed to say weren’t on my radar.

A deafeningly chaotic punk set sees lead singer and guitarist Sean bleeding from his fingers all over the scratch plate of a borrowed Telecaster (he broke his in the first song), before a crowd-pleasing cover of Basement Jaxx’s ‘Where’s your Head At’ lifts the corrugated roof off the faux working men’s club. They’re playing Sidney and Matilda on 24^th June. Hard recommend.

Drastic Automatic. Photo credit: Jacob Flannery

It’s then back to Yellow Arch for KEG, the latest post punk ‘next big thing’ in the vein of Yard Act, but this time with brass. The kids at the front go nuts for the angular riffs and it’s obvious why the Brighton seven-piece are so heavily tipped.

At this point it was time to think about refuelling with some dancing carbs, and with more vendors than Mickey Callisto can fit sets into the day, we’re spoilt for choice. The Peddler courtyard hosts New Yorkshire Pizza, banging bratwurst from Get Wurst, Turksish flavours from Mor-Mor and Sri Lankan street food from Colombo, as well as vegan ice cream (perfect for a Sunny Sheff day) from Lick.

Photo credit: Lindsay Melbourne

Over the road at Alder, V or V’s Grillhouse has set up camp in the courtyard and you’ve got Slap and Pickle and Gravy Train slinging their menus in their respective homes of Heist and Neepsend Social. After scranning the jackfruit kottu from Colombo and a jaffa cake ice cream from Lick, it’s over to Heist for Divorce. The stage at Heist has been set up so that bands are playing in front of the stills and it makes an impressively shiny backdrop for the alt-country grunge of Divorce.

Speaking of alt country, next up was main support CMAT and undoubtedly the earworm of the day. Firstly, performance-wise CMAT absolutely stole the show. The Irish singer-songwriter is eminently watchable, is very funny, and was just a whole lot of fun, and with ‘I Wanna Be a Cowboy, baby’, she has a stonewall pop hit that I cannot get out of my head 48 hours later!

CMAT. Photo credit: Jacob Flannery

Following CMAT, we finished with Sister Wives in Alder, which was a fitting way to close out what had been an incredibly successful day for gig-goers and the festival’s organisers. Kelham was buzzing and needs this sort of event to continue to make the area thrive. Grafters bar, who hosted the pop-up record shop and acoustic sets through the day, told us they’d had a record day in terms of takings, and that can only help the area in what are still difficult circumstances post-pandemic. We can’t wait to see how Get Together evolves next year.

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