By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: **** (press pass)

WHEN?: Friday 25 August 2023

A fortnight ago Cian Ducrot’s debut album topped the charts in both the UK and his native Ireland and this afternoon he opens his set on the Castle Stage with the title track from it, the appropriately titled Victory.

• Read on for reasons including Mae Muller, Britain’s best new band Welly, Billy Nomates and The Charlatans

Wearing a Rolling Stones T-shirt, Ducrot celebrates his 26th birthday next week and we’re right up the front for him and can hear the predominantly teenage girls who surround us singing along to heartfelt ballads like the top 20 hit All For You and Everyone Who Falls In Love (Has Someone Else They’re Thinking Of).

We’re wearing our ‘I’ve been to Heaven with Cian Ducrot’ T-shirt in honour of a recent single and we reflect on how far he’s come since we 1st saw him less than a year ago in London at 1 of his 1st headlining gigs.

Mae Muller may not have been victorious at this year’s Eurovision in Liverpool but her top 10 hit I Wrote A Song is 1 of the best of 2023 and she and her live band perform the socks off it here.

She was the 2nd act sourced by TaP Music for Eurovision after Sam Ryder and we wonder whether Muller’s decision to cancel her headlining tour this fall including a Camden Roundhouse gig played some part in TaP’s decision to withdraw from their UK selection act role for Malmo in 2024.

Fans of Eurovision will be delighted to know the BBC this week confirmed that Eurovision’s 2 semi finals will be shown live on BBC1 for only the 2nd time following their popularity this year and, for us, the interval act performance of You’ll Never Walk Alone featuring a cut to Eurovision winner Ruslana in Ukraine is probably 1 of the most moving TV moments of this or any year.

Muller plays her big pre-Eurovision hit Better Days and reminds in this main Common Stage slot why her debut album Sorry I’m Late out 15 September and including song of the week Me, Myself And I is definitely 1 of our reasons to be excited for next month.

We saw Welly live the night before outdoors at a gig headlining at The Scoop at Tower Bridge in London and received some social media criticism for not crediting their record label enough and so we are happy to put that right with a link to our friends at Neon Filler and a piece on Goo Records.

Welly, the name of the lead singer and the band, reveals on this cosy Casemates Stage gig for which they draw a sizeable and lively crowd that his mum is in the audience and he is hoping to convince her that music is a viable career option for him.

We wrote of their London gig that they were ‘Britain’s best new band’ and that they would be ‘as big as 90s Blur in 18 months’ so we hope Mrs Welly senior was convinced.

We love the small details: they’re wearing PE kits and limber up, comically, onstage and immediately before the show. They also encore in London but Flowers is cut short 2 minutes in because of the strict curfew and Welly urges the crowd to ‘Lana Del Rey’ in reference to the audience which kept singing when something similar happened at Glastonbury this summer.

The set is a little different to last night in London and we flee to catch the end of Mae Muller as they launch into Me And Your Mates and so may have missed our favourite song Big In The Suburbs, complete with audience joining in, but we hope to catch them live again very soon because they are fun, entertaining, full of banter and destined for far bigger stages.

We joined the Humdrums for Welly and also a main Common Stage appearance by Billy Nomates who proves beyond a shadow of a doubt why she didn’t deserve a BBC Radio 6 backlash after her Glastonbury performance.

We also enjoyed The Blossoms on the main Common Stage whose lead singer reveals his dad was in the Navy and he used to play football on Southsea Common where this Glastonbury-on-sea festival is being staged 20 years ago as a child.

We also appreciate the main stage set by the Charlatans – a band we 1st saw at The Buzz Club in Aldershot in 1990 before they rose to fame – and arrive home on the train hours before another rail strike, sunburnt and happy after our seaside adventures as the rain falls on London.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy Victorious Festival Tickets
• Have you ever been to Victorious Festival or heard the songs of the acts playing there? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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