Newcastle based festival Hit The North Festival returned over the May bank holiday weekend for its 2nd year taking place on the 6th May. The festival also featured an opening Party on the 4^th with the choice of three gigs (Jungle, Circa Waves or Drenge) and a pre-festival day called Meet The North on the 5th, which was headlined by Peace. 

Some of the artists towards the top of the builing (full lineup at bottom of page)

The festival itself is spread across several different venues across Newcastle (including O2 Academy, Boiler Shop, Riverside, Think Tank plus many more and even Newcastle Cathedral) when choosing someone to see across the venues, you have to factor in walking time between the venues dotted about Newcastle and like any festival, if you like your music, there will be band clashes, oh so many clashes!

One thing that seemed evident, compared to last year, was a lot of the venues didn’t seem to have as higher attendances as last year (maybe that was just the gigs I went to, but a few people said the same). Last year the festival had the luxury of it being its debut year, the biggest ‘inner city festival in the North East’. The current line-up maybe lacked a few bigger more established names compared to rival festival Live at Leeds (which falls on the same weekend), however the line-up was packed full of up and coming bands and lots of local talent, incidentally a lot of the bands perform both at Live At Leeds and Hit The North, sometimes they play sets at both festivals on the same day.

The HTN line-up, reflected the music scene in Newcastle is especially strong currently with some local acts such as the likes of Sam Fender, The Pale White, Feva and The Old Pink House featuring prominently on the line-up.

The festival learned from a slight gripe last year, that on the day of the festival people were queueing outside the O2 Academy to get a wristband, whilst many bands performing early last year including the wonderful London based band ‘Haus’ suffered with the attendances due to people queuing to receive the wristband. This year, there was more access to getting a wristband with the festival also having ticket points for wristband collection at other venues and also better timing, or if you were like me, you could get your wristband at the Opening Party or Meet The North (which were all included as part of a weekend ticket).

As part of the Opening Party, I saw headliners Jungle at Boiler Shop who were supported by Rae Morris (you can see the review in our earlier post). Jungle were actually the highlight of the 3 day festival weekend for me, the sad thing was they clashed with Circa Waves and Drenge who were headlining the 02 Academy and Riverside concurrently.

Onto Meet The North Festival, this was an all-day event spread across several venues and the main headliner on the billing was Peace, who had just released there new album ‘Kindness Is The New Rock n Roll’ the day before the gig. But before Peace arrived there was a late special guest addition to the line-up in the form of Scottish band Glasvegas, who after a stunning debut album had maybe not hit the same heights. Luckily, the set was the debut album played in full along with a Ronettes cover of ‘Be My Baby’.

Headliners Peace, played a set comprising of songs from all three of their albums. Opening with Wraith and closing with Bloodshake. Airing several songs from the new album and also a cover of Binary Finary song ‘1999’ amalgamated into Peace’s song ‘called 1998’, I’d recently saw them in Manchester as they supported The Courteeners for the St Jude album 10 year anniversary gig, and I enjoyed this gig a lot more in a more intimate setting of Riverside, down next to Newcastle’s beautiful Quayside. Lead singer Harrison Koisser also led the fans into a giggle, when he advised he had been learning to play a Peace song on Piano all week, only to sit down and start playing Coldplay’s song ‘Fix You’ opening bars, only to burst out laughing and shout ‘I’m only joking’ before playing From Under Liquid Glass.

Next we have Hit The North:

Firstly, the weather was wonderful, the only shame was that the weather was so nice and sunny it almost felt a shame that all the gigs were inside (maybe something for the festival organisers to look into having 1 or 2 outdoor stages next year?)

The day started with North Shields artist Sam Fender, fresh from a European tour, who was a special guest added late to the festival line-up to Open Hit The North, and boy did he open it with a bang, the venue Think Tank was completely full, issuing a 1 in 1 out policy. A talented musician with an incredible voice, its no wonder you can see why he has been compared to Ben Howard. He also spotted a few other local bands had came to the gig to watch him too such as Feva. In all, a great opener and good to get a big local name to open the festival and get some punters in early doors.

Next a brisk walk to the O2 Academy to see Louis Berry. I was shocked by how little people were there to watch him, the O2 Academy had roughly about 20-25 people in. Berry commented a few times that it was very ‘surreal’ performing there, you’d imagine due to the small crowd size? However, he didn’t let this effect his performance, and said due to the intimacy of the crowd, he changed the setlist on the go to play more ‘intimate songs’. He and his band were quite simply brilliant, have a real class and quality about them, Louis Berry has a swagger about him but with a real humbling maturity.

A possible reason for Louis Berry’s unusually small crowd may have been due to 3 of the bigger local bands The Pale White, The Old Pink House and Feva essentially clashing over three venues, or due to walking time, realistically you could only choose to see one at a time. I had planned to see The Pale White, however as id seen them numerous times, I saw The Old Pink House as they were another band I had wanted to see. The crowd grew, especially with the end of Feva’s set in Academy 2 and was around 40-45 people looking round, maybe more. The Old Pink House, played a wonderful set, featuring their unique cosmic pop style.  Featuring songs such as Expectations and Jaded. In all, they were fantastic, I look forward to seeing them at The Cluny later this year.

Managed to catch the last song of The Pale White set closer ‘That Dress’ who were entertaining a packed Boiler Shop, some of the crowd dispersed before Blaenavon came on, their set was slightly delayed it appeared with a delay on the sound side. However, it didn’t put them off. They thanked the crowd for the patience, before a rip roaring set featuring songs from their debut album ‘That’s Your Lot’ and also 2 new songs (One the interestingly named ‘Catatonic Skinbag’). The crowd sang a long word for word on almost every song, something that didn’t escape singer Ben Gregory, who was very thankful to the audience throughout.

Next up, on the lineup that I wanted to see was Pale Waves, which was a walk from Boiler Shop to Newcastle Quayside to the Riverside venue. A pretty decent crowd in here, and Pale Waves didn’t disappoint, they’ve been compared to The 1975 and songs like Television Romance, don’t really make you change your mind on that. But that’s not a bad thing, their set was enjoyable and was short but sweet.

Lastly, we have the headliners, with several headliners across different venues, there was plenty of choice, with RatBoy being top of the billing on the posters at O2 Academy. I decided to see The Horrors. Starting with the band walking onto the stage, with lead singer Faris Badwan storming onto the stage midway through the intro of ‘Hologram’. The band put an impressive set, comprising of all their albums bar the debut, but leading heavily featuring songs from newest album ‘V’. With little crowd interaction, the band tore through a set and ended the festival (for me) on a high note.

There was scope potentially to see one or two other bands after The Horrors headlined the Boiler Shop at smaller venues, including Newcastle Cathedral, which on the pictures looked fantastic, but after a good 8 hours or so stood up or walking about, my race was run.

Hit The North is a magical festival, as a big fan of music, the freedom of several venues having lots of good music from bands from established acts, to local talent or up and coming bands, and even giving some musicians a platform to perform on a wider scale and introduce them to a new audience, the freedom to be able to shake a wristband to go into several of Newcastle venues is great.

The festival isn’t going to compete with a Glastonbury type profile or even some other inner city festivals (see TRNSMT for example in Glasgow with Arctic Monkeys as Headliner). It’s charm is its a city centre festival in a wonderful city like Newcastle and only in its 2^nd year. But offers a good budget festival, with a lot of character and charm. The design marketing for the festival is wonderful and they clearly have a great team working on it.

I dearly hope it is on next year, maybe 1 or 2 outdoor stages to add, possibly reducing the venues down by a couple too as theirs almost ‘too much choice’ that you feel some artists may suffer from small crowds? I also hope they increase awareness about the festival, lots of people seemed to have never heard of or heard about the festival, which was a shame. IF its on next year for a 3^rd year, then I will certainly be one of the first in line to get a ticket.

By Tom Holynski

From left to right, Sam Fender, Blaenavon. Bottom Left – The Horrors, The Old Pink House, Louis Berry. (Pictures taken by Tom Holynski)

Festival Lineup – From Hit The North