Pulp and Cmat top the bill as end-of-season festival celebrates 20 years
A sell-out crowd of 15,000 helped celebrate the End Of The Road festival’s 20th birthday this weekend, in one of the final events of the UK summer season.
The anniversary line-up enjoyed headline performances from Britpop luminaries Pulp and Irish indie-pop singer Cmat slated for Saturday and Sunday respectively.
Meanwhile, New York art-rockers Geese and Canadian singer-songwriter Mac DeMarco topped the bill on the main Woods Stage on Thursday and Friday.
Other highlights from across the four-day event, held near Blandford Forum in Dorset, include Welsh psych-pop outfit Super Furry Animals, laid-back US band Kurt Vile And The Violators, and a host of emerging artists from the UK and around the world.
More than 140 acts, 100 of them new to End Of The Road, were due to perform across the five music stages which showcase a mix of indie-rock, folk and alternative artists.
The festival, set in rolling countryside on Cranborne Chase – a protected National Landscape – also hosts a Talking Heads arena, this year featuring comedians Fern Brady and Adam Buxton among others.
But it is the surprise shows and one-off collaborations that are usually among the highlights for festival-goers.
Speaking about an impromptu performance given by Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker in 2010, festival co-founder Simon Taffe said ahead of this year’s event: “It was one of those goosebumps moments.”
While the Sheffield indie-rockers have never appeared at End Of The Road before, Cocker has regularly attended – and performed a headline solo Garden Stage set in 2019.
End Of The Road, which runs from September 3-6, started in 2006 and has been held annually – except in 2020 when it was cancelled because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
This year’s event comes at the end of the warmest summer in the UK since records began in 1884, according to provisional Met Office figures, during which wildfires have been common across the country.
Issuing guidance ahead of the festival, organisers warned that the ground and vegetation remained “extremely dry” and that barbecues and open fires were “not permitted anywhere on site”.