FILMS

All Cheerleaders Die: when I asked my friend Alice back in April if I could crash at hers for a night to break up the journey to Cheltenham for 2000 Trees, she immediately picked the film that we would watch together. I think it says a lot about our friendship that a full three months in advance she already knew what the mood of the evening should be. This was absolutely terrible; I loved it.

The Handmaiden: I told Cara she could get any film she wanted from Fopp to watch on the evening of her birthday, she chose a Park Chan-wook masterpiece. I’ll get her watching Oldboy soon enough.

MUSIC

Martha: my favourite gigs are always the ones where I get to point and yell. Martha are easily one of the best options for that - loads of fun hooks, great lyrics (no “yoghurt for my mind” this time though??), and a nice little dance.

2000 TREES

Originally I was going to put this into the “music” section (it is a music festival, after all), but once I started writing all of this out I realised it probably needed a section to itself. So here are a lot of thoughts.

Between 2010 and 2019 there was exactly one summer when I didn’t attend 2000 Trees (2018, when the lineup was a bit underwhelming, for you fact fans). I went in 2010 to volunteer with my friends Steph and Andy, the one year where that was a thing I did, and immediately concluded that this was the festival for me. Compared to my previous experiences at Download and Leeds, Trees was of a decidedly smaller scale and with a much more laid-back energy. This made for a great place to reunite with long-distance friends every summer, especially when we convinced Rogan to join us. Then COVID happened, festivals stopped for a couple of years, and when Trees came back not only was the lineup uninteresting to me but now Steph and Andy had a child together, who was definitely too small for a noisy weekend of bands and tents.

Well, come 2025 the lineup was actually looking pretty good again and so it was time for the gang to return to (as it turns out, an almost unbearably warm) Upcote Farm. One look at the mainstage and I immediately remembered what we’d missed - Trees is always, even that year when the entire site nearly washed away in the rain, an absolute pleasure. Even as it’s grown in scale it’s always retained that lovely atmosphere, the lineup was good and I had some of my favourite people around to spend the weekend with. There was a lot of fun had over the weekend (Rogan is a blind mouse, recorded here for posterity), but what sticks out to me is that I actually barely saw the last two bands of the weekend, because I was too busy having fun entertaining Steph and Andy’s child with toy cars and glow sticks while they watched bands they both like (and I’m nonplussed about) in relative peace. Imagine telling 19 year old Adam way back in 2010 that this is where we’d end up. Growing up absolutely rules and nobody can tell me any different. My musical highlights of the weekend, then:

Million Dead: There’s a lot to unpack here. I first started listening to Frank Turner in 2008 - my dad booked us day tickets for Leeds to go see Rage Against The Machine, and I remembered his name from a Biffy support set. My obsession with his music (and, I suppose, him) started then and lasted for a good few years (at least until his Sugarmill show in 2011), until his albums started appealing to me less and generally the whole schtick started to grate on me a little bit. What never dried up, however, was the love I developed during that time for his old band Million Dead. If you know me from somewhere on the internet, there’s a high chance it’s with a Million Dead-themed username.

Prior to this year’s 2000 Trees, I had seen exactly one Million Dead song live - Smiling At Strangers On Trains - both at a Frank solo show where people started at me because I was fully screaming along, and also at 2000 Trees when Frank’s noisy side project covered it and his yelled vocals were uhhh Bad. So coming into this set, the band’s first live show (excluding a warmup) in twenty years, I was a little worried it wouldn’t live up to what I’d built it up to be. Two songs in I was already crying. A complete stranger was stood next to me singing almost every word. I saw After The Rush Hour live, something I had resigned myself to never happening and a song that has helped me through countless stressed-out bad moods. I thought of my college pal Joel, who I will forever associate with the line “slumbering in my jimmy jammies”. This meant a lot to me, and I had a wonderful time.

Anxious: eternally grateful to my friends holding onto my stuff when I get too excited and have to run off and yell at some band I love. In April is absolutely peerless, also hot and dusty tents are a bad time.

Kneecap: flares fundamentally terrify me, but they look extremely cool eh? This was a very fun set.

Battlesnake: when Jack says “I want to see this band whose album art is a tank that is also a church”, it can go one of two ways. Thankfully, this time it was in a deeply unserious way, with robes and bouncy horns and Iron Maiden-worship riffs.

GAMES

Factorio: it’s that gif of Ralph Wiggum, I’m in danger. The Switch definitely isn’t the best option for this kind of heavily tile-based object placement game, but the controls are actually fairly passable. I’ve been somewhat sensible so far and there’s only been one evening almost entirely lost to it, but that doubtless won’t last. The factory must grow.

BOOKS

There Is No Ethan by Anna Akbari: Catfish the film and arguably to a greater extent Catfish the TV show were essential cultural moments in my late teens and early 20s - as a child of the internet, I was always incredulous as to how people could believe these stories for so long. I think it’s fair to say with hindsight that the TV show got more exploitative (and probably more staged) as time went on, and maybe lost some of that initial intrigue. This book feels like a more modern counterpoint, written by and centred on the victims of a catfish (I’m not giving anything away here, it’s literally in the title). I absolutely zoomed through the entire audiobook- it wasn’t perfect but it was a very engaging listen.

Strong Female Character by Fern Brady: went in expecting some discussion of autism and probably a fair bit of humour, ended up absolutely blown away how frankly Fern takes about some incredibly stressful things that have happened in her life.