Glastonbury live: Sunday at the festival with SZA, Shania Twain and more

Tim Burrows is out seeing South Korean collective Balming Tiger on the West Holts stage, and reports back:

Balming Tiger have woken up West Holts with a jolt. Bass is HEAVY. Obvious comparisons to their countrymen Seventeen dissipate quickly when an arthouse film introduces the band and the five members arrive before a deep bass vibrates through us all. It’s mostly dark and foreboding but with shafts of gorgeous light in a burst of falsetto harmonising with a backing track that flits from brooding and contemplative to maximalist hyperpop. They soon have a growing crowd in their palms with some technically impressive yet nicely unhinged flows and some all-important audience participation.

Our brave leader Ben Beaumont-Thomas modelling a freshly acquired cowboy hat to wear to Shania Twain later. He took to it so naturally, I think it may have legs beyond the legends slot. Cut to him wearing it to work on Tuesday morning.

And here is Paloma “Crazier Than a Bat” Faith (see Seasick Steve, below) on the Pyramid stage right now.

Several members of the camp report seeing a roughly 12-year-old girl carting around a life-sized cardboard cutout of tonight’s headliner SZA that’s bigger than she is. Commitment!

Pyramid stage, 12.30pm

This performance couldn’t be more diametrically opposed to that of the previous band to play this stage. Where Coldplay last night brought pyro, fireworks, LED wristbands, lasers, guest vocalists, Afrobeat legends, and projections of K-poppers BTS on the side of the Pyramid, blues musician Seasick Steve has a drummer, a guitarist, and a guitar made out of a Mississippi numberplate. “I made it,” he says. “It’s a piece of shit.” There is a guest star in the form of a barefoot harmonica player, but Steve barely even stands up. With Coldplay’s confetti decaying amid the woodchippings underfoot, the crowd are taken back down to earth after the intergalactic scale of the night before.

One song is introduced as being “about people who try to rip you off on the internet”. Then in droll sotto voce: “… though if you weren’t on the internet, maybe you wouldn’t get ripped off.” Another new song has the lyrics “move out to the country, leave your phones behind … time to get offline”.

His drummer’s cymbals are frayed; his arrayed guitars are either battered or homemade; his forked-bearded chin probably last saw sunlight in puberty. A cynic might argue that Seasick Steve’s analogue fetishism is as much a schtick as Coldplay’s futurological tomfoolery. But there really is a deeply affecting immediacy to these songs, his raw voice, and the unfiltered electricity of his guitar playing. Barracuda is a highlight, stomping along with gimlet-eyed intent and decorated with an insanely raunchy guitar solo from his sideman. But the sweeter, more bucolic moments are just as strong.

And then there’s the kind of awestruck moment the Pyramid generates more of than any other. Now 73, Steve reminisces about the mid-00s when he was unemployed, his wife was a cleaner, and they were close to losing their house before “the miracle of Jools Holland”, who booked Steve on his TV show. Quickly, “the people of the UK adopted me like some old stray dog”. He looks out at the crowd he has made from nothing and is buffeted by a wave of emotion, tears springing to his eyes. He and the audience are so closely wound for the rest of the performance, though he admits to looking forward to who’s on next: Paloma Faith. “Hoo-wee, I do love that girl. And she crazier than a bat.”

Other stage, 12.30pm

It’s a sleepy Sunday midday set for indie-rock songwriter Rachel Chinouriri, who steps on to stage to the sound of birds chirping. Earlier this year she released her debut album, What a Devastating Turn of Events, combining an aesthetic indebted to Britpop, riot grrrl and the blunt 2000s British indie pop of Lily Allen and Kate Nash with deep reflections on belonging and migrant identity. The latter is most apparent during her luscious performance of The Hills, in which she describes the mental difficulties of her family making a home in England away from Zimbabwe, with grungy lyrics describing “pulling the skin off my bones”. The St George’s cross fills the background, and Chinouriri wears a punky outfit with a British flag motif.

As with the weather switching between sunny spells and clouds, Chinouriri’s music shifts between desolation and upbeatness. An uptempo performance of Ribs has the crowd jumping, but then Robbed, written about losing her six-day-old niece, is dedicated to the people of Palestine and “what they’ve been going through for 75 years”. The dark solemnity of the song quietens the crowd. It is a requiem for the dead that also articulates the confusion and cruelty of losing someone you barely got to know – that “unfamiliar face I should’ve recognised”. She cries after this performance, and is soothed by the crowd’s support.

I’m certain there’s a beautiful, crushing novel within Chinouriri. She tells us that “love has no currency, you can definitely underspend it but you can’t overspend it”. She also speaks of her indebtedness to Black British female musicians – Keisha Buchanan of the Sugababes, Shingai Shoniwa of the Noisettes, and Estelle – and pays tribute with a great cover of Estelle’s song American Boy. She ends her set with a jumper, Never Need Me, which features that classic empowerment trope of turning someone’s mistreatment back in their face. It’s no mean feat to take your crowd through such extremes of mood and experience, and there’s clearly an incredible power and strength within her.

West Holts, 12.30pm

By the time Sunday rolls around at Glastonbury, some serious TLC is required (especially if you spent the early hours trekking back from Block9). But with Jalen Ngonda, the quickly rising east coast-born, UK-based singer-songwriter, we are in safe hands: his slick soul bops and shimmering slow groovers, laced with an imposing falsetto, are enough to soothe any sore, serotonin-depleted heads.

But it’s more than just background music. As soon as Ngonda and his band step into their swaying opening track, those parked up on blankets and camping chairs saunter forwards; within 20 minutes he has people wailing a fragment of a chorus back to him, albeit shakily. “Y’all must be really hungover or something!” he laughs.

Ngonda’s music harks back to the heyday of soul and clear parallels can be made with legacy acts like Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye – just listen to that vocal range! – but it resists feeling corny or pastiche. Just like his breakthrough 2023 album Come Around and Love Me, his Glastonbury debut is a sharp, classy affair, with enough sweet hooks and killer vocals to cut through and stand on its own feet.

Over the weekend I’ve been working on my theory that Glastonbury is a bit of a nostalgia festival these days, especially for ageing millennials (hi). I think that’ll be in full effect later on when Avril Lavigne plays the Other stage: it’s kind of horrifying to realise that her debut single, Complicated, is 22 years old. If you need any reminding, you can catch up on her catalogue with Alexis’s recent Ranked here…

…and revisit my frankly torturous 2019 interview with her here.

Other stage, 11.15am

If you’re looking for a new iPhone alarm, you could do worse than Zuton Fever. Many a dishevelled, bleary head emerges out of a Glasto tent at the screeching riff of the Zutons’s unofficial theme tune.

The Zutons, who haven’t played Glastonbury for 16 years, are a more noisy, abrasive band than you may remember, with Abi Harding’s squawking sax bringing a power and sharpness to their bluesy rhythm section. Tracks such as Pauline and the insistent You Will You Won’t feel like a cold, invigorating slap at this time in the morning.

Obviously one song receives a cheer 10 times as big all the others combined: Glasto singalongs are a rarity before midday, but Valerie prompts one. The Zutons’ original is never likely to dislodge Amy Winehouse’s cover in most people’s affections, but its more energised stomp feels ideal for a big Other stage crowd.

“We were shitting ourselves about this,” admits vocalist Dave McCabe midway through the set. But, bar a few false starts for Pressure Point, they don’t look flustered at all. Instead there’s a tightness and synchronicity in keeping with a band who have been around, on or off, for more than 20 years now. A consummately professional – if noisy – way to kick Sunday off.

I’m going to need more than Berocca to mitigate against the infernal thud-thud-thud of Seasick Steve pounding over from the Pyramid stage.

And here’s Alexis on last night’s headliners, Coldplay, whose laser-heavy razzle dazzle made “Dua Lipa’s performance on Friday night look like the dernier cri in shy understatement”, he writes.

As Sunday gets going, revisit the best of yesterday from our crack photography team, who really have the hardest job of all of us in the Guardian Glasto team, hoofing around heavy equipment in often punishing heat.

Pyramid stage, 11.30am

For any sore heads, jangled nerves and discombobulated limbic systems after what was a very big Saturday night out for many, no full-sugar beverage or shoulder massage will have matched what Birmingham Royal Ballet so beautifully bring to the Pyramid stage. Interlinked is a production from 2022, choreographed by Juliano Nunes, and inspired by “how the energy that we exude bounces from one person to the next, in a never ending circle” – ie an extremely Glastonbury vibe.

Luke Howard’s string-led score features a central melancholy octave-jumping motif that seems to mirror the dancers’ leaping and stretching towards one another. Large groups contract to pairs of dancers, allowing intense bonds to form before being folded into the group again, much like your average Saturday night at Glasto spent copping off with someone you’ve just met before blending your friend groups later on. And with men and women alike in flowing tulle skirts, Birmingham Royal Ballet have clearly got the memo about Glastonbury’s radically relaxed attitude to gendered clothing, while one male dancer has an impressively punkish amount of ink.

The dancing is exquisite – poised but not brittle, and so alive to the possibility of human connection. One of the best feelings at Glastonbury is that everyone here is reaching towards beauty in one way or another; towards the best of what humanity can do and be. This performance thrillingly embodied those values.

Approximating the words of today’s legends slot: let’s crack on. It’s Sunday at Glastonbury (which seems to have gone extremely fast), it’s overcast outside, spirits are reasonably high in the Guardian cabin and I feel like I saw the sun rise far too recently to be up at this hour. We have reviews to come of the likes of Rachel Chinouriri, Janelle Monáe, Avril Lavigne, SZA and more. Absolutely no prizes for guessing who I’m most excited to see today (for the 38th time).