End of the Road Festival expertly walks the line between tradition and innovation

Hayden Pedigo is the first to say it: “This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.” He’s never been here before, and he’s been given the job of inaugurating End of the Road’s beloved Garden Stage – a leafy, aurora borealis-hued enclave (after dark at least) outside the main arena on the periphery of the forest, shoulder to shoulder with the giant END OF THE ROAD sign/photo op.

Pedigo admits that he suffers from stage fright, meaning he didn’t play live until 2023, despite releasing his first album ten years prior. Part of this is the fault of his hometown, Amarillo, Texas – somewhere that he says has never been kind to his music and whose cowboy aesthetic Pedigo gentrifies into something non-threatening and stylish, divorced from historically oppressive connotations.

Posting on Instagram the day after his set, Pedigo writes, “The crowd was dead silent. Honestly, it was one of the trippiest things I have ever experienced. I was thinking ‘Man, this is like if Fahey played Woodstock!’” And it is exactly like that. He expresses similar sentiments during his set, in between each clockwork-intricate instrumental guitar piece, one of which is a rendition of Gustavo Santaolalla's theme to Brokeback Mountain that trails into one of his own tunes. The Instagram post went on: “That was the best show I have ever played… I have always believed that there is a far bigger audience for this kind of music, and yesterday proved it to me.” Way to go, End of the Road! We’re off to a flying start!

Two-and-a-half days and about a hundred downpours after Pedigo cuts the ribbon, the Garden Stage lineup is headlined by Black Country, New Road. The London six-piece are one of the festival's closing artists, their ornate post-everything maximalism worlds away from the Texan’s spacious minimalism. Although this is the band's third time at End of the Road, vocalist and bassist Tyler Hyde offers appreciative disbelief not dissimilar to Pedigo’s: “This is a dream come true to play on the Garden Stage,” she says early on in a set comprised entirely of material from this year's Forever Howlong, dressed in a Palestine flag t-shirt. “It’s honestly one of the best stages in the world, so this is a bucket list thing for us.”

That the artists feel this way – and are as chuffed to be here as the fans – is a testament to the festival’s setting, curation, and crew as much as to the considerate attendees: those all-ages music lovers that won’t utter a whisper during 45 minutes of Steve-Reich-meets-John-Fahey guitar instrumentals, that will ride out a biblical deluge to hear Throwing Muses’ Kristin Hersh roar through a song about her late goldfish for Best Fit's secret sessions, on the forest-set Piano Stage.

It isn't just Pedigo: this year's festival is a year of exciting debuts all 'round. LA lo-fi dream-pop act Cryogeyser are here for the first time playing floaty, happy-sad music “about the first time being in love, when I was 23” – as vocalist Shawn Marom tells the audience – in front of wobbly primitive visuals. Tyler Ballgame has come all the way from LA too, bringing a heavenly falsetto and recruiting Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch for a duet.

A trio of buzzy British newcomers – Westside Cowboy, The New Eves, and Man/Woman/Chainsaw – are reminders of how much incredibly cool, vision-driven music the UK has going for it right now. Elsewhere, the new Pip Blom/Personal Trainer supergroup, oxymoronically named Long Fling, play their first ever UK show, waking up The Folly with equally oxymoronic compositions that navigate tight pop brilliance and goofy atonal noise, giving whiffs of everyone from Arthur Russell (whom they covered) to Pavement (I spot Blom at the Pavements screening twelve hours earlier).

The tented Folly stage is – as always – the place to be for palate-cleansing indie rock. Vermont’s Lily Seabird has rusty, well-loved songs that jostle comfortably in the MJ Lenderman/Wednesday/Waxahatchee extended family. “This is the most amount of people we’ve played in front of!” she exclaims, while the cobwebby guitars and gloomy but safe arrangements of Seattle’s Chastity Belt are another Folly highlight in between the fest’s formidable programme of experimental acts elsewhere.

At well as the inclusion of acts past the bleeding edge – Aunty Rayzor, Daisy Rickman, Black Fondu, and Kassie Krut – there are old-school legends Throwing Muses, Caribou, and Gina Birch, who plays ska-dipped songs of female rebellion from her new album Trouble. Sharon Van Etten’s new project the Attachment Theory headline their first-ever festival (“women can headline festivals,” she proclaims, closing the the opening night) versus an at-capacity-and-then-some Getdown Services show. Mad-scientist post-rock guitar experimentalists such as Moin and Squid (who spits out entrancing, cannibalistic songs on the festival biggest stage during a belatedly sunny Sunday afternoon) battle it out and both come in first place. DIIV, Viagra Boys, and Daisy Rickman all give immersive, career-high performances with added Palestinian solidarity.

One of many things to bind the festival is its cohesive art direction, embedded into its identity rather than being an afterthought. Illustrator Kai Wong and designer Kevin Summers have taken inspiration from Larmer Tree Gardens’ bucolic surroundings, resulting in a down-home but off-centre style that extends to its merchandise, website, and the sculptures of animals and fairytale-like characters with green skin and watchful eyes who seem to guard the site. The real-life guardians are of course the Gardens' many peacocks, who roam freely nearby their namesake bar, fascinating adults and children alike.

One thing I’m glad to see back is the ‘Top Tipper’ flowchart near the lineup postings: by answering a quintessentially British room-splitter – “red sauce or brown?” – and then working your way through the questions that follow – yes I’m chronically online, no I’ve never been in a fight – you end up with a recommendation of who to see (Chastity Belt in this writer’s case. The system works!).

Head into Effing Forest (lol) and you can record an on-the-fly-demo tape using donated instruments in a pop-up recording studio, or treasure-hunt for forks – last year it was spoons – hidden in the trees before stumbling across the compact Boat stage and bar, host of the festival’s fringiest fringe acts. There’s a healing garden for your massage needs, a games area for getting competitive, and the Talking Heads stage for Q&As and stand-up performances when you get sick of the music.

Opposite the Piano Stage you can even sign a giant petition to “turn the world off and on again.” Given the weight of what’s happening in Gaza and elsewhere, it’s a comfortingly simple premise in the moment – a bit of levity – but it also digs at the idea of us each doing a small bit to help. We all did our bit watching Hayden Pedigo in awed silence, sitting with the gaps in the music as he requested. There’s a bit of hope in that petition’s list of names as there is in that communal breath-holding. As there is in the sheer quantity of music that we can escape into or else harness for positive change in 2025 and beyond: Gina Birch’s “good trouble-making,” or Daisy Rickman’s haunted droning freak-outs that seem to express the kind of anger and confusion that’s beyond words, or Van Etten’s evidence that women can make it to the top, or Viagra Boys’ commendable decision to donate their entire fee for playing the festival to Doctors Without Borders.

True End-of-the-Roaders know to take the festival’s name not as an ominous full stop but an inevitable if painful opportunity to celebrate where we are – to get on with it and do your bit to make the world as magical as the most magical place on earth.