Jarvis Cocker led a Happy Birthday singalong at end of the road festival as it turned 20 at Larmer Tree Gardens in Wiltshire. Pulp and CMAT headlined the anniversary year, and the celebration doubled as a signal that this sponsor-light, 15,000-capacity event still has room to matter in a crowded market.
Jarvis Cocker and Happy Birthday
Cocker’s singalong was the clearest birthday-marker of the weekend: he led the crowd through "Happy Birthday" and wished for 20 more years. That sort of gesture fits a festival that has kept its identity by mixing familiar names with riskier bookings instead of chasing scale for its own sake.
The 20-year mark also matters because the festival has stayed medium-sized and free of big corporate sponsors. In practical terms, that means its programming can swing from accessible headliners to more experimental names without needing the same kind of commercial smoothing that shapes larger events.
Pulp’s Hiatus and Deep Cuts
Pulp used the headline set to announce a hiatus, but they did not lean on crowd-pleasers to do the work. The band played deep cuts and B-sides, and also gave a live debut to "Deep Fried in Kelvin", a choice that made the set feel less like a victory lap than a reset.
That approach came with friction. Pulp’s uncompromising set featured almost an hour without a hit song despite the celebratory anniversary crowd, which is a strong reminder that this was not programmed as nostalgia alone. The band left the field with a break ahead, and that changes what anyone should expect from future appearances after this anniversary stop.
CMAT’s Two-Year Gap
CMAT matched the night’s sense of occasion with a sharper boundary. During her headline set, she said "she won’t be playing the UK for two years", then ended shirtless and deep in the audience.
For UK festivalgoers, that puts a real timer on her next local appearance. The anniversary bill still delivered the event’s core promise — a mix of breadth, personality, and enough unpredictability to keep the 20-year format from going stale — but the headline acts also made clear that the next chapter will not simply repeat this one.
