All Points East Festival, also known as APE, is a brand new 10-day music festival held in Victoria Park, London from the organisers of Coachella.
No full festival passes are sold and there’s no camping, but there’s still a multitude of different and diverse line ups each day with some of the biggest and best names currently touring.
The organisers seem to be aware of their punters and even made some last minute changes to scheduling after hearing some of their negative reactions to clashes.
Coasters for Beers attended the penultimate night on Saturday 2nd June which was headlined by The National.
The incredible sunny weather brought out music lovers in droves but with that there also came the more casual crowd of whom some seemed more inclined to talk over sets rather than pay attention to the stunning performances on offer.
All the acts we saw over the course of the day were great, with the day starting out with a solid set from The Districts from Philadelphia.
Following on from this, the more laid back poetic folk music arrived from This is The Kit before Public Service Broadcasting got the crowd going with their unique immersive live experience, with the stage screens showing clips from the broadcast audio samples featured in their infectious music.
Over to the main stage we witnessed a sublime performance from the wonderful Cat Power followed by live favourites Future Islands as the bulk of the crowds started drawing in.
Back over to the North Stage we managed to catch some of The War On Drugs but unfortunately our experience was ruined by the aforementioned casual festival goer who seemed to be attending purely to say they were there without any regard for the musicians on stage at that point.
Still, we had The National ahead of us so after stocking up on the pints we got into the (by now) huge gathering that had formed at the main stage.
The National have been getting slowly bigger and bigger on this side of the shore and I thought they wouldn’t have been able to top the incredible performance at the o2 Arena back in 2013. I was wrong. Just like that big moment, they knew what they had to prove and they did just that – they proved that they deserve to be headlining the big stages at festivals in the UK.
Whilst the setlist was very heavy on the most recent (and wonderful) album “Sleep Well Beast” there were fan favourites peppered throughout the set, including an emotional rendition of Cherry Tree EP’s “About Today”, dedicated to Scott Hutchsion of Frightened Rabbit , and an acoustic unplugged performance of “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks” to end out the night. Hearing 40,000 people singing in unison was an affirming moment.
It’s clear – The National are unstoppable and one of the best bands of all time.
Overall our brief taste of All Points East was incredibly positive and we can’t wait to see what the organisers have planned for next year.
