‘Our stage is a giant pair of open legs!' Meet Glastonbury's most obscure acts

The Guardian

2 days ago

With 80 stages hosting more than 3,000 performers, there is a terrifying amount of things to see and do at Glastonbury. While the headline acts dominate the coverage, what of the lesser-known artists listed further down the bill? Is anyone stumbling to their strange shows?
From an Elvis-fronted Nirvana tribute act to a feminist punk group singing songs about UTIs, via a taxidermy mouse circus and a singalong performance of school-assembly hymns, we went in search of Glastonbury 2025's most obscure acts.
Friday, 1.45pm, the Greenpeace stage
In the baking afternoon heat of the first proper day, a man dressed in an Elvis bodysuit is making a crowd of about 100 people jump into a lively mosh pit.
'I might sound like Nick Cage, sometimes like Matthew McConaughey and perhaps like Kurt Cobain, but most of the time I do not sound like Elvis fucking Presley!' he bellows before launching into a vibrato-laden rendition of Nirvana's grunge anthem Smells Like Teen Spirit.
The Newcastle-based singer Paul Kell is the man responsible for this maelstrom. Kell has played in bands since his teens and was always a fan of Nirvana. In 2015, his hobby became more serious when he was asked to perform at a fancy-dress birthday party. 'We decided to do Nirvana songs because we knew our mates would love it and for some reason we dressed as Elvis to add a bit of extra fun,' Kell says after his show. 'I started singing the Nirvana songs in an Elvis style and that was it. Everyone stood watching it open-mouthed and Elvana was born.'
In 2019, they performed at Glastonbury for the first time and have returned ever since. 'It always goes down amazingly here. Even though there's so much happening at the festival, people like to roam and will always find their way to your show,' he says. 'Glastonbury is an amazing marketing tool and trade show because people come from all over the world to seek out oddities and take a chance.'
Friday, 4pm, the Bug
Harvey Jones has been coming to Glastonbury for as long as he can remember. Over by the West Holts stage, his parents have run a vegetarian food stall, No Bones Jones, for the past 25 years. It's the place where he met his wife and has since played his first shows as the video-game-themed DJ Pizza Hotline.
'During the pandemic, I began digging into old video-game music from the 90s and discovered this amazing, optimistic-sounding strain of jungle and drum'n'bass in the soundtracks,' he says. 'It gave me a sense of nostalgia and I decided to start making my own tunes that reference it.'
During his Friday afternoon set on the roving Bug sound system, Jones works through frenetic versions of the theme tune from the 1997 video game GoldenEye, while mixing in fast-paced percussion and thunderous basslines. His crowd of a dozen, including his two children, bounce happily along.
'This is only the second time I've played at Glastonbury and it's been a dream come true,' he says. 'It's always a family affair and in the wider context of festivals it's hard to find something this colossal that still maintains its experimental roots. There's nowhere else quite like it.'
Saturday, 2pm, Glebeland
The roving taxidermy show Feminist Mouse Circus is so obscure that it takes 20 minutes to find it in the scorching Theatre fields on Saturday afternoon. Once you chance upon the portable setup, though, it's hard to miss: an intricately painted wooden doll's house perched on bike wheels that houses a range of puppet mice, each named after a notable feminist – Babybell Hooks, Germaine Gruyère and Paris Cheese, to name a few.
'We started the circus in 2015 with myself and another artist-activist called Jenny Fernbank,' the performer Miranda La Mutanta says. 'We were thinking about how gendered circus can be, with men performing stunts and women only doing aerial acts and looking beautiful, and we wondered if there was a way to challenge that while also educating people about feminism.'
Drawing on her previous puppetry experience, La Mutanta settled on taxidermy mice as the conduit for her feminist message – 'A friend already had them' – and made her Glastonbury debut in 2018.
'This is our first time back since then, but it's always been such a welcoming and open place,' she says. 'It's a festival that is as much about performing arts as it is about music, and we hope we can bring a bit of playful subversion to it.'
Saturday, 3.45pm, the Summerhouse stage
One of the biggest success stories of Glastonbury 2025 is the primary school music teacher James Partridge's Primary School Bangers. A singalong session of assembly hymns and other nostalgic fare, Partridge went viral for his 2024 performance at the festival. This year, he took over the entire Summerhouse stage on Thursday night.
His Saturday afternoon slot is decidedly more relaxed; he works his way through crowdpleasers such as Give Me Oil in My Lamp and He's Got the Whole World in His Hands on the piano as a seated crowd joins in passionately. 'The assembly hall singalong has died out somewhat for kids today, but these songs have such powerful nostalgia for millennials like me,' the 34-year-old says.
With five performances booked for 2025, it feels as if Primary School Bangers could become a Glastonbury staple. 'It's the festival that kicked everything off for me and I think the show is the perfect way to spend part of your day here,' he says. 'There's nothing better than pure joy, nostalgia and singalongs – feel no shame and belt it out!'
Sunday, 1.30am, the Hive stage
California surf music and Colombian cumbia rhythms may not seem the most likely match, but for the psychedelic band Los Fuckin Surfer Smokers it proves to be a potent blend. During their late-night set at the tiny Hive stage, a few dozen revellers bounce around to wailing guitars and twanging melodies, celebrating a debut at the festival that has been a goal since their formation in 2017.
'We came all the way from Bogotá to be here and have planned the European tour around it,' says Alejandro Reverend, the guitarist. 'We've always admired Glastonbury for being such an open space for people to discover music, and even though it's tough and expensive for us to get here, it's a milestone we've wanted to do since we began as buskers.'
Although the crowd mills and disperses throughout their hour-long slot, a closing mix of spaghetti western music with Beach-Boys-style surf and rockabilly injects energy into the remaining audience members. 'There is a lot happening in the world; everyone is so anxious and worried. We just want people to jump into the concert and enjoy themselves,' says Reverend. 'You can take a bit of that joy with you into the future.'
Sunday, 10.30am, the Hive stage
At a tiny stage in the north-east corner of Glastonbury, Old Man Vegas, AKA 53-year-old Jason Butler, can be found on Sunday morning, blending on-the-spot storytelling with bantering crowd work that keeps bleary-eyed passersby engaged.
A hip-hop MC turned improv poet, Butler has a knack for conjuring delightful verses on the spot, including a 10-minute-long ditty about an office-working giraffe who becomes a tennis star, concocted from multiple crowd shoutouts.
'Glastonbury is where I started doing improv poetry – since it's such an open-minded crowd, you're free to experiment,' he says, still breathless after his set. 'This is the seventh or eighth festival I've played and I always come as a worker, as that way it's easier to blag slots on the smaller stages.' As well as performing, Butler is manning a service gate.
He spends his free time wandering around the fields, chatting to punters and offering to write poems for them. 'It's such a beautiful way to make a real connection,' he says. 'I did one yesterday and it made the woman I wrote it for cry. Glastonbury might be a place where people come to let loose for four days, but it's also an amazing chance to come together and have a meaningful experience.'
Sunday, 2.15pm, the Gateway stage
'Show me your claws!' Lekkido, Lord of the Lobsters, commands. Immediately, a crowd of at least 50 people in the Theatre field lift their arms in the air to make pincer movements with their hands, snipping at the sky.
Over the next half-hour, Lekiddo pumps through crustacean-themed electro-pop songs (and even a Christmas number in 30C/86F heat), encouraging people to look out for each other, leave no trace on the farmland and, of course, show those claws.
'I've been coming to Glastonbury every year since 2009,' Lekiddo says. 'It's the people that bring me back every time. Everyone's having fun, they want to get involved and they feel the lobster love I bring.'
It's unclear what Lekkido's lobster connection is or where it came from. He simply states: 'One day the lobsters chose me,' but the backstory matters little since his crowd is fervent, queueing up to meet him and show their pincers once the show is done.
'It's an honour to be here and I'll keep coming back,' he says. 'As long as the lobsters will have me.'
Sunday, 10.30pm, Scissors
Throughout the course of their hour-long Sunday night performance at the queer venue Scissors, the feminist pop punk group Twat Union will go through five costume changes, an entire carton of cranberry juice (downed by saxophonist Beth Hopkins) and bring out props including a vibrator, a drill and a broomstick.
'It's incredible to be performing our theatrical comedy music at one of the biggest festivals in the world, on a stage adorned with a giant pair of open legs,' says Kate Mac, the singer, before their set. 'It's our first Glastonbury, so we don't quite know what to expect, but we're excited to get silly with the crowd and make people engage with feminism in the process.'
The band will be working through satirical songs from their recently released debut EP that reference UTIs (hence the cranberry juice), red flags in relationships and stereotypical depictions of women in bands, hoping to draw in punters who aren't already distracted by clashing headline slots from Olivia Rodrigo and the Prodigy. 'We're one member down this weekend, so we're going to give it our all and can't wait to hopefully come back,' says Alice Rivers, the keyboardist. 'We'll be full twats at Glastonbury then.'