T in the Park took on something of a 70s air as the event kicked off, James Morrison on the Main Stage seemingly throwing aside his (slightly unfair) MOR reputation and indulging an already sizeable audience to some good old classic rock.
That was nothing compared to The Mars Volta though, who – as the first act to grace the NME Stage – resembled little less than the sort of prog-rock heaven your dad can only hope to imagine he actually witnessed during his hazy hippie heyday.
Launching into a belligerent, blistering take on Goliath, there was frenetic guitar noodling and impassioned vocals histrionics all underpinned by the precision pounding drums of more recent recruit Thomas Pridgen.
“Watch me now” cried stick-thin, wild-haired singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala as he leaped about the stage during the opener (and for the rest of the set), as though anybody could rest their eyes upon anything else.
Swinging his microphone with wild abandon, he was merely the centre-point for a mesmerising show that then leered into lead single Cotopaxi from new album Octahedron, and carried on with epic jams that revolved around enough fearsome hooks to prevent too much boredom from the attendant audience.
That I saw Ali Baba accompanied by several other wizards – and, slightly confusingly – Wonder Woman – taking in this magical display consequently wasn’t nearly as strange as it seemed.
Neither even did the slightly intimidating flock of seagulls that also gathered en mass stage left. The Mars Volta are a band that beggars belief, ac
