Don Broco + Delilah Bon + So Good + Bad Nerves + Tigercub + Lemonsuckr + snake eyes + Saint Agnes + Melanie Baker @ 2000trees Festival 9th July 2026
Back Into the Furnace
After breakfast in an air-conditioned pub in Cheltenham (surely aircon must be the most important invention created by mankind?) I return to the furnace that is the 2000 Trees festival site. It is a furnace in terms of both the unusually high temperatures that we are experiencing, and the red-hot artists that will be playing today.
Melanie Baker Makes Spontaneity Look Easy
The first of these that I see is Newcastle singer-songwriter Melanie Baker. Including herself, she has a four-piece band comprising two guitarists, bass and drums. Much of her music is grungy, but without following the loud-quiet-loud template.
The first couple of songs begin with Melanie accompanying herself before the band come in. The bulk of today’s material comes from her debut album, Somebody Help Me, I’m Being Spontaneous!, which sounds like a very promising piece of work.
HAHA! features some spectacularly mad and chaotic-sounding lead guitar, while Real Life has a superb walking bass line. She plays Slugs, “a really sad song” about a slug infestation in her flat. She tells us that the infestation is also a metaphor for being depressed. It’s fittingly slow.
Melanie’s too-short set ends with Why Would I Want to Be Just Like You?, which is dedicated to anyone who’s a dickhead. It’s slow and lumbering but powerful. There’s a long and interesting instrumental section, and the song ends with a fast coda. It’s a pretty spectacular song to finish on.
Melanie’s album is clearly a highly considered piece of work and is surely worth a listen at the very least.
Saint Agnes Bring the Bad Times
I’ve seen Saint Agnes a couple of times before, and they’re one of my must-see bands this weekend. Also, in Your God Fearing Days Are About to Begin, released in May, they have one of the best album titles that I’ve heard for a very long time.
Vocalist Kitty A Austen – which may not be her real name – tells us: “We’re here to have a bad time.” That’s fine. I understand that you can have a good time being bad.
The band have a new bassist, Ryan Brown, who makes his presence felt on guitar and keyboards as well as bass. For Bloodsucker, Kitty dons a guitar, but later in the set she plays keyboards too. This band are nothing if not versatile.
The set closes with The Beast, which is about grief. It includes what, sixty-odd years ago, would have been called a “freak-out” section – ask yer grandparents.
It’s an earth-shaking end to a set which, as these things often are at festivals, is way too short.
snake eyes Take Aim at the Cash Rich
snake eyes are a Brighton-based alternative duo comprising Jim Heffy on vocals and guitar and Thomas Coe-Brooker on drums. It rapidly becomes clear that they are crusaders against billionaires and oligarchs – that small section of society which owns the bulk of the world’s wealth and is rightfully becoming increasingly unpopular as a result.
They walk onstage to what sounds like an untuned radio, which quickly becomes tuned to a spoof station called Cash Rich Radio. You could almost imagine such a station existing in Trump’s America.
Judging by the second song, no cars, they seem to be very environmentally aware too. They’re keen to commune with the people as well, with both members entering the audience at different points during the song.
Much of the set is taken from their debut album, Cash Rich – do you see a possible theme emerging here? – which certainly sounds as if it would be worth a listen.
hug me is about Jim losing his job and how that loss affected him. It’s quite moving. He’s soon back in the audience to participate in a “wall of hugs”. It’s better than your usual moshing.
The very topically titled hottest day on record is actually an anti-driving song. The set ends with the title track from their skeletons EP. The sound is briefly cut and then switched back on as they overrun.
This doesn’t necessarily sound like punk rock, but it certainly is in attitude. Proceedings come to a close with a mosh pit involving water pistols – perfect for a blazing hot day like this.
Lemonsuckr Throw Crowd Control Out the Window
Lemonsuckr are not a band that I expected to see at this festival. I didn’t think that their blend of post-punk indie would appeal to the 2000trees crowd. Still, the tent is packed, so what do I know?
Guitarists Oscar Post and Ollie Thomas are wearing jackets and ties. They must be insane dressing like that in this heat! They keep their jackets on for the whole set too.
Opener Rugrat simply explodes after the first verse. One of the guitarists is in the crowd. When he returns to the stage, vocalist Guy Ferris jumps into the audience. He sings Stain while lying on his back among the crowd.
From this point onwards, the gig becomes utterly chaotic, with band members going in and out of the audience. It’s not chaotic enough for the music to suffer, though. Security, meanwhile, do not look happy. The band’s excursions into the audience seem to have caught them on the hop.
I’d only seen Lemonsuckr once before, at Brighton’s Three Wise Cats as part of The Great Escape last year. They were good then, but in the relatively short time since, they’ve improved immeasurably, both in terms of their playing and their showmanship.
There’s a confidence about them now that simply wasn’t there last year. Watching them, I very much get the impression that they’re going to be much bigger than they are now.
Main Stage next year, lads!
Tigercub Face the Furnace
I trog across to the suntrap that is the Main Stage for Tigercub. At around midday, there’s a little shade at the front of the stage. By mid-afternoon, there is none. It’s a bit like the Sahara, but with some very parched grass. Hopefully, the pints of iced water that I’m drinking will see me through.
Tigercub are a Brighton-based three-piece – there are a lot of Brighton bands at this festival – who have impressed me whenever I’ve seen them before. Let’s see how they fare on this furnace of a stage.
First off, vocalist and guitarist Jamie Stephen Hall asks for a mosh pit. Come on! It’s way too hot.
He keeps up his efforts to commune with the crowd, though. Before I.W.G.F.U. – aka I Wanna Get Fucked Up – he asks all of the drinkers to raise their glasses, which we duly do. It’s never too hot to raise a glass, even if I am only drinking water. They won’t be able to tell that from the stage.
The Perfume of Decay has a cool descending guitar intro. There’s a sweet solo too. They might not like this, but the song reminds me a little of Muse.
Swoon has to be restarted as, unsurprisingly, the heat has thrown the guitar right out of tune. Jamie tells us that they’re from the north and aren’t used to this kind of heat. Neither are we!
Swoon has another ace guitar solo and a great bass riff from Jimi Wheelwright. They’re a classic three-piece, with lots of space for the musicians to do interesting stuff.
I’m Breaking Out is from their new album, Nets to Catch the Wind, and features a bass line that is somewhat reminiscent of The Jam’s The Eton Rifles. It reminds me of a saying that goes somewhere along the lines of: “Talent borrows, genius steals.” I wonder whether Jimmy Page said that? If he didn’t, he possibly should have done.
For A Black Moon, there is a crowd surfer dressed as Tigger. That can’t have been comfortable to wear on a day this hot. Still, it takes all sorts, I suppose.
Stop Beating on My Heart (Like a Bass Drum) might just be a love song, methinks, while Beauty has a pleasing air of Jimi Hendrix.
Tigercub have survived the furnace with flying colours. I raise my glass to them once again.
Bad Nerves Turn Up the Heat
Next up are the irrepressible Bad Nerves, who, in my opinion, are one of the best new bands to have emerged in recent years.
They walk on to Ramones’ Do You Remember Rock ’n’ Roll Radio? and crash straight into an oldie: Baby Drummer, from their first album. Palace, also from the first album, elicits the first crowd surfer, who fires a water pistol at the front rows – a drenching that isn’t unwelcome!
Vocalist Bobby Nerves wants us to lose our “fucking minds” for Electric 88, which naturally we need no second bidding to do.
During Plastic Rebel, bassist Jon Poulton executes some very impressive Pete Townshend leaps. Indeed, Jon is one of the most mobile bassists that I’ve ever seen!
Network was released as a single and will be on the new album that they’ve been “working on forever”. I’m sure that it will be worth all the blood, sweat and tears.
The intro to USA sounds oddly like Status Quo, which isn’t something that I’ve noticed before. Maybe it’s the heat.
The crowd is separated into two for moshing purposes, and there is much moshing for the rest of the set. The Kids Will Never Have Their Say brings a veritable tsunami of crowd surfers, and security look as if they may be overwhelmed. They just about manage to keep control of things, with good grace too.
Single Loner is a definite highlight, being very fast and only one minute long. Proceedings draw to a close with Dreaming, from the first album.
This has been a cracking Bad Nerves set. Is there really any other kind? They themselves say that they’re “the best rock ’n’ roll band”. That is indeed possible. They’re certainly a shit-hot rock ’n’ roll band, and if you haven’t seen them, then you really should without further delay.
So Good Rewrites the Rulebook
I now head into the shade of one of the tents to see So Good. They’re a project fronted by Sophie Bokor-Ingram, who also performs as So Good. Live, she is joined by a bassist and drummer.
Mostly, her music is an amalgam of hip-hop, punk and drill, which she refers to as “ignorant brat pop”. There is certainly nothing ignorant about Sophie, though. Her lyrics are both political and socially aware.
Hey is dedicated to “Donald fucking Trump”. There’s also a song about “having the worst Prime Minister ever”. I’m not entirely sure which Prime Minister she’s referring to, but there have been a few candidates over the past decade or so.
She also has a song in which she wonders what it might be like to have a dick. Well, nowadays she has the freedom to find out!
The newest single, Orange Juice & Milk, is about being told that you’re too much, possibly by your parents. You’re being too loud, too quiet, too rowdy and so on.
I Rewrote the Fucking Bible is certainly thought-provoking – and then some – but the real joy-bringer, and the last song in the set, is I Will Love You Until. It is the only song in the set that is truly in a punk style.
The lyrics are superbly witty and thought-provoking and, quite honestly, it is the reason that I’m reviewing her. It’s an absolute stone-cold classic – or at least it will be when more people have heard it.
It’s brilliant, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Delilah Bon Brings Feminine Rage
Being in a political frame of mind, I next head over to see another – albeit somewhat angrier – political lady in the shape of Delilah Bon.
Delilah, aka Lauren Tate, was formerly the frontwoman of Hands Off Gretel, but has now branched out on her own. The stage is festooned with feminist and trans slogans.
Delilah’s band take the stage, followed by Delilah herself. She’s wearing a white T-shirt bearing a St George’s flag and the slogan “Stop the Blokes”. Very witty.
Her lyrics are also pretty witty in the main, with her music generally being rap-rock. She maintains a sense of humour while being politically serious. I Don’t Listen to You is a feminist anthem, while Chop Dicks is about chopping off men’s dicks, which seems a bit harsh.
So Whatever is about men who threaten Delilah online and also about making rapists suffer, which seems fair enough, to be honest. Time’s Up is about billionaires getting away with everything – it’s still happening – while Not the President is a song of unity and community. It is also a ballad, which was not something that I was expecting.
This song is a future classic. Mark my words!
Maverick is gloriously heavy and features the repeated refrain: “Your wife will not be treated like shit!”
There is an increasingly militant atmosphere, and I must confess that I’m becoming a little nervous and fearful for my safety. Maybe that’s the point. How often do women feel like that? Probably pretty frequently. As a man, how often do I feel like that? Virtually never.
The vibe continues. Fuck the Police is about killing rapists – not forgetting that police officers who rape have not been entirely unknown in recent years – while the subject matter of Dead Men Don’t Rape is self-explanatory.
This song has a strong message, but is it the right one? Are all men potential rapists? Notionally, perhaps, but in reality probably not. A more realistic title might be Dead Rapists Don’t Rape, but that’s probably a debate for another time.
The key thing about Delilah’s material is that it shines a spotlight on an area that many men might find uncomfortable, and that’s a very good thing.
Today’s audience, I would say, is around two-thirds female, which is a shame. More men should be exposed to Delilah’s material. More power to her elbow.
Don Broco Answer the Call
Tonight’s scheduled headliners, Alkaline Trio, pulled out of their live commitments with only a few days’ notice. At very short notice, Don Broco stepped in to headline.
I must confess that I have rather mixed feelings about this. I salute them for stepping in. However, I saw them in Brighton a year or two ago and wasn’t overly impressed. They seemed a little too poppy for my taste.
Let’s see whether they can win me over this time.
Immediately, on Cellophane, they’re rocking much harder than I remember them doing before. Likewise, vocalist Rob Damiani is shoutier than I remember, so full marks so far.
However, Come Out to LA is not a favourite of mine. It has “hit single” and “radio play” all over it. Still, the crowd love it, so who am I to criticise?
During Gumshield, we get the first deployment of pyro. I do like a bit of pyro. There will be far more as the set progresses.
Disappear is from the band’s latest album, Nightmare Tripping. It has annoying techno-sounding drums, but a decent riff. It has something of a nu-metal flavour.
The band’s performance is energetic and kinetic. They certainly put plenty of effort in. Overall, this has been a very entertaining performance. I can’t say that I’ve not enjoyed it.
Having said that, in terms of musical content, it hasn’t been one of the best headline performances that I’ve ever seen, but it has been good enough. They may not have entirely won me over, but given the circumstances, Don Broco have delivered when 2000trees needed them.
There’s much more from 2000trees 2026 still to come, with two full days of bands, discoveries and inevitable clashes ahead. Be sure to check out our complete Day Two gallery below.
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Day Two Gallery
