Fleet Foxes take to the stage bathed in bright yellow light, which, from a distance, looks like the sun on their faces. The bleakness of the grey sky and the fact they're decked out in the wellies, waterproofs and woolly-hat combination worn by almost all of the crowd watching them, tells a truer story.
Completing a beardy few hours on the Other stage, where they're essentially a warm-up for the steady influx of Mumford & Sons fans, they kick off with an instrumental and limp through 15 reedy, thin minutes, until Robin Pecknold hears a voice in the audience asking him to turn his vocals up.
He jokily mimes fiddling with a dial on his body, but as a call to action, it seems to do the trick. Your Protector, Sim Sala Bim and Mykonos suddenly lift the mood, and the best of the band on record – the simple loveliness of the harmonies, the intricacies of the many instruments they pull together and the delicateness with which it is all balanced – finally comes across, as the singalongs pick up and the flags start to wave with purpose.
But it doesn't last. With the hits out of the way, the pace drops off and rest of the set feels curiously flat and apologetic, ringing out to a crowd that seems only partly, politely interested. The weather obviously can't be helped, but Fleet Foxes are surely a band for the glare of an early evening sun, and tonight, it didn't come out for them.
