Where and when
William's Green, 4pm
Dress code
Uniform black T-shirts for the utmost playing-a-club-gig-no-bother attitude.
What happened
A tent full of sweaty rock herberts who've just crammed into William's Green for the Palma Violets have their dreams of the ultimate Glastonbury punk-pop double-punch shattered when an announcer informs them the Vaccines set has been delayed for an hour. When Justin Young and co finally arrive, fresh from O2 enormity via the Pyramid stage on Friday, and surrounded by a field-wide cordon stopping any more people crushing towards the tent to see them, they're instantly back in their element. Having struggled to fill hour-plus slots on main stages across the last two festival seasons ("we've played about 150 festivals in the last three years," Justin claims), their natural habitat is banging out all the hits inside 45 minutes without pause in a rammed-out tent, and they tear the place apart like rough-edged punk pros, the ram-a-lama Ramones.
An anthemic Blow It Up back-ends Teenage Icon, which shunts into a beat-skat Ghost Town, Justin head-banging like a Download speed-freak throughout. Their barrelling, unashamed punk thrills, otherwise largely missing from a generation keener on recreating Fleetwood Mac's Everywhere or writing their high-pitched guitar noodles by complex mathematical formulae, strike hard at the primal brain stem and the tent reflex-pogos wildly through No Hope, spaghetti western chant-along I Always Knew and the elated desperation of If You Wanna. Simple pleasures, sensationally delivered.
Who's watching
Several thousand more people than can fit in the tent, many of whom are riding their friends like bucking broncos.
High point
A sing-along to Wetsuit so loud it must have made people at the Park stage wonder where the distant mass scuba-diving lesson was happening.
Low point
The one new track, Melody Calling, is a Smiths-y acoustic jangle that suggests a more subtle approach to album three. But you look silly somersaulting off a human pyramid to "subtle".
In a tweet
The Prince Harry of rock – scuzzy but popular choice in line to the headline-slot throne.
