Mojo - The Music Magazine

It's a small, sweet festival that might be in danger of attracting glampers, but before Friday night is through End Of The Road has delivered enough noise and gumption to scare off the Cath Kidston set. Beirut, on the main Woods stage, causes a woman wearing light-up neon dreadlocks to ululate with joy. Winsome waltzing brass, accordion, uke and a solo Sunday Smile make the rest of the audience swoon. There's more OOMPH and a gnarlier crowd over on the smaller Garden stage, where The Fall sound so quiet if you're too far back that one is pretty much forced to go down the front and get involved with the moshing. Mark E Smith ambles about, incoherent, twiddling knobs on the amps; Elena Poulou has her coat on and handbag over her shoulder, ready to leave at any minute; they are raucous and scary and exciting. In the Big Top, White Denim are full of proggy garage wigouts. There are frenzied outbreaks in the crowd during I Start To Run, Paint Silver Gold and, indeed, most of the set. Guitarist Austin Jenkins' mouth is constantly agape with joy.

Saturday afternoon calms things right down: Beth Jeans Houghton is studiedly wacky and zany; James Yorkston is soothing, and his clarinet player has a laughing fit during Queen Of Spain; Treefight For Sunlight, in hoodies and trucker caps, play a gorgeous cover of Wuthering Heights which stays on the right side of whimsy. This Is The Kit, at the little Tipi stage, trade in soft and honest folk, a happy-together band with harmonies, a guest saw player and an excellent bluesy new single, Waterproof. Phosphorescent - just Matthew Houck looping away on his own - brings a fuggish trance to the Garden stage. It's perfect for a drowsy Saturday, and A Picture Of Our Torn Up Praise garners backing vocals from the peacocks wandering about nearby.

The evening line-up never quite takes off, though. Gruff Rhys is daft and clever and likeable as ever, M Ward covers Daniel Johnston (Story Of An Artist, with Jolie Holland on violin) and Buddy Holly (Rave On). But the night's headliners are a curious pair of bookings: Mogwai are loud and clean and powerful but they know they're a strange choice - "Are you ready for more Saturday night party songs?" smiles Stuart Braithwaite - and Okkervil River are subdued, though they get lively (and so does the crowd) on Your Past Life Is A Blast.

By contrast, Sunday sends standards into orbit. Lightning Dust warm things up with horror synths and Amber Webber's spooksome vocals. Emmy The Great's between-song patter is cutesy and flat and then the whimsy disappears when you listen to her clever, ballsy, crystalline songs. Megafaun are wonderful at the Garden stage - four big friendly North Carolina men singing love songs to their home state (Volunteers) and to their beloveds (Second Friend). In the Big Top, The Fresh & Onlys bring indie freakout. Tinariwen mesmerise at the main stage (they seem to have a particularly hypnotic effect on toddlers, who fall silent when the band starts playing) and Laura Marling pulls a huge crowd. She starts off dark (Hope In The Air makes the rainclouds seem even more forboding) then plays two new songs - Don't Ask Me Why and Salinas - that are full of life and kind of sexy, with flute and clarinet and trumpet. Then she closes with Blackberry Stone, simple and powerful with just Marling and her cellist.

The rest of Sunday night alone earns the weekend's £145 ticket price. Beardy, beautiful, fleet-fingered Josh T Pearson sings heartbreaking songs and tells terrible jokes, and it's a brilliant combination. Country Dumb ("A Number 1 hit in the chart of acoustic songs that are longer than ten minutes") is a perfectly simple, free-of-motive paean to generations of "failures, each and every one", and if it weren't for the next two acts it'd be the best song played all weekend.

John Grant mixes unvarnished emotional distress with sharp comedy too, and soaring, beautiful songs with those leavening synthesizer interludes. The opening notes of every song are greeted by whoops and applause and "We love you"s from the besotted crowd, and Grant is beaming: "The feeling is mutual, I can assure you." When he sings Sigourney Weaver, Marz and Outer Space half the audience seems to be having a moment - it's almost like watching a rapture.

On the main stage, Joanna Newsom closes the festival under a starry sky with her first solo show in two years. The first plucks of In California pull the whole crowd to attention. We glide and skip through Easy and Cosmia, then it's over to the piano for the sublime Soft As Chalk, and The Book Of Right-On for an encore. One suspects we've just seen two of the best live performers in the world, back to back on a Sunday night in Dorset.

And there are still a few hours of fun to squeeze out of the festival. Tucked into the forest, past the smaller stage, there is a light-up dancefloor and a gaggle of beatniks and hippies DJing from an elevated boat. Fans of frugging outdoors to Blue Öyster Cult and The Flirtations (aka everyone) reach the end of the End Of The Road in moonlit bucolic bliss.

Anna Wood

Laura Marling photographed by John Seymour