Bergenfest 2018 review: Norwegian festival's future-facing lineup variety is an uplifting revelation

Festival hosts an eclectic lineup featuring some of the best and brightest in British music, along with plenty of homegrown talent

Nick Cave performs at Bergenfest (Jarle H Moe)

Little Simz closes this eclectic Norwegian festival with a glimpse of British music’s future. The 24-year-old London rapper confidently draws on the capital’s jazz as well as hip hop scenes, allying herself to grime without being absorbed by it. A DJ, live drummer and keyboardist give a steamy, atmospheric glow to music capable of just enough spontaneity. Soulfully mellow but with tensile, urgent strength, it soundtracks an emotionally intelligent rapper who is also judiciously, cuttingly fierce.

“God Bless Mary”, with its churchy, keyboard coda, is sweetly dedicated to the neighbour who let Simz’s early music play through thin walls at 3am, before her flow easily rides the damaged, hall-of-mirrors electronica of “Dead Body”. The crowd packed into the velvet-draped Magic Mirrors tent burn off their last energy dancing. “Selfish”, a hard-edged song from her upcoming third album, suggests Little Simz’s slow, steady independent rise is unstoppable.

Little Simz performing on the Magic Mirrors stage at Bergenfest in Norway (Jarle H M)

Nick Cave and Queens of the Stone Age have already headlined Bergenfest’s early nights when I arrive, just in time for months of sunshine to be replaced by rain more typical of Norway’s Manchester. The beauty of the wooded mountains which ring this hip college city and the fjords which lead from it isn’t immediately visible.

With the main stage briefly wet, Father John Misty relocates to a side-stage for a stripped-down acoustic set with his keyboardist. As raindrops detonate in beer-glasses, “Total Entertainment Forever” imagines the ignominy of a post-Smartphone apocalypse, and his 70s singer-songwriter croon and word-drunk, ironic intelligence sharply pierce the clouds.

“It doesn’t rain in America any more, crops don’t grow,” Jason Isbell tells a nation which, despite its current right-wing government, feels a world away from his homeland’s current seedy shame. Isbell’s rugged country-rock is the autobiography of a redeemed American. The climactic nightmare of his addict life comes in “Cover Me Up”, “when I tore off your dress”. Such details grip, but it’s Isbell’s band the 400 Unit who put his otherwise dour music over.

Back in the Magic Mirrors tent, charismatic young grime prince J Hus tells his own story, a couple of days before it takes a dip when he’s arrested and charged with carrying a knife.

“I was never the cool kid/More like strange and awkward,” he confesses in “Samantha”, a typical mix of surreal sexual brags and vulnerable asides. Rapping over a backing track, this is little more than a PA compared to Little Simz, though as grime chronicler Laura Brosnan has noted, the Met’s infamous grime-crippling Form 696 restricted his live experience till this year. His delight at being in Bergen is anyway shown by his double-crowd-surf. From the reggae inflections and gunshot-punctuation of “Bouff Daddy” to his lyrics’ impish wit (“I’d be a genius if I had to think with my penis”), he’s worth more than foolishness with the law.

Crowd-surfs are par for the course at a festival where artists work hard to connect. When the sun returns, French veterans Phoenix play a glorious mid-afternoon set. “Rally” is a Lou Reed glam calypso, “Rome” a crowd-chanted vision of civilisation falling as a cigarette burns.

Deck D’Arcy plays disco, cathedral and John Carpenter keyboards, epic songs shape-shift, and Thomas Mars sings from deep inside the crowd. In a festival too heavy on glorified PAs, they’re punkishly unpredictable. In comparison, Bergen’s biggest new international star, Sigrid, has a chattily innocent, refreshingly unsexualised persona which feels radical, but plays rhythmically stiff, stilted pop.

Gabrielle Plenen performs at Bergenfest in Norway, 2018 (Jarle H Moe)

“Ey, ey, chubby!” Bergen rapper MachoMayne meanwhile roars, high-kicking with ebullient aggression. This cherubic 13-year-old schoolboy is a happy, silly sensation, who of course jumps into the crowd. Norwegian post-grunge punk band Sløtface offer another vision of youthful, this time feminist freedom, when singer Haley Shea shrugs off her shirt and pinwheels over the audience, then gutturally roars from the heart of their rolling mosh.

Sleaford Mods’ Jason Williamson is a kindred oppositional spirit, whose ungainly, camp physicality combines Les Dawson with John Lydon. His dyspeptic dismay at a Britain “full of fucking fascists” contrasts with British music’s general bland contentment in the face of cruel, divisive times.

Bergen in the by now relentless sunshine uplifts him despite himself. “Please invite us back,” he says, “it’s beautiful.” At its best, Bergenfest’s forward-facing variety and city centre splendour is certainly an uplifting revelation.