First Night: V Festival, Hylands Park, Chelmsford

V is the most corporate of festivals – but the sell-out crowd still rocked

V remains the most nakedly corporate festival. Its stages are defaced with ads for a phone company, and filled with mainstream acts such as Kings of Leon and Kasabian. The antiseptic tendency even reaches the ground beneath our feet: Hyland Park's suburban green is tarpaulined over, addressing a monsoon mudbath which never comes. The picnic-hamper-packing elitism of boutique rivals such as Latitude is, though, also absent.

Saturday's headliners Kings of Leon aren't convinced. "You guys sound so excited," singer Caleb Followill grouses ironically. He stops short of the guitar-smashing meltdown after last year's Reading crowd didn't meet his approval. But it shows the insecurities of these Southern boogie rock veterans with boy band looks. Their formula of adult-oriented music, adolescent lyrics and dance-hard beats peaks with natural hit "Sex On Fire". The crowd roar it so hard, even Caleb's content. Sunday's headliners Kasabian appropriate dance music with more conviction, spiking their sound with swirling air-raid spotlights and Apocalypse Now jungle smoke. Fatally undermined by uncharismatic singer Tom Meighan, they remain, like Kings of Leon, an over-promoted, middleweight band.

The Virgin phone company's one rock connection is that its founder began his fortune by releasing a Mike Oldfield record, and Richard Branson is on hand to introduce Paul Weller, leaving just ahead of some well-aimed beer. Weller's set is as sharp as his suit. His recent Mod pop single "Wake Up the Nation" sounds better than The Jam's "That's Entertainment", which blows in uncertainly on a gusty wind. Stereophonics, who follow him, are 20 years younger, but their rasping rock is far more stolid: like backstreet Welsh Springsteens, without the hope. Weller's sturdy appeal to V's middle-aged contingent is repeated on Sunday by Madness, still one of Britain's best bands.

Florence + the Machine's Florence Welch, sent out to flog what should by now be the dead horse of her one album Lungs for a second year of festivals, remains infectiously exuberant. No longer climbing the rigging at the sheer joy of singing, she is impishly theatrical in a gauzy black gown, assisted by a huge crowd. Similar numbers cram in to watch Plan B's rollicking rap-soul. As he finishes, that other festival perennial, pensionable bluesman Seasick Steve, is making a still wilder racket with a one-string guitar and drums. Wimbledon's Jamie T modernises that blueprint in a ragged, visceral set. Sometimes playing his cautionary and inspirational urban tales on just a scratchy acoustic guitar, he feels his way through them with the help of fervent, word-perfect fans. This is rock'n'roll with its raw heart beating.

On the dance stage, Alison Goldfrapp splices Donna Summer and Marc Bolan to retro-futurist effect, in a billowing cape of black cassette tape that outglams even Florence. In the smaller tent reserved for more introverted talents, meanwhile, Tricky is using his mic as a stethoscope, to amplify his pulse. The one-time Massive Attack accomplice plays an asthmatic, endless blues, conducting rather than singing – the Miles Davis of the Bristol Sound. Grunge great Mark Lanegan is less intense than usual, while eels' Mark Everett remains a craftsman of depressive yet inspiring pop. The same could be said of the Charlatans' Tim Burgess in his darker moments. But he focuses here on ecstatic hits such as "One to Another", turning the tent into a Northern Soul dancefloor.

Ex-Beautiful South man Paul Heaton looks enviously at others' crowds, quipping to a nearby queue for the loo. "You can piss in here and listen to me – double your fun!" He plays his unreleased new album, Acid Country, and the spat out anger of its title track gets through. Its laceration of the envy and greed of Britain's middle and upper classes is the sort of thing pop music was for, before mobile phone companies bought it. Even at V, it still can be.