Isle of Wight festival review, day one: Noel Gallagher hits like a tornado for his most relevant set in years

By the time Friday kicks off there's no sign of any serious storm damage – the sun has got his psychedelic bandana on and the day is buoyed by the communal relief of disaster narrowly avoided

“I hear there was a tornado here yesterday,” says Lily Allen, certainly dressed as though a twister has hit a local comic shop. True, if you believed reports on social media of funnel clouds touching ground on the island you’d have thought that this year’s Isle of Wight Festival, themed around the loose anniversary of the first summer of love, had skipped straight from the age of Aquarius to the dawn of the apocalypse. But by the time Friday kicks off at this annual mash-up of Radio 2 pop, heritage nostalgia acts and indie rock soft enough to drink through a straw, there’s no sign of any serious storm damage – the sun has got his psychedelic bandana on and the day is buoyed by the communal relief of disaster narrowly avoided.

It makes for a mile-wide open goal for an act like Gerry Cinnamon, one acoustic-battering Glaswegian in a tracksuit top who was made to play his Bontempi Quo rock to lager-basted festival crowds; he’s received so well you might think that the entire festival exists only in the wildest dream of a Sauchiehall Street busker.

James bodyboard the celebratory vibe too: Tim Booth is crowd-surfing to “Sit Down” – the second song of a set that only gets grander – as he summons down ever more unifying choruses with his legendary shaman snake dance. You’re never on the firmest ground, at an event that’s hardly gammon-free, to decry Trump and his wall and declare “you’ll have Forrest Gump soon”, but Booth’s politicising hits home on “Many Faces” from last year’s Living In Extraordinary Times, and the stage fills with dancing girls for rip-roaring runs through “Come Home” and “Laid”. This is what happens when nostalgia attacks.

Lily Allen was always going to feel flimsy following that, but not necessarily so two-trick. Skipping between a brace of backing musicians adding who knows what, she alternates between glitch pop confessionals with Sixties girl band melodies smothered in autotune, breakfast cereal Lahndahn ska and dancehall. So overused is the latter that even a track as effervescent as “LDN” becomes corny, while “Trigger Bang” just sounds like a Poundland MIA. Thankfully things pick up after a one-minute silence for the victims of Grenfell and a fiery “The Fear” dedicated to the “c***” who shouted through it. A series of musical middle fingers bolster Allen’s defiant air: to Bush, Trump, Theresa and Boris on “F You”, and to ex-lovers with crippling clitoris allergies on jaunty hoedown “Not Fair”.

On the main stage just before Noel Gallagher, The Courteeners spot their chance to publicly murder their Duncan. They attack their slot with something to prove – their worthiness as the next great Manc-rock headliners. Their strain of lad rock has been infiltrated by chart-pop sizzle in places, but there’s still gristle and bite to “Are You In Love With A Notion?”, “Cavorting” and bullish new track “Heavy Jacket” – anthems that fall just the right side of authentic. Flares light the arena for roaring singalongs “Not Nineteen Forever” and “What Took You So Long?” – not long now, boys.

Even as The Courteeners swipe at the crown, though, the don’s moved on. On his third album with the High Flying Birds – 2017’s Who Built the Moon? – the elder Gallagher finally conquered the psych-rock territory that foiled both Oasis (on Dig Out Your Soul) and Beady Eye (on BE). Moon tracks dominate the first 40 minutes of his storming headline set, and rightly so. “It’s A Beautiful World” is euphoric cumulonimbus pop, hi-octane psych jeepsters like “Keep On Reaching” and “She Taught Me How To Fly” race by at the pace of the highway lines speeding up the screens, and he even cheekily glams up Ricky Martin’s “She Bangs” on “Holy Mountain”. His infamous scissors player Charlotte Marionneau may have departed – presumably caught running in corridors – but his Birds fill the gaping chasm with a bawling passion that offsets Noel’s stony stoicism, and a bit where someone speaks French into an old telephone for no reason.

A new track, the Jungle-style space disco “Black Star Dancing”, suggests that stylistically Gallagher’s not looking back, but he’s also not averse to crowd-pleasing. The set descends into an all-out Oasis-along: “Little By Little” the root of all this psych, “Wonderwall” still bafflingly underwhelming for a generational anthem, “Half The World Away” charmingly knockabout, “Don’t Look Back In Anger” sparse yet effective. He might lean on past glories and close with The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love”, thoroughly on-theme, but Noel’s set finds him back at the top of the festival bills more relevant than he’s been since Knebworth ’96. A tornado hit after all.

Thanks to Pink Moon Camping for supplying our critic with a tent for the weekend​.