First Night: Reading Festival, Rivermead Centre, Reading

America's finest keep grip on crown

Kings of Leon closed the Reading Festival’s first night with a set confirming them as America’s biggest young rock band. Their odd mixture of old-fashioned Southern rock guitars, crisp electronica-influenced pop and bearded boy-band good looks, though it has yet to grip me, satisfied a huge crowd.

With Radiohead and Arctic Monkeys as the other headliners, this year’s line-up is short on surprises. Kaiser Chiefs, over-familiar festival regulars, typify this weakness. With long bare legs in high heeled boots, Florence And The Machine’s Florence Welch looks and sings like the star she has just become.

She is an elegant whirlwind of ferocious energy. When she shushes their cheers in the middle of “Cosmic Love”’s psychedelic odyssey, they are instantly silent. With Radiohead and so many more still to come, things, I suspect, will only get better.