The elu­sive Mazzy Star have a new album release mid 2012, so the band are now out on the road, yay! The band played at Field Day fes­ti­val, at the same time as head­lin­ers Franz Fer­di­nand on the Eat Your Own Ears main stage. Mazzy played at the Vil­lage Men­tal­i­ty tent, and the await­ing crowd and sense of antic­i­pa­tion was a clear indi­ca­tion of their loy­al fan­base. The screen pro­ject­ed moody, flick­er­ing mono­chrome images of thun­der­clouds, a lake sur­round­ed by misty moun­tains, the shim­mer of leaves on trees: atmos­pher­ic, moody shots with the frag­ile qual­i­ty of some­one’s cine film from the 50s.

The band slipped onto the stage silent­ly, word­less­ly, in the gloom of a stage where the lights were left dimmed for the entire per­for­mance. Hope San­doval’s voice is still a heart­break­er – soar­ing, ethe­re­al, the per­fect foil for David Roback­’s gui­tar which is as sweet as ever, flu­id, bluesy, slidey… The set was the band’s mix of blues-edged bal­lads, inter­spersed with their dark­er, psy­che­del­ic swirly, Vel­vet Under­ground-tinged num­bers, San­doval’s voice cut­ting through the mash of gui­tars with a mes­meris­ing edge, like on So Tonight That I Might See.

I was loathe to give up my place hang­ing over the bar­ri­er at the front of the stage, a speak­er stack almost squashed against my left ear, but the drum dis­tor­tion was almost too much to take and sev­er­al of the audi­ence mem­bers were lis­ten­ing with their fin­gers in their ears. Ear dam­age aside, Mazzy Star was my high­light of the fes­ti­val. New sin­gle Com­mon Burn and the dreamy B side Lay Myself Down will keep fans hap­py till the album arrives.

THE SMALL PRINT

Where: Field Day Fes­ti­val, Vic­to­ria Park, London
When: June 2, 2012