“Oh, that’s the Norway I remember!” howls Jack White as the Oslo crowd roars to life during a fevered outing of ‘That’s How I’m Feeling’. He’s a last-minute addition to the line-up – stepping in to replace Friday night headliners Queens Of The Stone Age after Josh Homme’s emergency surgery – but, as he enters the stage with no fanfare and tears straight into a relentless set in the finest of garage rock beast fettle, he seems right at home.
You can sense it throughout the week: artists love coming here, and the fans reflect that. Øya has a reputation as one of the most forward-thinking festivals in the world. Here, joy is an act of resistance. Gender parity on the line-up was quietly the norm here many years before events were making headlines, and every year comes with a renewed push to be the greenest festival around. This year, all the locally-supplied food is pescatarian (and pretty damn good compared to your normal rushed festy scran in a napkin), and Øya is providing free menstrual pads and tampons for festival-goers.
All the worst bits of festivals – waiting ages at the bar, bad crowd control, queuing hours for the toilet, nothing to do after the headliners are done – just don’t exist here. Not only have they cherry-picked one of the finest European festival line-ups of summer 2024, but with Øya’s capacity of just 20,000 super-chill fans, it’s so easy to get between stages and calmly mosey right up to the front row and see the whites of your heroes’ eyes.
After kayaking down the river to the fjord from Oslo’s trendy Grünerløkka area, we make our way on-site on the opening Wednesday to catch the pumping Scandi-pop of Norway’s own Moyka. She boasts the future-rave aesthetic and drive of Röyksopp and the fire of Aurora at her poppiest, albeit with a much more sharp and polished club-ready production.
It was a welcome introduction to the rave, later continued by Nia Archives. The Mercury-nominated star marks her first time in Norway by bringing some UK junglism to get the beautiful early arrivals ‘avin it to cuts from her debut album ‘Silence Is Loud’ along with her Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ flip ‘Off Wiv Ya Heads’ and a frankly nuts 1000mph remix of Charli XCX’s ‘360’. Brat Summer continues in earnest up at the Boiler Room-esque Klubben stage as Oslo’s Nora Mamdu and her glamorous entourage spill out from behind the decks for her “chaotic set” of hedonistic dance and classic pop, all set to visuals of 90s screensavers and grotty memes. We’re told she’s given the club scene a real kick up in the arse over here, and we can see why.
PJ Harvey pulls the first major crowd of the week to the gorgeous natural amphitheatre of the Amfiet stage, brushing away the grey clouds with the pastoral grace of her latter work before turning the riffs and the raunch up to 11 as she becomes a mighty grunge goddess for the second half of her set. Vince Staples follows up on the neighbouring Vindfruen stage, with the artist charming with his anti-rap star modesty. “Fuck, I’m not gonna lie to you,” he sighs after ‘FUN!’. “That song didn’t go as well as I thought. That’s one of my most popular songs. Shit, we should have bought some Norwegian death metal”. Still, sans face paint and witchy rituals, Staples brings the crowd to life in good time for the night’s main event.
On a European run of their reunion victory lap, Pulp aren’t playing any UK dates this year, meaning the front rows of their Øya headline set are filled with fans from around the world. Frontman Jarvis Cocker is no stranger to Norway, regaling the crowd with his fine language skills (“Let me see your rosa hansker”, he offers while introducing fan favourite ‘Pink Glove’), his early memories of the city and his visit to the Rådhus (the home of the Nobel Peace Prize) where he picked up George Orwell’s Fascism And Democracy to be reminded of something a little closer to home: “People who are afraid will believe anything, and that’s kind of what’s happening”. Still, distant race riots aside, the gloom is brief as we blast off to the likes of ‘Es And Whizz’ and the universal rager ‘Common People’.
We march across town to one of the many Øya Night inner-city events offering new music discovery and big-name DJs to catch Irish indie upstarts Cardinals at Revolver. The tiny basement club is ideal for the gossamer intimacy of their sound – somewhere between the elegiac pop of Echo & The Bunnymen, the driving, honey-drizzled shoegaze of The Jesus & Mary Chain, and the punk simplicity of The Velvet Underground, but with the deep Irish roots and personal intensity to make it all their own. It made for one hell of a nightcap.
We begin Thursday on a boat out through the fjord accompanied by a set from Ella Marie, formerly a member of the pioneering band ISÁK and a well-known activist for the preservation of the rights and culture of the Sámi people – the indigenous people of parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. “I’m singing in my mother tongue, my native language,” she tells us at her first of two spellbinding Øya performances that day. “For many years, the Nordic state has tried to erase my culture, but I am living proof that we are still alive”. There’s no better way to fend off death either than with songs as arresting as this.
We arrive back on site for Holly Humberstone, giving us a punchy blast of her Springsteen-meets-pop-punk euphoria, spreading smiles that carry round the corner to RAYE’s mainstage masterclass in big band Vegas showmanship. With her armour down, gold-plated banter and sharing memories of addiction and sexual assault, she’s a tower of strength and sheer class in a set that draws power from vulnerability.
Culminating in a rocked-up rendition of ‘Prada’ and RAYE belting out a mighty cover of ‘It’s A Man’s World’, it’s a headline-worthy showstopper of a set. Sadly, Jorja Smith‘s more subtle approach doesn’t quite land so well, so we head off to Sirkus for a honeycomb hug from Slowdive – somehow sounding more essential than ever.
The fun of such a stacked line-up is you find yourself doing the half-and-half approach, and we spend the rest of the night skipping between the fabulous disco romp of Jessie Ware, the James Brown-meets-Midsommar theatrics of Øya veteran Janelle Monae, and the ever-stately dad rock celebration of The National, but we’re saving ourselves for another Øya Night party in town after hours.
We head to the female-run club night NARA SOUNDS at Gamle Logen, which strikes us as a massive mansion full of impossibly beautiful people while offering itself as “the place for the gurlies, the gays, the theys, and the allies who love to dance to electronic music from around the world”. The main event is the new Norwegian trio LIAR – an in-your-face blast of rap, R&B, techno and pop for fans of Björk, FKA Twigs, and ShyGirl and having one hell of a laugh. If you ordered Sugababes from the dark web and sent them back in time to destroy the patriarchy and set nightclubs ablaze, you wouldn’t be too far off what you have here.
We shake off our hangover with the humble heroics of London’s Loyle Carner. Highlights to follow include Air warming up for their grand Olympics closing with a sun-kissed run-through of the seminal ‘Moon Safari’, Nordic pop queen Astrid S pulling out all the stops for one of Sirkus’ biggest crowds of the weekend, and a mighty Friday send-off from that aforementioned Jack White set.
A no-nonsense affair of joyfully rattling through cuts from surprise new album ‘No Name’ alongside Raconteurs and White Stripes favourites – naturally peaking with a mass sing-along to ‘Seven Nation Army’ – White beams from ear to ear as he shies away from your usual headline-set pyro and bombast to play like he’s in a sweaty club with his four-piece band.
The blissed-out vibe rings out on the closing Saturday. Yard Act, in particular, quite literally make the case to “make some noise for life please” and “give love to the universe” as their Yorkshire vernacular transcends the North Sea barrier for the tender sway-along of ‘100% Endurance’ and LCD Soundsystem wig-out of ‘Trench Coat Museum’.
They, too, comment on the generosity of spirit of the Oslo folk based on their past visits. We’d be remiss in going to a city festival and not talking about the city. It’s pricey, yeah, but it’s a melting point of bold new culture. Bars, restaurants, tattoo parlours and record labels thrive here. Feeling boujie? Get yourself to Nektar for the anchovies on toast. Less so? Go to Hell’s Kitchen for the best pizza in town. Jump in the fjord. Make a discovery. Be around people that give a damn.
Norway was one of the few countries to recognise Palestine as a state in the face of the war with Israel. It’ll come as no surprise then that the mass of young punks that gather for IDLES’ closing set in the Sirkus tent are primed for chants for “Viva Palestina” before the words have finished leaving frontman Joe Talbot’s mouth.
Joined by the awesome “sister, friend and cockney” Tina Maynard standing in for guitarist Mark Bowen, IDLES finale is a violent shower of empathy and love, paying tribute to the “handful or fascist outnumbered by anti-fascists” in the UK earlier that week while also “a celebration of standing on this side of the line with a smile on my face and love on my heart”. Dedicating ‘Danny Nedelko’ to “the innocent people of Palestine and the immigrants that made yours and my country a better place”, he captures the spirit of the week. “It’s a beautiful feeling to feel so at home so far away from where we live,” ends Talbot. That’s Øya all over.