It was midnight in a field in Wales and I was lying face down in six inches of mud: Green Man Festival reviewed

I love Green Man. The smallish festival is the second most beautiful site I’ve ever visited (after G Fest, which is situated on a beach in a fjord in the Faroe Islands). Nestled in a valley between the mountains of the Brecon Beacons, it has great bills, it’s impeccably organised and I feel nourished by it. But, in the interests of being honest about festivals for those who have never been, I should also confess that this year it supplied the single most miserable experience of my music-watching life.

Friday was the kind of day Noah might have felt a little discombobulated by. It began raining before dawn and it never let up. Come nightfall, the wind picked up too. During The Comet Is Coming – the fêted trio that bonds the alto sax of jazz star Shabaka Hutchings to the tempos and analogue synths of classic rave – the combination of the wall of sound and light with the horizontal rain was thrilling in a here-comes-Armageddon sort of way. Come the headliners, Devo – the American art-rock group now on their farewell tour – I was desperate to get something warm inside me and walked up the slope to one of the food stalls. In the dark and wind and rain, and in mud that would have done credit to the Somme, I slipped and twisted a knee. It was midnight, in a field in Wales, and I was lying face down in six inches of mud, clutching my leg, yelping. This is not what being a music critic is meant to be.

That rather overshadowed Devo for me, which was a shame because they were terrific. They’re one of those bands who are often misunderstood as a novelty act, but at Green Man they played a fantastic set of skew-whiff rock ‘n’ roll.