The Silent Words Speak Loudest Leeds Festival 2003 Rock ‘N’ Roll Diary

In the past, my festival philosophy has traditionally been to watch sets in their entirety and try to cram in as many sets as possible. This time round, though, I decided to try something different – put the emphasis on seeing as many bands as possible, and only watching whole sets when they didn’t clash with anything else of interest. It’s worth bearing in mind when reading what follows, then, that these reviews are likely to be sketchy, impressionistic and personal, given that in many cases I only caught a twenty-minute snippet. In the interest of making an assessment that was at least somewhere close to being fair and representative, I saw at least three songs by every band reviewed, though – for that reason I’ve omitted the likes of The Streets and The Sleepy Jackson.

So, now that that’s clear, off we go…