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The Local's top ten Roskilde concerts

The Local Denmark
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The Local's top ten Roskilde concerts
Whether it was at the expansive Orange stage or one of the festival's more intimate settings, there were no shortage of good concerts. Photo: Sophia Juliane Lydolph/Scanpix

The Local sent two writers with distinctively different musical tastes to cover this year's Roskilde Festival and tasked them both with selecting their five favourite concerts.

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Roskilde Festival has once again come and gone, leaving a trail of smiles, laughs and memorable experiences in its wake. This year's lineup was more commercial than previous years, with less rock and metal on the billing, but there was still more than plenty to satisfy all musical tastes. 

A testament to the Roskilde Festival's diversity can be found here in our picks for best concert. Our two writers, Justin Cremer and Allan Mutuku-Kortbæk, have quite different tastes and there isn't a single repeat among their respective choices for the year's five best performances.

Justin Cremer's top five 2015 Roskilde Festival concerts:

5. Africa Express
Arena, July 4

Photo: Torben Christensen/Scanpix

I caught parts of 28 different concerts at this year's Roskilde Festival, so getting it down to five picks is no easy task. Several others could have just as easily taken this spot – Dolomite Minor, Father John Misty, The Gaslamp Killer Experience or Mastodon, to name a few – but Africa Express gets the nod as it is where I closed out the 2015 Roskilde Festival, surrounded by good friends and treated to an impressive international jam session that had been going strong for nearly three hours when I packed it in. 

4. St Vincent
Arena, July 2

Photo: Simon Læssøe/Scanpix
Photo: Simon Læssøe/Scanpix

I knew basically nothing about St Vincent before strolling in to the Arena stage on Thursday afternoon and when I left I wasn't quite sure how to describe what I'd just seen. I think my feeble attempt to explain it to a friend later was something along the lines of "robot pop-rock" and perhaps that's as good as anything. This was a tightly-performed – even occasionally choreographed – and very high-energy performance, highlighted by a final song played on the shoulders of a security guard with St Vincent sporting an ear-to-ear grin that revealed that she had just had as much fun as the audience.

3. Chelsea Wolfe
Gloria, July 4

Photo: Justin Cremer
Photo: Justin Cremer

The intimate Gloria stage was the perfect setting for an absolutely hypnotic performance by Chelsea Wolfe. Her particular mix of dark folk mixed with occasional blasts of rage may have on the surface been a strange pick for a hot and sunny day at Roskilde, but the enchanting Wolfe delivered one of my best musical experiences of the four days.  

2. The War on Drugs
Arena, July 1

Photo: Simon Skipper/Scanpix
Photo: Simon Skipper/Scanpix

This was the show I was looking most forward to heading in to the festival and Adam Granduciel and company certainly did not disappoint. The setlist was very heavy on last year's stellar album 'Lost in the Dream' with the performance putting just enough new nuances into the songs to really bring them alive. This was a powerhouse rock 'n' roll performance.

1. Goat
Friday, July 3


Photo: Justin Cremer

It is perhaps fitting that I don't have a particularly good photo to go along with my top choice. The late night performance from these costume-draped Swedes who mix experimental psychedelic rock with African beats didn't seem to be on the radar of too many, but those of us who were there were treated to what felt like a blissful mix between occult ritual and raging dance party. In a Roskilde Festival full of unexpected musical surprises, this one was the best.   

Allan Mutuku-Kortbæk's top five 2015 Roskilde Festival concerts:

5. Timbuktu
Arena, July 1


Photo: Bobby Anwar

Consistent, calm, confident. Those are the words that underline the show of veteran Swedish rapper Timbuktu. It's never easy for Swedes to perform at Roskilde and earn critical acclaim, but Timbuktu put on a solid show good enough to scrape into our top ten anyway.
 

4. Kendrick Lamar
Orange, July 3

Photo: Bobby Anwar

Kendrick Lamar epitomized the booking policy at Roskilde this year: bombastic, commercial and appealing to the youth. Orange stage host Per Vers introduced him as the man he thought is the best rapper at the moment before his show and whilst some of us may disagree with such a grandiose claim, Kendrick did put on a top-notch performance before a packed Orange stage.

3. Mew
Orange, July 3

Photo: Simon Læssøe/Scanpix
Photo: Simon Læssøe/Scanpix

Danish rock band Mew played at Roskilde's Orange stage missing one of their frontmen, guitarist Bo Madsen, who left the group just last week after 20 years. On their sixth appearance at the festival, this time as a trio, Mew were brilliant and endearing, backed by the solid Danish following that they've built over the years.

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2. Die Antwoord
Orange, July 2


Photo: Bobby Anwar

South African duo Die Antwoord brought the Orange crowd to its knees with an emblematic, raucous performance that few expected would be as good as it turned out to be. Given that they are not well-known locally, their psycho blend of Afrikaans rap and trashy shrill vocals proved to be an even bigger hit. Frankly, Roskilde has rarely seen something of this nature.

1. Florence and The Machine
Orange, July 2


Photo: Jens Nørgaard Larsen/Scanpix

How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful – not only is that the title of indie band Florence and The Machine's remarkable new album, it's also a good descriptor of their show at Roskilde's Orange stage. The voice of Florence Welsh, the singer at the forefront of the band, is a force to be reckoned with – she found herself at home at a packed Orange stage, with the big, blue beautiful sky above a sea of smiling fans.

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