End of the Road 2025
Larmer Tree Gardens
★★★★★

Despite being closed and neglected for 90 years prior to 1995, Larmer Tree Gardens can lay claim to being one of the oldest outdoor music festival venues in England, first opening its gates as a free-to-enter public pleasure grounds in 1880, and becoming known for its summer parties in the Victorian era.

Thomas Hardy recalls an outdoor dance he attended there in 1895 in his poem Concerning Agnes, when he wishes to “...dance with that fair woman yet once more / As in the prime / Of August, when the wide-faced moon looked through / The boughs of the faery lamps of the Larmer Tree.”

Today, 130 years later, End of the Road (now celebrating its 19th edition), annually brings out the same poetic magic of the gardens — trees are dramatically uplit in green, red and purple, and strings of LED fairy lights lead revellers, during breaks between bands, deep into the cherry laurel woods, to discover performance art, sculpture, chance interactions and even political statements.

One such tongue-in-cheek installation this year is a 12ft-high whiteboard marked out with space for signatures with the title “Please sign my petition to turn the world off and on again.”

The idea of a global reset is a popular one. But while in reality there are no easy fixes, there are artists at End of the Road who want to make a difference and for their voices to be heard. Swedish punk band The Viagra Boys, who are Saturday night headliners on the Garden Stage, are at odds with the idyllic surroundings as singer Sebastian Murphy states: “We’re living in a fucked-up world. All of the world leaders today are fucking fascist pieces of shit who won’t admit that there’s a genocide going on! Free Palestine, and fuck the UK for arresting peaceful protesters. This song is about those people.” Before launching into Troglodyte, from their 2023 album Cave World.

The Palestinian cause had already been raised by Cornish folk singer Daisy Rickman on the same stage on Friday afternoon, where she displayed a large flag behind her band and expressed solidarity with the people of Palestine and Gaza, encouraging the audience to: “Boycott! Do anything you can!”

And on the Sunday, this time to a capacity crowd waiting to see headline comedian Stewart Lee on the spoken-word Talking Heads stage, comperes Ivo Graham and Alex Kealy (of the podcast Gig Pigs) stepped into the seating area with a Palestine flag and got the audience to raise placards and watermelon symbols for a photo opportunity (pictured).

Lee went on to bemoan the lack of comedy material he is able to get from the current Labour government, describing it as “like looking at a gaping wound.”

However, while it has never shied from political activism, End of the Road is first and foremost a showcase for new and alternative music. Carefully curated, it is here that new acts regularly get their first breaks, playing to the largest audiences of their careers.

This year Tyler Ballgame was one of the hottest newcomers, drawing a decent sized crowd despite the rain and the fact that he is yet to release an album.

Later in the day he was back for one of the festival’s trademark, late night “secret sets” on the Folly Stage, a slot which had been taken the day before by podcaster Adam Buxton debuting songs from his new album with assistance from Joe Mount from Metronomy.

Another musical highlight of the weekend was Moonchild Sanelly, who had a “career in a day” on the Saturday as she went from being interviewed by Buxton on the Talking Heads stage in the early afternoon, before packing out the Big Top with her own show a couple of hours later and then guesting via giant video screen with mainstage headliner Self Esteem after sunset. It is a triumphant day for the South African newcomer whose star is on the rise.

Elsewhere, boundary-pushing highlights include Man/Woman Chainsaw, The Orchestra (For Now), Geordie Greep (formerly of Black Midi) and End of the Road favourites Squid, all of whom bring elements of jazz and classical to their sets in such a similar way that it could be the beginning of a new genre — let’s call it freeform rock.

But the festival closes out in more traditional style with a country-rock master class from Sunday headliner Father John Misty, formerly of the Fleet Foxes. His assured, note-perfect lounge-lizard sway is punctuated by moments of guitar abandon, as on the immaculate She Cleans Up, and lyrical excursions into the darker recesses of the mind, as on Mr Tillman, and Holy Shit. 

It’s a fitting conclusion to the last big party of the summer, that celebrates the unusual, challenges preconceptions and proves as enjoyable as ever, even with more rain and mud than the event has seen so far this decade.