Hear Me Out: Sault would be the perfect surprise act for Glastonbury 2025
There was a whiteboard at Glastonbury that used to provide me with all the information I needed. Actually, as a customer of one of Britain’s worst phone providers, I would still rely on it this year, were it still around. Nestled in the Paines camping area, it gave everything from news bulletins to cricket scores, but one year, it said, “Jack White, secret set on the Park Stage!”
The very morning of his show was the first I heard of it. It delivered as a secret set because it was Jack White, yes, but primarily because it was a surprise, an unknown entity to the festival revealed in the purest and most happenstance of ways. Those of us lucky to catch that show were there because of word of mouth, nothing else.
This year, 56 surprise acts await punters, and naturally, the rumour mill is turning. But the revelations of who each might be will probably be telegraphed digitally and be common knowledge long before my old mate from the campsite gets his whiteboard pen out.
Sometimes secret sets bring out the very worst in music fans, desperately looking for a dopamine hit that comes with an A-list sighting that they forget what is in front of them in the very first place; a spoil of musical riches with the opportunity to support burgeoning artists at every corner. But at the same time, they’re an undoubtedly exciting prospect, and when the stars align for it to be one of your favourite artists, it amplifies the spirituality of your festival experience.
But a good surprise should be a rare one. Albeit expected now, the prospect of Pulp turning out to be Patchwork would undoubtedly satiate the appetite for rarity, while Mac DeMarco descending on the Crows Nest in 2016 typified the spontaneous and intimate nature of a festival secret set. But as music fandom embraces the digital age, a time where information is readily available and accessible, what artist would truly provide a one-off moment of brilliance?
There’s only one answer, really: Sault. The mercurial London collective are predominantly a studio band with 11 records released over six years. But, with only one show to boot, they are perhaps the lasting bastion of musical mystery.
While they market their band on anonymity, it’s well known they are led by award-winning producer Inflo and largely driven by Cleo Sol’s vocals, who together thrust their sound into a state of instrumental live bliss that delicately pulls on genres ranging from soul, reggae and alternative rock.
There’s a profound purity to their project that is driven by the anonymity and distinct lack of touring. Clearly, the members of the band all have their own professional pursuits that are parked in the name of Sault and their albums are recorded to serve the sole purpose of artistic creation, nothing more, nothing less. In that journey, they step back from the growing presence of musical bureaucracy and disown the idea that music is a commodity to lean into it being a soundtrack to community. And if festivals, and Glastonbury, in particular, are supposed to be fertile ground upon which idealistic social values are harvested, then who better to play for it?
When the band made their live debut in December 2023, it was a masterclass in immersive performance. Orchestral renditions gave way to choir-led harmonies and textured rhythm sections that weaved through the band’s different album-led eras. It was a focused and intensely curated show that reminded music fans of what they were being consistently robbed of by the band’s insistence on not playing together live.
Now, Sault have gone back on their word of their 2023 show being their “first and last” by announcing their second-ever gig in London, this August. It could be argued that the legal dramas Inflo finds himself in with Little Simz may be attributed to the choices, from either a financial perspective or as a diversion. Regardless, the prospect of these textural hits being translated to the live stage remains exciting.
And so what better place to road-test the ideas than Glastonbury this week? Their appearance in one of the TBA slots would buck the trend of using surprises as a marketing tool and place the emphasis firmly back on the music. Giving fans in the know a rare opportunity to see the collective in action, and those ignorant an opportunity to discover their next favourite band, a moment of musical immersion and a much-needed reminder of the very reason they bought a ticket.
