Reviews / Forwards 2025
Review: Forwards 2025, Sunday – ‘Emotional rapport between stage and crowd’
With a closing set from Barry Can’t Swim the night before, the ground of Forwards had already been well-trodden by the Saturday participants that blessed its holy ground.
On Sunday I find, strangely, that the average festival goer is filled with more energy than the previous day despite the looming work week.
is needed now More than ever
Perhaps this is due, this time around, to the tactical decision from Forwards to situate the festival before the bank holiday Monday.
But for many of us hospitality and retail workers it was a standalone night of more mellow partying ahead of an unwilling return to the grindstone the next day.
Despite this fact, and a last-minute cancellation from much-anticipated artist Doechii, my mood was still resplendent and solar-powered by a beating sun that shone above.
The reasons for the rising hip hop star’s last-minute withdrawal may still be unknown, but who could have been better to silence these loud concerns (if you’ll pardon the pun) than the racket-making announcement of jungle royalty Nia Archives.
However, before we could witness the two-time junglist sensation of Bristol’s festival season, it was a serving of things more local with Smith & Mighty’s takeover at the Arches.
The trip-hop duo have been beatmakers inside the city’s scene for over one-and-a-half decades: they’re best known for the two-step classic Bi Line Fi Blo.
Smith & Mighty are always a go-to recommendation when I find people in search of trip-hop that supplements interest in the more well known Massive Attack or Portishead, and they aren’t one to disappoint at a festival, especially when accompanied by a hearty valve soundsystem.
Having already caught the duo only a week before at We Out Here festival, I’ll testify that their place on the bill was fitting and made all the more organic in a setting they were so clearly comfortably with.
The crowd at Olivia Dean’s set, on the larger West Stage that followed, dwarfed previous expectations set by Saturday.
While I had been able to easily navigate to the front of Confidence Man at the same time a day before, Dean’s stage was rammed at least 15 minutes prior to her arrival.
Like Doechii she was perhaps one of the most popular acts on the announced lineup this year, and this speaks to the efforts of the bookers behind Forwards only four years into its existence.
Eponymously operating as a forward-thinking festival is pivotal to its working: reusable cups, compostable food packaging, and a recurring ‘pledge’ for its guests to take public transport to the site rather than higher-carbon alternatives all feature here.
To be clear, I am no environmental consultant, but these pledges seem genuine to my uneducated eyes, or at least by most festivals’ standards in my view.
By comparison to my Love Saves the Day experience for example, the ground of the stages on Sunday were considerably less litter-laden and had a stronger sense of purpose behind even being there in the first place.
Zara Sultana’s speech at the Information area and her opening remarks for Nia Archives set was one such instance of an effort to promote genuine forward thinking beyond the name itself.
It was only a month ago Sultana announced the launch of her new party co-founded with Jeremy Corbyn, aptly titled ‘Your Party’: a member-first political initiative that seeks to redress pressing issues of social justice in the UK and ‘being asked to settle for less’ by Westminster.
And following her announcement of a milestone 700,000 member signups, who could have been more appropriate to partner this claim than Nia Archives, who instantly launched into a breakbeat-infused victory lap.
The sets kicked up a gear from here on out. Pressure was on to fill in for Doechii but Nia came through with a performance that rivalled her Love Saves performance only months before.
She was one of many artists performing that day who has made Bristol something of a second musical home. Squid had played out their set just before, and were one of a few local acts on the bill like Katy J Pearson who played the day prior.
The Last Dinner Party, on after Squid and Nia, were filled with as much compassion and progressive jingoism as they closed off with Nothing Matters and the call for a free Palestine.
Huddled around the West Stage, Jorja Smith finalised the weekend on a theme of refined maturity, looking back on one’s younger years, and reflecting on the passage of her career as an artist.
By opening her set with perhaps one of her earliest and biggest hits, Blue Lights, and closing with Little Things from her more recent album, there was a guiding thread across time that bookended the performance well.
Surrounded by session musicians often launching into solos, there was also a sense of genuine connection between the band and frontwoman.
Perhaps the real beauty of Sunday, though, was the fact this emotional rapport extended beyond the stage and into the crowd. It was all around to be carried and passed between us.
All images: Luca Rosewell
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