This week, Open\u2019er Festival will see performances from Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds<\/a>, The Cure<\/a>, Calvin Harris<\/a>, JENNIE<\/a>, Addison Rae<\/a>, Halsey<\/a>, Ethel Cain<\/a> and more. It\u2019s an eclectic mix but based on the number of people dashing from Kneecap<\/a>\u2019s politically charged rave-rap at the Tent Stage to Larsson\u2019s empowering main stage spectacular, it\u2019s one the crowds of Open\u2019er are very much here for. Here\u2019s what went down on day one of Poland\u2019s largest and most diverse festival.<\/p>\n Florence + The Machine offered communal catharsis<\/p>\n There was more than a touch of horror to Florence + The Machine<\/a>\u2019s headline set at Open\u2019er Festival. The show started with a troupe of vampiric dancers stalking the stage during the opening roar of \u2018Scream\u2019 and things got a bit Midsommar<\/a> during \u2018Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)\u2019 when Florence asked for \u201cofferings\u201d to celebrate the summer solstice, in the form of fans on shoulders.<\/p>\n But this run of festival shows is more about surviving the horrors of the world than succumbing to them. \u201cWhatever you have been through, whatever you are going through, know that I am with you,\u201d Florence told the crowd mid-way through the joyous cathartic purge of \u2018Shake It Off\u2019. \u201cI hope we can provide you with a place to scream.\u201d<\/p>\n Classic indie-folk hits \u2018Spectrum\u2019 and \u2018Say My Name\u2019 were delivered with a cool, confident swagger that allowed the crowd to belt out every word while newer songs \u2018Sympathy Magic\u2019 and \u2018One Of The Greats\u2019 gave the 90-minute set a venomous, classic rock snarl. \u201cIt must be nice to be a man and make boring music just because you can,\u201d she sung with a vicious smirk.<\/p>\n From the joyous cover of Candi Stanton\u2019s \u2018You Got The Love\u2019 to the stripped back \u2018Buckle\u2019 (dedicated to anyone currently being ghosted), Florence + The Machine\u2019s Open\u2019er set was all about inspiring a sense of community. \u201cI want every person at this festival to put their phones away,\u201d she announced before the victorious \u2018Dog Days Are Over\u2019. \u201cI know it\u2019s hard but filming this song will stop you from experiencing this song with the people that you love and with the people that you just met,\u201d she explained. The result? A field of friends and strangers jumping as one before the jubilant \u2018Free\u2019 sent the loved-up crowd off into the night. (AS)<\/p>\n David Byrne delivered masterful art-punk<\/p>\n With its surrealist phallic sculptures, onsite museums and rave bank, Open\u2019er has a long and neon-splashed history with art happenings. It\u2019s the natural summer habitat, then, for David Byrne<\/a>\u2019s new \u2018Who Is The Sky?\u2019 show. Like \u2018American Utopia\u2019 before it, it\u2019s part rock gig, part TED talk, part interpretive dance event and, now, part modern art installation too.<\/p>\n An art-rocker\u2019s idea of an afro-funk street party, Byrne\u2019s free-floating band of drummers, keyboardists, guitarists and dancers were back, roaming the stage in red and orange suits with their bulkier instruments strapped to them by body harness. One poor percussionist carried around a multi-pronged monstrosity that allowed him to bash numerous pans at once. But where there used to be just a shimmering chain box to dance around, the band were now surrounded by screens that turned the stage into oceans, hazy nightlife scenes or arrays of mouths, as each song demanded.<\/p>\n So Byrne and a wandering chamber orchestra performed a stunning \u2018Heaven\u2019 as the Earth itself rises overhead. \u201cThere she is, our heaven,\u201d Byrne explained. \u201cThe only one we have.\u201d For \u2018And She Was\u2019, about a girl he knew in school who found great joy in the lysergic arts, they marched and twirled through footage of white-picket US suburbia. \u2018(Nothing But) Flowers\u2019 imagined nature reclaiming a decaying consumerist world from inside a virtual cornfield and \u2018Life During Wartime\u2019 took place in the middle of a very modern American riot \u2013 state versus minority. Most striking of all, Byrne\u2019s shadow stalked him through the opening of a sensational \u2018Psycho Killer\u2019, performed like a twisted Lynchian slo-mo nightmare.<\/p>\n Occasionally he paused for a mini lecture \u2013 key topics: methods of historic resistance in Poland and Italy, kindness as a modern punk statement and do animals have feelings? It added a frisson of anti-gig to an otherwise joyously funky Afro-pop extravaganza \u2013 Byrne having a dance-off with a gospel choir during a particularly fluid \u2018Slippery People\u2019, caught up in an animal head party on \u2018Like Humans Do\u2019 and joining an art rock chorus line across the front of the stage for a spectacular \u2018Once In A Lifetime\u2019. Finally, some art for lark\u2019s sake. (MB)<\/p>\n The Kneecap victory lap continued<\/p>\n \u201cThe Polish and the Irish have a lot in common\u2026 we don\u2019t need an excuse for a fucking party,\u201d said Kneecap\u2019s M\u00f3gla\u00ed Bap just before the band launched into the pulsating rave-rap of \u2018Get Your Brits Out\u2019. It might have been the first day of Open\u2019er Festival and the live music had just gotten started, but that didn\u2019t stop the Irish trio from delivering a boisterous, high-energy set that got the huge crowd at the Tent Stage jumping.<\/p>\n The band opened with snarling new song \u2019Smugglers And Scholars\u2019 before the warped vibes of \u2018Better Way To Live\u2019 and \u2018Sick In The Head\u2019s moody introspection allowed Kneecap to flex their impressive musical muscles. The most talked-about group around still know how to instigate mosh pits aplenty, but their lyrical flow was tighter than it\u2019s ever been while DJ Pr\u00f3va\u00ed\u2019s beats were beefed up for this summer of huge shows.<\/p>\n Last weekend, Kneecap played their biggest ever headline gig at London\u2019s Crystal Palace Park and that victory lap continued at Open\u2019er. Tracks from second album \u2018Fenian<\/a>\u2019 gave their playfully chaotic performance a menacing edge, with the band adding industrial metal and euphoric dance to their already-eclectic pool of influences. The album\u2019s title track inspired the biggest singalong of the set while the fiery \u2018Liar\u2019s Tale\u2019 was dedicated to Hungary\u2019s former Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n, who banned Kneecap from the country last year<\/a>. \u201cBut now Viktor\u2019s out of a job,\u201d cheered Bap.<\/p>\n As celebratory as Kneecap\u2019s live show has become, it\u2019s still driven by a righteous purpose that goes beyond simply having a good time. \u201cNo matter where we play, it\u2019s important to us, as people from Ireland who suffered 800 years of colonialism, that we use our platform for what we believe to be right and true,\u201d explained the bands Mo Chara. \u201cAnd there\u2019s no bigger crime that\u2019s happening in our lifetime than the genocide that\u2019s being committed in Palestine right not.\u00a0 We all have phones, we can all see what\u2019s happening,\u201d he added as chants of \u201cfree free Palestine\u201d rang out. (AS)<\/p>\n The xx made a glorious return<\/p>\n As darkness fell over Gdynia with a spectral swirl of sound, a giant X of a lighting rig began to glow, as if made of pure dark matter and with its own strange gravity. Smoke blew through striplights and The xx<\/a> crystallised onstage for an hour of haunting skeletal funk and ghost dimension rave.<\/p>\n \u201cThese shows this summer have been some of our first in eight years,\u201d said Oliver Sim<\/a>, clearly glad to be back even without any sign of the new material they\u2019ve been promising since 2024. And their ecstatic reception as far afield as Poland highlighted the London trio\u2019s standing as minimalist indie-soul icons.<\/p>\n Eight years on, their quiet\/rave methods are more effective than ever. The spare and restrained moments of glacial guitar and quiet emotion (Romy<\/a>\u2019s exposed \u2018Angels\u2019 or a charming, starlit \u2018VCR\u2019) framed increasingly rave-y segments pulsing up from beneath their songs. \u2018Crystalised\u2019, \u2018Say Something Loving\u2019 and \u2018Night Time\u2019 built a deep-bone dance tension that was then released on \u2018Fiction\u2019, with Sim roaming the stage like Satan\u2019s showman. As the rig lights warped and twisted trippily in the smoke, \u2018Infinity\u2019 was all deep space surf guitar akin to a very dark \u2018Blue Hotel\u2019, before building to a white dwarf climax. And a second half dominated by the threesome\u2019s solo tracks upped the beat count significantly: Romy shimmied up the ego ramp like a black-clad disco diva to the pop blast of \u2018Enjoy Your Life\u2019; Oliver headed out into the crowd for his dank disco \u2018GMT\u2019.<\/p>\n Jamie<\/a>\u2019s solo contributions proved to be major mood enhancers too. Open\u2019er witnessed the euphoric gospel surges of ad man\u2019s favourite \u2018Loud Places\u2019 and his 2017 Hot Chip<\/a>-like version of \u2018Shelter\u2019, made all the more intense by the band being boxed in by their descending X rig). Elsewhere, his remix of \u2018On Hold\u2019 lifted the crowd like the modern dance classic it is. From pout to party in one intoxicating hour. (MB)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In partnership with Open\u2019er Festival Words: Ali Shutler and Mark Beaumont \u201cI want you to go out into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,157,111,139,69,38],"class_list":["post-506359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Florence](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/OPENER_2026_FLORENCE_AND_THE_MACHINE_CZYZEWSKI_DSC01088.jpg\")
Florence + The Machine at Open\u2019er 2026. CREDIT: CZYZEWSKI<\/p>\n![\"Florence](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/OPENER_2026_FLORENCE_AND_THE_MACHINE_CZYZEWSKI_DSC00954.jpg\")
Florence And The Machine at Open\u2019er 2026. CREDIT: Czyzewski<\/p>\n![\"Zara](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/OPENER_2026_ZARA_LARSSON_LODZINSKI_01-19-1.jpg\")
Zara Larsson at Open\u2019er 2026. CREDIT: Lodzinski<\/p>\n![\"Kneecap](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/OPENER_2026_KNEECAP_STANISZEWSKA_9.jpg\")
Kneecap at Open\u2019er 2026. CREDIT: Staniszewska<\/p>\n