I rarely need an excuse to go to Brighton. Having grown up nearby, a large part of my heart still belongs to the city. Valuable life lessons were learned all over town - from the pier to Topshop's harshly-lit changing rooms, dubious nightclubs to the last train, we were finding out how to drink, how to dress, how to look cool walking on a beach made of pebbles. Ok - most of us are still mastering that one, but from student summers slaving(ish) in beachfront bars to a frankly glorious couple of years working my first 'real' jobs in radio, we've been on a bit of a journey. So what if the Great Escape actually only started the year I moved from Brighton to London? Any event that offers up the chance to spend a weekend revelling in old memories and making up new ones - all soundtracked by hours and hours of new music - well, I'm in. Here are some of my musical highlights from this year's Great Escape - the festival's tenth anniversary...
1. SEINABO SEY
Every now and then I get a little bit obsessed by a new female voice that just seems ridiculously perfect, and - at the risk of sounding a little bit Derek Acora - sort of speaks to me. Ever since I first heard this track from Swedish singer Seinabo Sey (randomly recommended by The Clash's Mick Jones, during an interview about his charity Christmas single) I've been desperate to see her live. Spotting her on The Great Escape line-up, it was a done deal. Seinabo did a couple of knock-out performances, including on the Vevo stage. Absolutely stunning.
2. The Maccabees
It feels so good to have The Maccabees back. And to see them twice in one week felt like Christmas, after they were revealed as TGE's surprise Saturday night headliner. New track Marks to Prove it already feels like a classic, while standouts from their last album Given to the Wild - including Feel to Follow and Pelican - induced mass hysteria at both TGE and their London show at The Coronet a few days earlier.
The band had played at the first ever Great Escape a decade before, and in a celebratory mood unearthed this little beauty from their back catalogue. Latchmere was inspired by the wave machine at Latchmere Leisure Centre in Battersea - laced with extra nostalgia for me, thanks to the fact it featured so heavily in mine and my sister's attempts to master armbands when we were small people and lived in South London in the early 1980s.
3. Alabama Shakes
Another band who played a small, sweaty, packed out Great Escape show early in their career that has now become the stuff of TGE legend. Celebrating the release of their second album Sound & Colour, Alabama Shakes captivated the crowd with singer Brittany Howard singing each syllable like it was her last.
After a couple of days pounding the pavements of London to my early favourite Don't Wanna Fight, it was a thrill to finally see / hear it live and be able to break out the shoulder shimmy that I'd been struggling to keep under wraps.
After a couple of days pounding the pavements of London to my early favourite Don't Wanna Fight, it was a thrill to finally see / hear it live and be able to break out the shoulder shimmy that I'd been struggling to keep under wraps.
4. ELIAS
A quick mention for my first gig at this year's Great Escape - 19-year-old Elias from Sweden, playing his first ever gig in the UK.
He's just been signed to Warners here, who've revealed he credits Otis Redding, FKA Twigs, Spooky Black and Patti Smith as inspirations. That sounded intriguing and I wasn't disappointed.
He's just been signed to Warners here, who've revealed he credits Otis Redding, FKA Twigs, Spooky Black and Patti Smith as inspirations. That sounded intriguing and I wasn't disappointed.
5. Shamir
It was obvious at least 70% of the crowd assembled in The Haunt to watch Shamir were there to hear On the Regular - the other 30% being their mates, siblings, colleagues and stragglers who'd been dragged along - but that didn't make it any less brilliant when it happened. I made my own toes curl a bit, just by thinking it, but we definitely all had 'a moment'.
Extra marks to Shamir for jumping off stage and hugging everyone at the end. Even if some of us didn't realise exactly who he was or what was happening until after he'd been hugged back and had moved on.
6. DJANGO DJANGO
This was meant to be a list of 5, especially as I've already covered Weller, but I couldn't stop without mentioning Django Django, who played an unexpectedly banging late night set on the Friday. Thank you Great Escape 2015, we had a blast.