Meltdown 2026: Warpaint

A milky sunshine accentuated the sleek glazing of the mid-century modernist Royal Festival Hall, inviting attendees to mingle in the deliberately democratic airy foyers which surround the concrete core of the suspended concert hall. Together with the gentle warmth of an early summer’s evening, it felt a fitting entrance to a performance by a band known for their collaborative ethos and whose sound welcomes you with ethereal dream-pop, built upon the occasionally visible foundations of heavier psych.

The ten-day artist-curated music festival — the world’s longest running such event — is this year handpicked by pop superstar Harry Styles, with Meltdown occurring alongside his record-breaking run of 12 dates at Wembley Stadium. To some, the Together, Together tour’s stadium bombast instinctively offers an almost insurmountable contrast to the sometimes serious-leaning staple in London’s cultural calendar. Taking a step back, this is obviously nonsense. It’s refreshing to see the acknowledgement from the organisers of pop music and the cross-pollination of ideas and influences which have always shaped it. The breadth of the bill for Meltdown is testament to Styles’ own stylistic touchpoints and recognition for acts he’s worked with along the way.

Support for the evening came from one such act with links to Styles. Hot Chip’s long-time live drummer is part of Style’s band at Wembley. However, it was another member of the electronic synth-poppers, Alexis Taylor, who offered a more stripped-down set of his solo work.

Warpaint themselves opened for Styles on an Asian tour in 2018, with the pop showman apparently a particular fan of the band’s Australian drummer, Stella Mozgawa. Tonight was their first performance for eighteen months, the opportunity to play at Meltdown for the second time enough to pause their hiatus. That 2023 Royal Festival Hall set was also their last time in London, off the back of their most recent album, Radiate Like This. Tonight’s setlist was instead aimed squarely at those, like me, for whom this was a nostalgia trip to the early 2010s with eight songs coming from either the debut EP Exquisite Corpse or debut album The Fool. Before launching into ‘Love is to Die’ — probably their best-known track — as the second song of the set, lead vocalist Emily Kokal referenced how fun that night had been and a minority of the slightly stilted crowd gratefully took her cue to stand up and start dancing.

Shifting textures across the set managed to walk the line between movement-provoking angularity and broodingly introspective fluidity. This was never more obvious than during ‘Undertow’, lead single from The Fool. Characteristically woozy reverbs and harmonies drew the crowd in, before an off-kilter head-bobbing breakdown cut in, eventually drowning us all in a psych-drenched ending. Just for a minute I was back feeling sad somewhere on a grey winter’s day in 2014.

Despite understandably being a little rusty, the authenticity and humanity at the heart of Warpaint shone through. During a few extended jams, it was clear that the four of them were bonding once more through the music they’d collectively created over the past two decades. It was also during these moments when Mozgawa’s drumming came most to the fore, her dynamism propelling a powerful groove that truly elevates their sound and was enough to make even the most serious audience member begin to move. It’s easy to see why Styles is such a fan.