There is a new messiah in town. Whilst we have all audaciously argued about who are the next festival headliners in our world, Greta Van Fleet have ascended to an arena-bothering level with little or no fanfare. They exist in that really interesting intersection between heavy rock and indie that you can trace the linage of all the way back to John Squire living out his Jimmy Page fantasies on ‘Love Spreads’. The arena is inhabited by a really interesting and predominantly young bevy of Merrymakers that are in the main, not your ordinary rock show attendees. The audience is far more likely to have spent time this summer at the Leeds Festival than they are to have inhabited the hallowed grounds of Donington Park.

This incursion of musical dimensions also means that the supports are not quite within our usual comfort zones. Opener Hannah Wicklund plays deeply personal modern blues that oozes with quality and confidence. She is no longer accompanied by The Steppin Stones (who she recorded her debut album with) and instead, she has shackled her wagon to Greta Van Fleet’s fast-accelerating trajectory. Sam Kiszka has produced her forthcoming sophomore album “The Prize” and he and Daniel Wagner are moonlighting in her all-new backing band. Sadly double duties are unable to be pulled this evening and she is backed by a bunch of anonymous but talented session musicians.

Her voice is sultry and full of burning desire. She has been open about the heartache that has inspired a new record and she wilfully empties her soul to the assembling throngs. The tempo increases as she retreats back to her former incarnation for the final two tracks of her ludicrously short set. During the closing number ‘Bomb Through the Breeze’, she skilfully combines lead vocal duties with some stunningly complex blues solo. Blissfully talented and respectfully authentic in her delivery, the legacy of the blues is safe in her hands.

If I'm honest Mt. Joy are more Americana than they are rock. Their laid-back country-tinged blues feels very reminiscent of early My Morning Jacket and the sway of identikit bands that followed in their wake. It's pleasant enough but it lacks any heft or urgency to keep a rapidly filling arena interested. Their use of harmonies meanders into Fleet Foxes territory and it all begins to feel a long way away from good-time rock 'n' roll. Not bad but nothing beyond background music for beer buying.

Greta Van Fleet are reinventing the arena rock experience for Generation Z. This is a slick hyper-produced “event” with plenty of showboat moments designed specifically to be captured on the plentiful amount of mobile phones. The intro meanders and meanders. Its elongated status is evidently designed to build up the anticipation in the room, but the Starcatcher Overture just seems to go on forever and it is a good 15 minutes after the lights descend that the grey draping finally falls to the floor to reveal the band. The screaming is instantaneous and incessant. It feels like we've been transported to the black-and-white footage of The Beatles in the heyday. As I stated this is a predominantly young (and female) crowd and they have come to worship and adore.

The set is divided into four very distinct parts (including the inevitable encore). The first is a precision-balanced selection of material from the new album and select older tracks. It is all incredibly well rehearsed and realised. There is very little spontaneity and every move and moment is specifically engineered and rendered to build up the excitement in the room. Whilst as old hacks we have seen the pyro and synchronised moves dozens of times before, it is obvious that some of the younglings at the front are experiencing all of this for the first time and are finding the whole spectacle absolutely magical.

Joshua Kiszka seems more than comfortable in his rock 'n' roll star persona. His voice is rich and reaching and he happily re-purposes the stage moves of all that come before him. During ‘Highway Tune’ he tosses white roses into the melee, causing pandemonium amongst its inhabitants as they clamber over each other to get even a petal from the rapidly shredded flowers. The youthful huddled masses in the standing section are obviously yet to learn that all drum solos are shit, as they clap away with great enthusiasm as Daniel Wagner pounds away at his kit for what feels like an eternity.  

Thankfully normal service is finally resumed, and the tempo is taken down a significant amount of notches for the second set of acoustic/piano numbers. Samuel Kiszka switches his bass for the ivory keys and we get a quite sweet and uniformly beautiful interlude of exquisitely rendered ballads. During a cover of the perennial ‘Unchained Melody’ Joshua reaches pitches that threaten to shatter the glass in the VIP boxes. He calms down a bit for waited all ‘Waited All Your Life’ and ‘Black Smoke Rising’ but still manages to further demonstrate his quite astonishing vocal prowess.

Set three sees them raid every rock 'n' roll cliché in the book. There is fire everywhere and it burns incessantly. The band themselves ratchet it up to fever level and bound around the stage with never-ending enthusiasm. The organic rawness of their earlier performances is now completely gone and instead, what has emerged Phoenix-like are four consummate showmen with an innate ability to hold an arena in the palm of their hands. There are still faint whiffs of plagiarism but we are now so far from the heyday of Led Zeppelin that their appropriation of the sound feels respectful rather than a blatant act of sacrilege. The intro to ‘Sacred The Thread’ is reverential and warms the cockles of the older generations in the room.

As stated the fourth segment is the encore and once they have rolled out George Gershwin's ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ they conclude with a climactic version of Light My Love, the crowd before them singing along with lustful ecstasy. Tonight, Greta Van Fleet channelled over 50 years of arena rock into a two-hour spectacle, reappropriating all its troupes and traditions for generation tic-tock. It might be sanitised and incredibly safe but the overarching point is the paying public obviously had the time of their lives and that is job done.

Check the “In The Flesh” page for more photos!
Great Van Fleet, Mt. Joy, Hannah Wicklund