^{Sam Fender/Picture: Rory Barnes}

If you were to generate a word cloud of the most spoken phrases at TRNSMT, ‘fuck the Tories’ would sit at its centre in shimmering neon. Sam Fender made it the centrepiece of his between-song banter, Wet Leg mumbled it in their cut-glass Isle Of Man accents, and The Snuts led an anti-Tory chant that would make the RMT proud. Even The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas mumbled ‘fuck the Tories’ at one point during his set, although it wasn’t clear if he had a clue what he was talking about (more on that later). It may not have been the most cerebrally engaging political discourse in the world, but it signalled some much-needed catharsis in troubling times. 

While anti-Conservative sentiments rumbled through most shows on the Main Stage at 2022’s TRNSMT, Sam Fender was the only headline act using the political sphere as raw material for his song writing. In an electrifying performance on Friday night, he proved exactly why his album Seventeen Going Under was met with acclaim from critics and audiences alike, intelligently peppering Springsteen-lite festival bangers with lyrics about the DWP, male suicide, liberal elitism and male toxicity. Fender's a switched-on songwriter bound for greatness. We can't wait to see what he makes next. 

^{Paolo Nutini/Picture: Tim Craig}

Rounding off Friday night was joint-headliner Paolo Nutini, who left politics at the door in favour of reworked versions of his songs in his newly favoured psych-rock sound. Where once Nutini’s music answered the question ‘what if Rod Stewart enjoyed landfill indie?’, his latest album Last Night In The Bittersweet places him in a sweet spot between Runrig and The Brian Jonestown Massacre. His seductive voice was buttressed by a swirl of guitars on hits like ‘Acid Eyes’ and the forbidding Arab Strap-adjacent rocker ‘Iron Sky’, with segments that frequently segued into kaleidoscopic shoegaze. It’s arresting stuff, but the tunes from his past two albums bristle uncomfortably next to his earlier material, with lilting ditties like ‘Candy’ underpowered by comparison. Glasgow’s favourite son is at a crossroads, then, never quite reconciling his artistic progress with the need to please a festival crowd, but he’s all the more interesting for it. 

^{The Strokes/Picture: Tim Craig}

If Friday night showed modern rock in fine fettle, Saturday’s headliner The Strokes felt like watching the creaky grandads of indie hobbling into A&E after a bad fall. They played an undeniable flurry of hits from their first two albums, rounding off their set with a rare performance of ‘Last Nite’, and yet their former cooler-than-cool spark was nowhere to be seen. The fault here lies almost entirely with Julian Casablancas, who seemed on the wrong side of compos mentis for the duration of the evening. ‘Oh, a seagull,’ he exclaimed after a rote performance of ‘New York City Cops’, seemingly realising where he was 20 minutes into his set. Like a human buffer, he made it his mission to destroy any momentum created by the band, loudly exclaiming his dislike for the night’s crowd and careering into rambling tangents that felt less like a performance and more like being trapped with a drunk at a bus stop. Julian, mate, we hope everything’s OK at home. 

^{Lewis Capaldi/Picture: Euan Robertson}

After Casablancas' barely concealed contempt for his audience, it was a relief to see Lewis Capaldi finish the festival on Sunday with the attitude of an over-attentive barista. Despite an oven-ready voice and a handful of unremarkable ballads to his name, Capaldi’s ability to turn a massive show into an intimate experience proves why he pulled in the biggest crowd of the weekend. He has the inverse problem of Casablancas, his mid-song patter at the level of a solid stand-up, making the humourlessness of his songs all the more baffling. Either way, his earnestness wins the day. At the close of his set, he addressed the pandemic and the isolation created by the past few years, emphasising his elation at performing in Glasgow Green in the aftermath of a turbulent period in history. As a summary on the wider importance of TRNSMT, he hits the nail on the head. We’re all together again after a period of inactivity, isolation and loss. Let’s savour it while it lasts. 

Check out our coverage of TRNSMT 2022's smaller stages. Tickets for TRNSMT 2023 are on sale now.