A Belated The Great Escape 2025 Write Up
21 August 2025
We’re well in the swing of festival season, and The New Age Magazine are taking you along for the ride. Next weekend sees North Yorkshire’s annual Deer Shed festival return to Baldersby Park, headlined by the likes of The Coral, Bombay Bicycle Club, and The New Age Magazine favourite CMAT. We’ll be dancing and singing our hearts out at Deer Shed from July 26th-29th, but for now, here’s a guide to the key artists you should be looking out for at this year’s festival.
London-via-Buckinghamshire six-piece Home Counties are a relatively new act on the indie music scene, creating a buzz through their unmissable live shows, and their no-skip debut LP ‘Exactly As It Seems’. They cast a large net of influences ranging from LCD Soundsystem to Confidence Man, and their songs have a political underbelly – ‘You Break It, You Bought It’ – a fiery anthem about the housing crisis and sh*tty landlords. Their raucous live shows are not to be missed and to see them on the Sunday at Deer Shed in the height of Summer is a real no-brainer.
With an all-female lineup from all corners of the world, and a musical style that is folkloric and takes inspiration from the 1980s instrumental music of the Spanish-speaking territories, Los Bitchos are the perfect tequila-fuelled, guitar-wielding party band for those warm Summer days. Ahead of their upcoming album ‘Talkie Talkie’ (expected August 30th), the band are set to grace the Deer Shed Festival stage on Saturday 27th July.
Garnering attention from huge support slots with The Last Dinner Party over the past few months, Manchester-formed indie-glam-rock group Picture Parlour will bring their unique guitar music sound to the Deer Shed mainstage. Expect huge debut single ‘Norwegian Wood’, the beautifully angular ‘Judgement Day’, and deep cuts from their debut EP, ‘Face In the Picture’. July also saw the group play in London alongside other Deer Shed acts Bombay Bicycle Club, CMAT, and Liz Lawrence.
“The love of singing is something I think most people realise at a very young age,” says Bess Atwell, a Brighton-based singer-songwriter from London known for her raw and beautifully crafted folk-inspired sound. Her latest album ‘Light Sleeper’ is a poignant dose of escapism, one that encompasses the feeling of embracing life at its fullest with a real sense of honesty and openness. Atwell is set to bring her tenderly cinematic live show to Deer Shed’s main stage on Sunday 28th July.
Also set to take the stage at this year’s Deer Shed Festival is Liz Lawrence, a Stratford-upon-Avon born indie pop singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer considered a “starlet in the making” by Q Magazine, and a familiar face to any fan of Bombay Bicycle Club, having been a long time collaborator with the band. What defines Lawrence, though, is her industrious, affectionate but ever-evolving sound. 2012’s Bedroom Hero is a quirky, dreamy collection of indie folk bangers, reminiscent of the early work of Laura Marling, although Bedroom Hero seems cast a larger net when it comes to influences, with Lawrence herself having a background in punk and ska. She seems to be an artist who has continued to further find herself more and more after every project, and so there’s never been a better time to catch a Liz Lawrence set. Lawrence is set to play the Deer Shed Main Stage on Friday 26th July.
Having sang solo first in public as an eight year old, Katie Gregson-MacLeod can only be described as the sort of talent that is not particularly easy to come around, and has come a long way as she prepares to perform at Deer Shed this year. Rising to fame after her song ‘complex’ made waves on TikTok in 2022, the Inverness-born artist has since released the ‘Big Red’ EP, utilising a larger soundscape than her previous songs written for piano and acting as a huge, exciting evolution of her sound. Still containing the unmistakable melancholia of her previous work, Gregson-MacLeod’s creativity is just being pushed further and further as time goes on, and her live performances are the best way to fully experience the delicate devastation of one of her tracks. Watch her open the Deer Shed main stage on Saturday 27th July.
Sparking some of the more exciting developments in modern folk music, Newcastle’s Frankie Archer perfectly blends traditional fiddle with complex synths, manipulated samples and potent lyrics examining timeless gender issues while bringing to the forefront the stories of those without a voice themselves. Unmissable track ‘Oxford City’ tells the tale of a woman’s drink being spiked out of jealousy, and while it features a traditional Northumbrian sound and voice, the track contains a “future facing sound” incomparable to any others in her genre. It’s guaranteeable that, should you find her on Saturday performing on the Lodge stage, Archer is sure to sound like nothing you’ve ever heard before.
Being described as “the most exciting breakthrough band of the past few years”, Fat Dog carry a buzz around them like few other in – well – whatever genre you believe Fat Dog to occupy, with people’s interpretations ranging from dance, to punk, to klezmer, and according to Rolling Stone, ‘just about anything else’. What they are best known for, though, is their infectious, raucous and riotous live performances, becoming something of alternative music’s worst kept secret. It’s hard to imagine a world in which Fat Dog don’t boom in popularity, especially after the release of their upcoming album, WOOF, which is why it’s only correct to urge any Deer Shed-goer to buckle up for their boisterous set on the Sunday of this year’s much-anticipated festival.
