"Way Out West is a music festival in Sweden's second city Göteborg, with rock, indie, and alternative acts from both Sweden and the international scene. The festival is in its third year, but already ranked by UK media as one of the 20 best festivals in Europe. The venue is Slottsskogen, a large beautiful park in the centre of the city. For two days the park is home to two outdoor stages, an indoor stage and a buzzing festival atmosphere during 14th-15th August. Way out West is also environmentally-certified and a tasty selection of organic food is also on the menu."

So, this was my second year at Way Out West, and it was absolutely wonderful. Gothenburg is the perfect place for WOW, the atmosphere is so relaxed and everyone is just having fun. Here's a recap of my weekend in list-form, with highlights and anecdotes, for my own remembrance.

Friday:

• Me and Ea took the train down to Gothenburg really early on the Friday morning, to get there in time for the first act on Flamingo (one of the big stages): Timo Räisänen. Timo was lovely and seemed really happy (as always), the sun was shining and it was a great start of the festival.
• After Timo we walked over to the indoor stage, Linné, to see Bon Iver. I love Bon Iver, but they started out kinda dull and when they started jamming in the middle of the set, we decided to leave to get good spots for Beirut instead.
• Because most people were over at Linné we got really good spots, just a couple of people from the fence. It got really hot in the sun, and I was kinda worried that I would wake up with a red right half of my face the next morning, because I forgot to put on sunscreen (luckily, I didn't). But when Beirut came on stage I forgot about that, and just enjoyed the show. They were great, and Zach was just as cute IRL as I'd imagined. They played for about an hour, and it was definitely one of the highlights of the festival. Some bands suffer from playing too early in the day, because their music fits better in darkness or semi-darkness, but Beirut sounded just as good in broad daylight as they would have done later on the evening.
• After Beirut we rushed over to Linné again to catch the end of Grizzly Bear's set. It was a shame that the organisers put them on at the same time, but we managed see two or three songs at least. When they finished we went and bought smoothies (raspberry for me), and then back to Linné to get good spots for Florence and the Machine.
• Florence and the Machine was wonderful, Florence's voice is just brutally beautiful, but the set suffered from too loud bass. In one of the songs the bass was so loud that it was hard to breath, which was very unpleasant. But other than that they put on a great show, and I long for her/them to come back.
• After Florence's set we went to get some food in our empty stomaches. Robyn was playing on Flamingo, but since we'd already missed most of her set we decided that we would eat dinner instead. We bought falafel, it was pretty good but a little dry maybe. Then we went to the toilets, where we had to queue for like half an hour. But while we queued Florence and hew crew walked past, that was fun (even if I didn't have the guts to say anything).
• When we were done queueing it was time to head over to Flamingo again, this time for Antony of Antony and the Johnsons, with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. It was magical, Antony was so sweet and shy and just stood there and sang, with no grand piano to hide behind. And the crowd was wonderful too, no one dared to talk during the songs or when Antony talked, everybody was so respectful. He talked about how Jesus was going to be reborn as a girl in Afghanistan and how nervous he was standing in front of us. It was amazing, another one of the absolute highlights of the festival.
• After Antony most people went to the other big stage, Azalea, to see Glasvegas, but we headed forward instead, to get good spots for Arctic Monkeys. Turned out that "good spots" also meant having to stand up for over an hour (I like it better when everybody sits down waiting), and when it was half an hour left it was already so packed it was hard to move. After another fifteen minutes I could easily have lift my feet from the ground and still be standing because of the pressure from the crowd.
• When Arctic came on stage the crowd went wild, and sadly I can't really remember anything from the first four or five songs because all I could focus on was not to get crushed and not to fall. After those five songs we managed to forcefully squeeze our way backwards, where the pressure eased a bit and we were able to enjoy the show a bit more. The Arctic's were of course really good, but they were better the last time I saw them, two years ago at Annexet in Stockholm. They seemed a bit blasé during the old songs, Matt being the only one who shined during the whole set. The others lightened up a bit during the new songs from Humbug, and "Secret Door" was just amazing, my highlight of the set. Sadly, most of the crowd didn't seem to appreciate the new songs as much as I did, I could see a lot of people with impatience written all over their face who were just talking, not caring about the music (or the people actually listening) at all. I don't know if it was because most people hadn't heard the new songs yet, or if they were there just to mosh and didn't like the new sound. Either way, it was a shame, but Alex said we were a dazzling crowd so it must have looked better from the stage. They played for approx. 75 minutes, no encore, and then the first day was over, at least for us.

Saturday:

• I woke up at nine, sore and tired and with a heart-shaped bruise on my left forearm. Ate breakfast at the hotel and then it was straight back to the festival area to see Patrick Wolf at Linné.
• Patrick Wolf was amazing. I'm pretty new to his music, I hadn't heard him before I saw that he was coming to WOW, but I fell in love at first listen. Seeing him live was even better than I'd imagined, he's so incredibly charismatic and his voice is just so powerful. It was wonderful, even though is was in the middle of the day, but it would've been even more beautiful if he'd played when it was dark, and also let him play for longet than 45 minutes. Seriously, the organisers made some big mistakes when setting the playscheme, like the Robyn/Florence clash and having Patrick open the second day at the festival.
• After Patrick we followed the mass of people back to Flamingo to see the second half of Jenny Wilson's set. She was also great, but suffered a little from playing so early. During the last songs it started raining, so we pulled on our raincoats and then we met up with my cousin, who had also come to watch Jenny.
• When Jenny's set was over my cousin headed to Linné to meet up with a friend and we went to buy lunch. We found a place where they sold some kind of vegetarian wraps with alfa alfa sprouts, spicy hummus, cheese and lettuce, which actually tasted pretty good. We took our wraps and headed back to Flamingo, where we got spots right in the middle by the little fence-divider-thing. The rain had stopped so we sat down and ate and listened to Calexico, who played on Azalea, while we waited for Vampire Weekend.
• Vampire Weekend was another one of the highlights of the festival, despite the weather. When I listen to VW, I think of sunshine and beaches and warmth, not cloudy grey skies and pouring rain. But they handled it well, and managed to replace the lost sun with their sunny music. Halfway through the set it started raining again, a lot more than before, but Ezra kept the crowd's mood up by saying that "this one's really good to dance to in raincoats!" before they burst into "A-Punk". And well, he was right. It was really fun to dance in the rain, it kept everybody warm and happy, VW was just the perfect band to play during the worst shower. Imagine a less sunny band playing, it would've been miserable! But they were great.
• After VW we decided that it was time to leave the festival area to let our clothes dry a bit and get something warm in our stomaches. We found a little café just a block away or so where we sat down with a cup of tea and some cake (cheesecake for me, carrot cake for Ea). We sat there for a little over an hour, sipping on our tea, taking small bites from our cakes and using the café's toilet. Then we felt it was time to leave and see if we could find somewhere to buy something small for dinner, so we took our raincoats and headed out.
• We walked around for a while and it stopped raining, which was a great relief. When we had walked a couple of blocks we ran into my cousin again, now with her room mates and her friends in Woodpigeon, who were playing at one of the clubs later. We shook hands with everybody and I got a bit confused, as I always do when I'm confronted with Swedish and English-speaking people at the same time. It was really nice meeting them all, but they were in a hurry to see NAS play so we waved goodbye and continued our hunt for food. Sadly we didn't find anything vegetarian that was cheap enough, so we decided to head back to the festival again and eat there. We found a stall that sold North-African terrine, which was tasty.
• When we had finished our food we headed over to Azalea, where Amandou & Mariam were wrapping up their set. I'm not very good at dancing to African rhytms or world-music at all, but it was a lot of fun watching everybody else dance, especially the "older" people (35-40-ish), whom you (or at least I) rarely see dancing at festivals otherwise.
• After Amandou & Mariam we headed over to Flamingo to watch Basement Jaxx. I only had a vague idea of what they sounded like, but they turned out to be pretty good. There was some strange people dancing around us, but what do you do? "Just dance, gonna be okay..", to quote Lady GaGa (not my favourite, but it seemed fitting), so we did.
• When Jaxx finished we squeezed our way forward and ended up getting the same spots as we had during Vampire Weekend. "Sweet!", we thought and sat down to wait for Lily Allen. A few minutes later My Bloody Valentine walked onstage over at Azalea, and then it was not so sweet anymore. I mean, come on! MBV were HORRIBLE. It was SO FUCKING LOUD. SO FUCKING MONOTONE. The songs were like ten minutes long sequences of monotone, loud, horrible fucking noise. There was no melodies, just.. this really intense noise. I don't know if anyone was singing, I couldn't hear what was guitars, what was bass or what was human voice (if there was any). All I could hear was drums and noise. For 75 minutes straight. And the songs seemed to get longer and longer until the last one, which sounded like a twenty minute long outro, one of those outros where the musicians just beat the hell out of their instruments. When it was FINALLY over, everyone who was waiting for Lily sighed of relief and clapped their hands. I felt totally brainwashed, almost numb, it was HORRIBLE. The only thing I could think about was "Why do people listen to that? Do people even listen to that?! OH MY GOD".
• So, anyway. It didn't go on forever, luckily. Lily Allen came onstage just a few minutes after, and my head cleared up. She had really heavy silver-glittery eye make-up and black clothes, and was just beautiful. It was an amazing set, which included a little "jazzy/acoustic bit" and an epic "Fuck You", which had the whole crowd dancing with their middle fingers in the air (including Lily, of course). She was maybe not at "bouncy" as she was after her first record, with the dresses and trainers and all, but damn, she is cool. I love her attitude, on stage and off stage, she just doesn't give a fuck about what people might think of her. She owned that stage. I danced through the whole set, definitely one of the highlights.
• After Lily's fantastic set we had to decide whether to stay and see the last part of Teddybears set, or walk to the Annedal church, where First Aid Kit and later Final Fantasy would be playing. We knew the queues to all the clubs, including the church, had been horrible (they always seem to be) the two days before, but we thought it was worth a try so we headed towards the church. Sadly, the queue was horribly long, and we were not really psyched to queue for hours and then maybe not even get in, so we turned around and took the tram back to the hotel.

Sunday:

• Woke up and was a little less sore than the morning before, but extremely tired and sad that the festival was over. Ate breakfast, walked around in Nordstan (shopping mall), and then we took the express train home. I travelled in first class, which was very comfortable, but I only managed to sleep for half an hour. And then we were back in Stockholm and I took the commuter train home.

Overall, it was an amazing weekend. The end.