The witching hour draws near on Sunday night in Glastonbury. Time for local heroes Massive Attack to bring the noise to the Other Stage before it goes dark for another year. After three days of watching guitar bands offer up their generally conservative take on retro-blues tropes, Massive come as a welcome relief, demonstrating how the colour blue can span a rich multicultural spectrum from gently menacing soul symphonies to dystopian post-punk dubtronica. Once a byword for brooding understatement, Massive in 2014 make a shuddering, scouring, surprisingly rowdy racket. Visually, they remain a clutch of furtive figures lurking in semi-darkness. But their sound has acquired extra muscle just as their stage presentation has grown teeth, notably a billboard-sized screen that blitzes the crowd with scrambled news headlines, political disinformation, anti-war slogans and personal testimonies from Guantanamo Bay inmates. At times it almost feels like watching Wikileaks – The Musical. Tonight’s show is mostly about strong female voices counterpointed by discordant, percussive, weaponised noise. Latterday Massive regular Deborah Miller provides belting vocals on "Safe From Harm" and "Unfinished Sympathy", early 1990s anthems that have become increasingly belligerent over the last two decades. Martina Topley-Bird, best known for her collaborations with former Massive member Tricky, takes on the softer ballads, including a gorgeous "Teardrop" that shimmers with a new, sinewy, Saharan heat-haze feel. Back on Friday morning, Debbie Harry stood on this same stage and christened the festival. “Glastonbury!” she grinned. “Nowhere else like it!” Massive Attack attempt nothing so glibly crowd-pleasing during this noir-ish finale, but their rhythmic rebel-rock rumbles make just as much sense here. Bluesy discontent meets hippie resistance, soulful uplift meets punk protest. Glastonbury provides a temporary place of refuge for all dissident tribes here in the Vale of Avalon. Nowhere else like it. Stephen Dalton Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim Glastonbury Day 1: Courtney Barnett and Lily Allen Glastonbury Day 1: Elbow Glastonbury Day 1: Arcade Fire Glastonbury Day 2: Midlake Glastonbury Day 2: Kelis and Fat White Family Glastonbury Day 2: Robert Plant and Lana Del Ray Glastonbury Day 2: Jack White Glastonbury Day 2: Pixies and Metallica Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani and Sidiki Glastonbury Day 3: Dolly Parton Glastonbury Day 3: The Black Keys

Sunday evening, with the finish line in sight, and Glastonbury has still got the blues. The Black Keys are playing the same penultimate Pyramid Stage slot as Jack White filled on Saturday, and it is impossible to avoid drawing parallels between these bitching Nashville neighbours. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney last played Worthy Farm four years ago as a ragged power duo. Tonight they bring backing musicians, eye-popping psychedelic visuals derived from their "Turn Blue" album artwork, and a truckload of Grammy-winning confidence. But the devil on my shoulder still tells me that Jack White won this battle. Where White’s set was incendiary and melodramatic, Auerbach and Carney stay crisp and contained. Where their nemesis channelled the explosive showmanship of Screaming Jay Hawkins and Little Richard, the Keys focus on the muscular minimalism of their increasingly soulful, riff-heavy sound. Even in their new smoothed-down form, they can still pack serious clout, especially on bad-ass wallops like "Lonely Boy" and a surprisingly jaunty "Fever". But this show exudes a pedestrian kind of professionalism, borrowing heavily from the blues-rock pantheon as if there were no higher honour than playing Later With Jools Holland. There is no danger here, no dark depths, no hinterland of delicious delirium. And definitely none of that wild-haired, sexually incontinent, high-voltage voodoo that certain other performers use to reanimate the corpse of this doddery old retro-rock format. Auerbach and Carney play a solid bunch of songs at Glastonbury, but nothing more. Next time they will need to rise to the challenge that a bigger stage demands. Stephen Dalton Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim Glastonbury Day 1: Courtney Barnett and Lily Allen Glastonbury Day 1: Elbow Glastonbury Day 1: Arcade Fire Glastonbury Day 2: Midlake Glastonbury Day 2: Kelis and Fat White Family Glastonbury Day 2: Robert Plant and Lana Del Ray Glastonbury Day 2: Jack White Glastonbury Day 2: Pixies and Metallica Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani and Sidiki Glastonbury Day 3: Dolly Parton Glastonbury Day 3: Massive Attack

With Glastonbury building up to its grand blow-out finale, now is the time to tick off the traditional Sunday evening checklist. Dolly Parton has already triumphed in the crowd-pleasing afternoon slot. Over the next few hours, it's a surefire bet Michael Eavis will declare this festival to be the best ever. Just like he does every year. Later, as Kasabian thunder to the end of their headline set, it is equally certain some disgruntled backstage veteran will grumble that Glastonbury is not the anarcho-hippie utopia it used to be in the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s. The choice of decade generally depends on when the speaker turned 20 and took drugs for the first time. As a Glastonbury veteran of some 25 years, I can safely confirm this is bollocks. As it happens, this weekend marks 20 years since the TV cameras first began turning the festival into a mainstream pop-culture event. For golden-age nostalgists, this truly was the jump-the-shark turning point when a righteous eco-hippie gathering sold its soul to commerce and fashion. An arguable point, but one that seems to contradict Glastonbury's enduring commitment to charity causes and political messages, not to mention its highly unusual resistance to major corporate branding. Of course it has changed over the decades, but it still feels like no other festival anywhere. Another key point that becomes abundantly clear wandering the far-flung fields where TV cameras rarely roam is that all those Glastonbury golden ages are still here, running in parallel to the main event. Here you will find bicycle-powered launderettes, nappy recycling stations, anti-fracking protest camps, crystal-gazing mystics and much more. Behind one cluster of trees, 1980s New Age travellers spill from graffiti-covered buses. Behind another, early 1990s rave survivors get totally spannered to vintage acid trance. Old Glastonburys never die, they just move to their own field. In these faraway meadows you also stumble across the hippie-rock icons of yesteryear. At 81, Yoko Ono must be the oldest performer here, but still one of the most vital as she fights to keep the 1960s avant-garde aesthetic alive. Playing the Park Stage with the Plastic Ono Band, Yoko reads poems and blessings between discordant howls, screeches and drones. It is close to unlistenable at times, but easily the most exhilarating and experimental noise-rock performance of the weekend. Respect is due. Another veteran band soldiering on despite losing a key member three decades ago, The Wailers gather a huge crowd to the West Holts Stage on the festival's eastern fringes. Essentially a tribute act to their younger selves, their jaunty set is mostly composed of Bob Marley classics, easy-listening reggae vibrations slightly marred by excessive pub-rock guitar. But the beaming stoners, the groovy pensioners and the dancing toddlers are all here in force, a tribal gathering of Glastonbury in all its past, present and future incarnations. "Are you ready for some more roots and culture?" Aston "Family Man" Barrett asks the heaving crowd. It's a rhetorical question. My dear chap, we were born ready. Stephen Dalton Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim Glastonbury Day 1: Courtney Barnett and Lily Allen Glastonbury Day 1: Elbow Glastonbury Day 1: Arcade Fire Glastonbury Day 2: Midlake Glastonbury Day 2: Kelis and Fat White Family Glastonbury Day 2: Robert Plant and Lana Del Ray Glastonbury Day 2: Jack White Glastonbury Day 2: Pixies and Metallica Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani and Sidiki Glastonbury Day 3: Dolly Parton Glastonbury Day 3: The Black Keys Glastonbury Day 3: Massive Attack

Mid afternoon at Glastonbury, and anticipation for the traditional Sunday singalong slot is tangible. It's a tricky balancing act to pull off well: ideally a veteran household name, safe and family-friendly enough for the older-leaning crowd that throng to the festival's last day, but with sufficient kitsch appeal for the students, hipsters and drug casualties. Dolly Parton arrives, and it is instantly clear she was a smart choice. The heaving all-ages crowd in the Pyramid Arena is the biggest of the weekend so far - easily topping Arcade Fire, Jack White or Metallica. Bounding onstage in a silver-sequined glitterstorm of comically exaggerated drag-queen femininity and syrupy Deep South shtick, the Backwoods Barbie looks dazzling in a sculpted, laminated, vaguely computer-generated way. Scientists call it the Uncanny Valley, that slightly creepy effect when something looks not quite human. Never mind the Botox, here’s Dolly. The original Steel Magnolia of platinum country-pop gets us on board early with a foot-stomping "Jolene", the sepia-tinted poverty ballad "Coat of Many Colors" and sanitised saloon-bar raunch like "Two Doors Down". She also bombards us with scripted jokes, folksy family memories and ingratiating local references: "I grew up in the county so all this mud ain't nothin' new to me!" Well, shucks. But behind the tiresome Nashville-meets-Vegas facade there is musical brilliance, savvy commercial instincts and a deep canon of fine songs. A close-harmony section with two male backing singers throws up some genuine gems, notably the wistful waltz-time tearjerker "Old Flames Can't Hold a Candle to You". Switching effortlessly from guitar to banjo to autoharp, Dolly and her band elegantly trace Appalachian country-folk back to its Celtic immigrant roots. The final pancake pile-up of ageless hen-party classics includes "Islands in the Stream" and Dolly's superior original arrangement of "I Will Always Love You", the honky-tonk heartbreaker that Whitney Houston later reworked into a massively melodramatic chart-topper. The crowd roars along to every line, soaking up every last drop of Dolly's gloriously fake flattery. Pure emotional uplift, a real Dollywood Ending. And how is Glastonbury feeling now? Happy happy happy, like a room without a roof. Stephen Dalton Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim Glastonbury Day 1: Courtney Barnett and Lily Allen Glastonbury Day 1: Elbow Glastonbury Day 1: Arcade Fire Glastonbury Day 2: Midlake Glastonbury Day 2: Kelis and Fat White Family Glastonbury Day 2: Robert Plant and Lana Del Ray Glastonbury Day 2: Jack White Glastonbury Day 2: Pixies and Metallica Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani and Sidiki Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers, assorted hippies Glastonbury Day 3: The Black Keys Glastonbury Day 3: Massive Attack

So it turns out John Lennon was right after all. You really can get a tan from standing in the English rain. Sunday morning at Glastonbury, and your Uncut reporter woke up glowing a livid radioactive orange. I blame Robert Plant, who performed his magickal Sun God alchemy last night, setting Worthy Farm ablaze with a scorching Avalon Sunset. And yes, I promise this will be my weather report on this blog, but it's looking like Glastonbury 2014 will be going out in a blaze of glory. At this rate I will be heading home tomorrow with hay fever, trenchfoot and sunburn. Living the festival dream. With Dolly Parton, Massive Attack and The Wailers on the musical menu, today is shaping up to be a chillaxing comedown from last night's riff-crunching metalfest. The Pyramid Arena already feels like a massive family picnic with deckchairs, blankets and Sunday papers spread out across the sun-baked mud flats. Perched on a raised platform on the main stage, the Malian father-son duo Toumani and Sidiki Diabaté ease us into the afternoon with their intricate kora duets, sinewy sparkles that hang in the air like sleepy fireflies. These ruminative sound paintings draw more on Toumani's rootsy traditionalism than Sidiki's musical alter ego as a West African hip-hop star, but they mostly strike a universal note. The understated highlight here is the mournful "Lampedusa", a quietly devastating requiem for all those desperate African refugees who perish on the hazardous illegal boat crossing to Sicily. Sublime. More updates from Glastonbury's final feast of music coming soon. Stephen Dalton Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim Glastonbury Day 1: Courtney Barnett and Lily Allen Glastonbury Day 1: Elbow Glastonbury Day 1: Arcade Fire Glastonbury Day 2: Midlake Glastonbury Day 2: Kelis and Fat White Family Glastonbury Day 2: Robert Plant and Lana Del Ray Glastonbury Day 2: Jack White Glastonbury Day 2: Pixies and Metallica Glastonbury Day 3: Dolly Parton Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers, assorted hippies Glastonbury Day 3: The Black Keys Glastonbury Day 3: Massive Attack

Scowling down from the Other Stage, the Pixies are not looking for our love. Bronzed, bald and bearlike, Black Francis bears a disturbing resemblance to Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour nowadays. The latest in the band’s Spinal Tap-style line of replacement bass guitarists, Paz Lenchantin shows Glastonbury she has the skills, but inevitably lacks Kim Deal’s innate mischief and instantly seductive voice. A handful of prosaic garage-punk bone-shakers from the new comeback album “Indie Cindy” also disappoint. All the same, Pixies have alt-rock artillery to spare. Dystopian bubblegum sci-fi surf-punk classics like “Gouge Away”, “Caribou” and “Wave of Mutilation” retain their forceful, angular, modernist bite. A decade into their reformation, the indie trailblazers who once served as midwives to Nirvana, Radiohead and many others still sound as bracingly alien as ever. Meanwhile, over on the Pyramid Stage, Metallica begin by curtailing their usual Sergio Leone spaghetti western intro with a specially shot mini-film about fox-hunting that climaxes with the grinning thrash overlords machine-gunning the hunters. This is a sledgehammer satirical comment on the mild controversy over Glastonbury booking a heavy-rock headliner, with naysayers particularly incensed by singer James Hetfield’s love of hunting for bloodsport. All these high-minded critics must be vegetarians, we can only assume. In reality, of course, Metallica fit the broad audience demographic of a mainstream mega-festival like Glastonbury just as comfortably as Bruce Springsteen or Beyonce. These elder statesmen are pushing against an open door, but their ingratiating underdog act is revealing at least. Behind their devil-horned bombast, they really want West Country hippies and indie kids to love them. Hetfield even makes a vaguely worded speech about saving the planet and staying true to your moral integrity, which could apply equally to a Greenpeace recruitment drive as to a Scientology convention. Metallica cover all bases. Charm offensive over, Hetfield locks into Nietzschean rock-gladiator mode while Lars Ulrich rockets out of his seat, pinballing all over the drum kit like Keith Moon’s hyperactive Danish cousin. A famously well-oiled touring machine, Metallica crank out their speed-riffing, fist-pumping anthems with pulverising power, all accompanied by IMAX-level visuals. Sure, this is slick shtick with a blockbuster budget, but it works just fine as festival spectacle. Whatever their critics feared, Metallica do not rip off Glastonbury’s head and drink its still-warm blood. Instead, they curl up at our feet and beg us to tickle their warm furry tummies. Once the sonically extreme fringe of the heavy rock underground, thrash metal is mainstream family entertainment nowadays. But there is a reason for that. And the reason is Metallica. Stephen Dalton Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim Glastonbury Day 1: Courtney Barnett and Lily Allen Glastonbury Day 1: Elbow Glastonbury Day 1: Arcade Fire Glastonbury Day 2: Midlake Glastonbury Day 2: Kelis and Fat White Family Glastonbury Day 2: Robert Plant and Lana Del Ray Glastonbury Day 2: Jack White Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani & Sidiki Glastonbury Day 3: Dolly Parton Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers, assorted hippies Glastonbury Day 3: The Black Keys Glastonbury Day 3: Massive Attack

Glastonbury can be a cruel mistress, punishing us with her ever changing moods. This morning brought thunderbolts and lightning, very very frightening. Now the sun is ablaze across the festival, and the pre-Metallica mood is incongruously mellow to the max. "I'm so excited," Lana Del Rey tells the Pyramid Stage arena with the least excited expression since faces were invented. You really have to love her ironic sense of humour, like when she criticised a broadsheet journalist on Twitter recently for being "calculated". She wears an explosion of citrus colours in the blazing afternoon sun, but her voice is pure bruise-coloured twilight, the sultry purr of a film-noir femme fatale confined to Death Row after coolly murdering a string of hapless no-good lovers. I love Del Rey's artful Stepford-wife fakery, all vintage Hollywood glamour and sultry lava-lamp nostalgia, but the limitations of her Instagram-fuzzy torch songs become all too plain in the broad-brush setting of a big festival. Playing more to her guitar-bloated power-ballad side than her more exotic cocktails of West Coast hip-hop and David Lynchian darkness, the tracks from her chart-topping new "Ultraviolence" album mostly sound like Chris Isaak's "Wicked Games" played at half speed. Plenty of woozy erotic langour, not enough love-drunk mystery. Next on the Pyramid Stage is Robert Plant and The Sensational Space Shifters, providing a natural Arthurian figurehead for Glastonbury's mystical hippie heritage. Plant plays much the same Zeppelin-heavy set as his recent Parisian show (reviewed here), sandwiching a teasing turbo-blast of "Whole Lotta Love" between the rasping North African folk reels and desert-blues dervish whirls. The Space Shifters might appear to be Plant's equivalent of the Mescaleros or Wings, but they feel more organically rooted in this Arcadian glade setting than anyone else on the Glastonbury bill. As a smartly chosen warm-up act for Saturday night, they make perfect sense. Young saplings like Jack White and Metallica are mere branches, but Plant is the mighty knotted oak that spawned them. Stephen Dalton Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim Glastonbury Day 1: Courtney Barnett and Lily Allen Glastonbury Day 1: Elbow Glastonbury Day 1: Arcade Fire Glastonbury Day 2: Midlake Glastonbury Day 2: Kelis and Fat White Family Glastonbury Day 2: Jack White Glastonbury Day 2: Pixies and Metallica Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani & Sidiki Glastonbury Day 3: Dolly Parton Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers, assorted hippies Glastonbury Day 3: The Black Keys Glastonbury Day 3: Massive Attack

Who's got the cleanest boots in the rain-sodden, mud-slicked Vale of Avalon this weekend? Kelis, that's who. The R&B diva is backstage right now in spotless purple-striped wellies, with her cute young son running around making animal noises and punching a giant wooden cockerell. Not something you get to see at every festival. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the fabled Glastonbury vibe in a nutshell. Rewind an hour, an Kelis brings all the boys to the Pyramid Stage yard with her glamtastic hot-pink ballgown and full brass-section big band. She looks fabulous, but the performance feels a little perfunctory, a knowing retro pastiche of vintage soul rather than the gutsy, lusty, life-or-death immediacy of the real thing. Still, her cover of Nina Simone's "Feeling Good" packs a punch, and the tropical carnival version of "Milkshake" is a vivid reinvention at least. Up against Kelis on the John Peel Stage are Fat White Family, whose profane raggamuffin sleaze-punk racket is currently generating major buzz in hipster media circles. Nothing is more flimsy and insincere than hipster buzz, of course, but this South London collective definitely have something, even if it is simply their hunger to be the next in a long line of vaguely transgressive art-yob rockers, from Flowered Up to Alabama 3 to The Libertines. Judging by their gangly frontman Lias Saudi and his whippet-thin naked torso, the name is clearly ironic. Their embryonic sound is still slouching towards Brixton, waiting to be born, but their slower numbers ooze lascivious Nick Cave menace while the faster songs have some of the caustic Prole Art Threat of vintage Mark E. Smith. Enjoy them before the hipster backlash starts! Stephen Dalton Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim Glastonbury Day 1: Courtney Barnett and Lily Allen Glastonbury Day 1: Elbow Glastonbury Day 1: Arcade Fire Glastonbury Day 2: Midlake Glastonbury Day 2: Robert Plant and Lana Del Ray Glastonbury Day 2: Jack White Glastonbury Day 2: Pixies and Metallica Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani & Sidiki Glastonbury Day 3: Dolly Parton Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers, assorted hippies Glastonbury Day 3: The Black Keys Glastonbury Day 3: Massive Attack

I love the smell of Glastonbury in the morning. It smells like... OK, not quite victory. But not quite defeat either. More like bacon, coffee, marijuana, mud, sweat and beers. And, there is no getting away from it, cow shit... It's Metallica Headline Day at Britain's biggest pop-up city and the weather-based insanity continues. Around midday, yesterday's apocalyptic downpour staged a spectacular comeback show, drenching the festival site all over again. Jokes about the Glastonbury mud are cheap media cliches, but it’s less amusing when you are here among 200,000 people in a valley prone to serious flooding. That’s not funny, it’s a potential humanitarian disaster. Remember Worthy Farm is within squelching distance of the Somerset Levels that suffered horrendous floods earlier this year. All the same, Michael Eavis and his team seem to be dealing with these regular deluges much better than they used to. In 25 years of coming to Glastonbury, I have never seen so many temporary shelters, metal roads and absorbent piles of emergency woodchip deployed all across the site. In previous years, a flooded festival was extremely unpleasant. This year it is merely uncomfortable. I call that progress. Uncut's special Punk Rock award goes to all the punters in wheelchairs and mobility chariots we saw slip-sliding through the mud this morning on the way to see Midlake. "Just in case you came to the wrong stage, our name is Midlake and we come from Denton, Texas." Typically understated, the band's recently promoted frontman Eric Pudhilo saves his modest introduction for the middle of Midlake's lunchtime set on the Other Stage. In an ideal Glastonbury, these easeful Laurel Canyon harmonies and honey-glazed rustic ruminations would be a perfect way to snooze off a Skrillex-induced hangover under blazing blue Somerset skies. Today, they at least provide a sunny Texan antidote to the grim weather. Midlake versus the mud lakes? Let's call it a draw. Stephen Dalton Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim Glastonbury Day 1: Courtney Barnett and Lily Allen Glastonbury Day 1: Elbow Glastonbury Day 1: Arcade Fire Glastonbury Day 2: Kelis and Fat White Family Glastonbury Day 2: Robert Plant and Lana Del Ray Glastonbury Day 2: Jack White Glastonbury Day 2: Pixies and Metallica Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani & Sidiki Glastonbury Day 3: Dolly Parton Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers, assorted hippies Glastonbury Day 3: The Black Keys Glastonbury Day 3: Massive Attack

Most Glastonbury headliners save their triumphant fireworks for the encore, but Arcade Fire make their own rules. Dressed like a renegade gang of Batman villains in sparkly capes and fluorescent facepaint, the Montreal art-rockers arrive in a blaze of pyrotechnics, the opening flourish in a fairly relentless two-hour marathon of high drama and maximalist showmanship. The insistent, slippery, whooshing groove of "Reflektor" opens the show, a reminder that these former acoustic warriors are definitely not in Kansas anymore. Songs from every chapter of the band’s shape-shifting career feature here: the urgent folk-rock blast of "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)", the Glitter Band rumble of Joan of Arc, the Neil Young-ish wistfulness of "The Suburbs". But many tracks have been remixed or streamlined, with snaking Studio 54 basslines and analogue Moog squelch now fitted as standard. Arcade Fire came to party like it’s 1979. You have to reach a long way back in pop history to find a major guitar band pulling off such a persuasive conversion to this New Wave glitterball disco aesthetic. U2 in the early 90s, arguably. Before that, maybe Talking Heads or New Order. There is certainly DNA from all three woven into this set, from echoes of "Temptation" in the whooping undulations of "Afterlife" to shimmering downtown loft-party art-funk like "It’s Never Over (Oh Orpheus)". Peppered with theatrical trimmings including giant puppet heads, mirror-suited spacemen and a sparkly troupe of guest dancers, this show turns the festival into a carnival. But crucially, behind the glam make-up and silver sequins, Win Butler and his cohorts also play with their usual tightly drilled E Street Band gusto, closing with the mighty revivalist fervour of "Wake Up". A wall-to-wall thrill ride with scarcely a weak moment, Glastonbury’s first headline act of 2014 have thrown down the gauntlet with this dazzling Arcade Fireworks display. Your move, Metallica. Stephen Dalton Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim Glastonbury Day 1: Courtney Barnett and Lily Allen Glastonbury Day 1: Elbow Glastonbury Day 2: Midlake Glastonbury Day 2: Kelis and Fat White Family Glastonbury Day 2: Robert Plant and Lana Del Ray Glastonbury Day 2: Jack White Glastonbury Day 2: Pixies and Metallica Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani & Sidiki Glastonbury Day 3: Dolly Parton Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers, assorted hippies Glastonbury Day 3: The Black Keys Glastonbury Day 3: Massive Attack

“Glastonbury! Are you seeing clearly now the rain has gone?” Guy Garvey bounds onto the Pyramid Stage, flooding the festival with avuncular game-show cheer, like that favourite teacher who always managed to get the kids on his side at school. The Elbow singer is beaming from ear to ear, wearing a lumberjack shirt and giving 100,000 people a bear hug. All at the same time. Once the sonic equivalent of a Keep Calm and Carry On poster, Elbow shows have grown louder and weirder in recent years, teasing out their latent undertow of prog rock with richer orchestral, percussion and electronic elements. There are times during this hour-long set when they sound like more down-to-earth northern cousins of Radiohead, veering off their usual sturdy trudge of heart-on-sleeve emotionalism into more choppy and adventurous waters. The chirruping keyboards in "The Birds" add an extra sprinkle of Frippertronic avant-rock, while the blues stomper "Grounds For Divorce" no longer sounds like an atypical novelty, more like a rip-snorting moshpit anthem that Aerosmith might envy. Given half a chance, of course, Elbow can still slip into lumbering mawkishness and misty-eyed nostalgia. The climactic numbers "Sad Captains" and "Lippy Kids" play too much to their comfy-sofa, nice-bloke side. But this is still a perfectly judged Glastonbury performance, full of uplift and grandeur, with Garvey shamelessly working the crowd like a children’s entertainer for grown-ups. Stephen Dalton Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim Glastonbury Day 1: Courtney Barnett and Lily Allen Glastonbury Day 1: Arcade Fire Glastonbury Day 2: Midlake Glastonbury Day 2: Kelis and Fat White Family Glastonbury Day 2: Robert Plant and Lana Del Ray Glastonbury Day 2: Jack White Glastonbury Day 2: Pixies and Metallica Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani & Sidiki Glastonbury Day 3: Dolly Parton Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers, assorted hippies Glastonbury Day 3: The Black Keys Glastonbury Day 3: Massive Attack

In a welcome blast of sunshine between downpours, an excursion to the fringe stages on the southern slopes of the Glastonbury site provides a welcome relief from the liquid mud lakes and crowd crushes around the main arenas. The Arcadia field is full of fantastic bio-mechanical monsters, from fire-breathing dragons to beetle-winged military vehicles, all watched over by a scary-looking science-fiction tripod robot bigger than a house that looks like it just stomped out of a Transformers movie. Or a U2 concert. The Park field is an Edwardian village fete on acid, ablaze with painted train carriages and surreal sand scupltures, plus a fabulous five-storey tower made of rainbow-striped ribbons and topped with a giant wicker dome. The Prisoner meets Edward Lear. Making her Glastonbury debut on the Park stage is Melbourne's Courtney Barnett, the current It Girl of appealingly wonky, sardonic indie-rock. In Australian terms, Barnett is a total dag - dorky and uncool, but with a slightly knowing hipster edge. Casually chugging away on her left-handed guitar, her short set peaks with "Avant Gardener", the greatest Krautrock-grooving, stream-of-sarcasm, one-sided conversational monologue that Jonathan Richman never wrote. Laconic to the max, but hugely endearing. Back on the Pyramid Stage, another former It Girl is making a comeback. "Thank you Glasto!" Lily Allen yells, before catching herself. "Not Glasto, I hate people who say Glasto... it doesn't need to be abbreviated." A small point, but it exposes something about Allen's brittle bravado and contradictory cockiness. Returning to the festival after a five-year sabbatical involving marriage and motherhood, the 29-year-old singer is a vision of hot-pink, high-heeled, defiantly zingy glamour as she twirls around a stage full of giant baby's milk bottles. Pure Pop Art spectacle. But her wooh-yeah mateyness feels a little forced tonight, much like her four-letter (and possibly defamatory) outbursts against FIFA boss Sep Blatter. Allen seems to attract so much media and online hate, it is difficult not to like her for that reason alone. In fairness, "Smile" is still an evergreen Londonista carnival anthem that sets Glastonbury bouncing, and "The Fear" still delivers its sly cargo of sharp feminist critique inside a gorgeous Trojan Horse of sumptuous dream-pop, but the recently relaunched diva is an oddly ambivalent performer these days. Britain’s favourite naughty little sister one minute, wrong-headed controversialist the next, she increasingly falls somewhere between tabloid populist and sharp-witted critic of tabloid populism. Stephen Dalton Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim Glastonbury Day 1: Elbow Glastonbury Day 1: Arcade Fire Glastonbury Day 2: Midlake Glastonbury Day 2: Kelis and Fat White Family Glastonbury Day 2: Robert Plant and Lana Del Ray Glastonbury Day 2: Jack White Glastonbury Day 2: Pixies and Metallica Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani & Sidiki Glastonbury Day 3: Dolly Parton Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers, assorted hippies Glastonbury Day 3: The Black Keys Glastonbury Day 3: Massive Attack

Thunder, lightning and heavy downpours over Glastonbury right now. Deep joy for the 125,000 people already onsite, with more arriving every hour. It seems the gods of rock are angry. And they are not the only ones making a racket. Maybe it is a reaction to sharing a weekend bill with Robert Plant and Metallica, but Friday afternoon is turning into a headbanging riff fest. Normally sedate indie-folk bands are cranking up to 11 and beyond. It might get loud. The first Led Zeppelin cover of the festival so far is "Stairway To Heaven" courtesy of Rodrigo Y Gabriela, who play mid afternoon on the main Pyramid stage. Returning to Glastonbury without the Cuban orchestra backing of their 2012 album collaboration Area 52, the Mexican acoustic folk-metal duo seem a little overwhelmed by the big arena, their normally fiery guitar duels sounding scratchy and thin. Tellingly, they abort the instrumental Zep number midway through and switch to a vocal version of Radiohead's "Creep", which finds a warmer reception with the singalong crowd. In the battle of the evergreen rock anthems, Thom Yorke's successfully trumped Jimmy Page's vaulting arpeggios. The heaviosity continues over on the Other Stage as Band Of Skulls crank out grinding blues-rock riffs sweetened by boy-girl harmonies. It's pretty basic stuff, but just the right kind of energy boost for that mid-afternoon lull at Glastonbury. They peak with "The Devil Takes Care of His Own", which is basically "I Love Rock And Roll" if Joan Jett had been born and raised in Southampton. And there can be no higher praise. Making their second Glastonbury appearance after a dramatic debut last year, when diabetic singer Este almost collapsed onstage, LA sisters Haim also prove surprisingly gnarly and kinetic, peppering their Other Stage set with four-letter banter and raunchy covers. Embracing those Fleetwood Mac comparisons head on, they play a blistering, groin-thrusting version of "Oh Well" and a sultry, booty-shaking take on Beyonce's seduction anthem "XO". Perhaps they are trying a little too hard to overhaul their wholesome image as David Cameron's favourite pastel-shaded soft-rockers, but Haim make a worthy sacrifice to the angry rain gods of rock. This afternoon, they play under stormy skies in Somerset. But tonight, they feast in the great banqueting hall of Valhalla. Stephen Dalton Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth Glastonbury Day 1: Courtney Barnett and Lily Allen Glastonbury Day 1: Elbow Glastonbury Day 1: Arcade Fire Glastonbury Day 2: Midlake Glastonbury Day 2: Kelis and Fat White Family Glastonbury Day 2: Robert Plant and Lana Del Ray Glastonbury Day 2: Jack White Glastonbury Day 2: Pixies and Metallica Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani & Sidiki Glastonbury Day 3: Dolly Parton Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers, assorted hippies Glastonbury Day 3: The Black Keys Glastonbury Day 3: Massive Attack

"Glastonbury!" beams Debbie Harry. "Nowhere else like it!" Just past midday on Friday in the Vale of Avalon, and the world’s largest voluntary refugee camp is already on the move. Even at this early stage of the festival, with sporadic rain and mud underfoot, the Other Stage Arena is rammed to bursting for Blondie. Currently celebrating their 40th anniversary, these New York punk-pop legends have been around almost as long as Glastonbury itself. "We've got some new songs, some old songs and some really, really old songs," Harry jokes. Sure, they creak and trundle more than they used to, but they have earned those stiff joints - Harry turns 69 next week, after all, and still looks fabulous. Absolutely Fabulous, judging by her dance moves. But even Chris Stein's latterday love of blustery blues-rock can not ruin New Wave classic like "Atomic" and "Rapture", the latter morphing into an agreeably incongruous cover of the Beasties' "Fight For Your Right To Party". They even make the sun come out, earning the loudest cheer of the festival so far. Blondie make everything alright. Arriving onsite yesterday evening, the party was already swinging in the Silver Hayes field, a cluster of architecturally elegant tents and flamboyantly decorated stages showcasing mostly DJs and club-friendly acts. New Build, the Hot Chip side project led by Al Doyle and Felix Martin, officially christened the nautical-themed Wow stage with a solid set of heavily percussive, lightly melancholy disco-tronica. They were followed by East India Youth, aka one man band William Doyle, who battled gamely through long delays and sound problems to deliver his agreeable hybrid mash-ups of banging techno and soft-rock power ballads. The crowd was heaving, shame about the technical glitches. Thursday also saw the first edition of the festival’s slender daily newspaper, the quaintly retro-styled Free Press, featuring columns by Billy Bragg and Yoko Ono. Bragg is again hosting his own performance and discussion area here, The Left Field, complete with a tower named in homage to Tony Benn. Old hands may complain that Glastonbury has lost its soul, but you simply do not get this kind of mix at other festivals. Indeed, is hard to imagine any other event where you might find back-to-back tributes to both Tony Benn and Frankie Knuckles. Glastonbury honours its fallen heroes. So that was the first 24 hours in Glastonbury. Here are the edited highlights: Least punk-rock star-spotting story: Arcade Fire spotted at the uber-posh Bath Priory hotel, playing croquet on the manicured lawns. One of them, according to Uncut's reliable sources, was wearing "clown shoes". Finest meat-based pun to wind up the Metallica haters: a Glastonbury breakfast kiosk emblazoned with the slogan “We built this city on bacon rolls.” Number of spurious rumours about Prince/Radiohead/David Bowie playing a secret set over weekend: only 24 so far. But it’s early days yet. More Glastonbury updates to come later. Keep watching this space. Stephen Dalton Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim Glastonbury Day 1: Courtney Barnett and Lily Allen Glastonbury Day 1: Elbow Glastonbury Day 1: Arcade Fire Glastonbury Day 2: Midlake Glastonbury Day 2: Kelis and Fat White Family Glastonbury Day 2: Robert Plant and Lana Del Ray Glastonbury Day 2: Jack White Glastonbury Day 2: Pixies and Metallica Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani & Sidiki Glastonbury Day 3: Dolly Parton Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers, assorted hippies Glastonbury Day 3: The Black Keys Glastonbury Day 3: Massive Attack