Dot to Dot Festival 2026 returns to the greatest venues in Nottingham
The multi-venue festival remains one of the best of its kind, also taking place in Bristol.
Photo: Eliza McLamb by Scott Seabridge
Nottingham was an absolute cauldron of joy this bank holiday weekend as Dot to Dot festival rolled back into town. A yearly celebration of the best new and upcoming music, Dot to Dot is every music fan’s dream. Taking place on the bank holiday Sunday, the festival is rooted in the city centre and is split across a variety of the city’s best venues like Rock City, Rescue Rooms, The Bodega and plenty more. Everywhere you looked, there was someone exciting playing, and there was enough of an eclectic mix to truly please everybody.
Part of what makes the festival so special is the tight thirty-minute sets for the vast majority of the acts. Keeping the sets relatively short and snappy kept the energy levels high and meant that the excitement levels, on stage and off stage, were always at an absolute peak. There wasn’t a single dull minute in the day. If anything, the day was too packed with great music that it was impossible to catch everything you wanted to see. It is a testament to the strength of the lineup put together that I wasn’t able to catch the likes of Fcukers, Ratboys, Adult DVD, ugly ozo, HUNNY BUZZ, Alice Costelloe and Mandy, Indiana and still ended up having an absolutely perfect day.
First up was a trip to The Bodega for Derbyshire rockers People Laughing. It was almost a shame to head inside with the sun and the festival bringing the entire city together, but People Laughing’s uplifting choruses and high energy was more than worth it. Musically, the band feels like a post-punk incarnation of Oasis. They have all the distorted energy and rhythmic drive of post punk but with the sunshine-inspired massive choruses of the best Britpop bands of the ‘90s.
Latest single Suffocate sounds absolutely massive, and its chorus gets burned into your brain just as quickly as you’ve heard it for the first time. Towards the end of the set, the band showed off the two sides of their sound with Ugly Man and One Thing. Ugly Man recalls the driving, volatile energy of The Fall, whereas debut single One Thing is another song packed with a massive singalong chorus. People Laughing are at their best when they mix their tense, driving energy with big, bombastic choruses. If Suffocate is anything to go by, then we’re going to be hearing plenty more from them in the near future.
Speaking of massive choruses, it was straight over to Rock City for Lucia & The Best Boys’ hotly anticipated early set. The band kicked off in bombastic fashion with gothic anthem So Sweet I Could Die. The band’s synth-driven songs are sung with an operatic grandeur and are absolutely dripping in melodramatic melodies. The six-piece Glasgow-based band played a handful of songs from their upcoming record, Picking Petals, with recent singles You Look Like Someone In Love and Lonely Girl amongst the standouts.
Both singles sound absolutely huge and were just made to be played on big stages to big crowds like this. They closed out their set with a slower, moodier new song that sounded absolutely haunting but would perhaps have been better served by being played slightly earlier to allow for one of the big singles to close out the show. Regardless, anticipation for Picking Petals remains high and, with a longer set to really stretch out, Lucia & The Best Boys could really be a force to be reckoned with.
Thankfully, the air conditioning at Rock City was working on overdrive, not just because of the Sunday heatwave but because Rocket lit the stage on absolute fire. The young Los Angeles punk band are an absolute riot live. The fuzz and thunder of their guitars, bass and drums congeal into one fat, frantic mass before they put their trademark sugary sweet choruses on top.
They are an incredibly tight four-piece with a collection of even tighter songs. Take Your Aim packed an almighty sonic punch right after they hit us with the bubble gum sweetness of One Million Reasons. For a band so young, they’ve already mastered the art of putting together a great collection of punk songs that are energetic enough to get a crowd worked up but then memorable enough to get caught in people’s heads long after the show finishes. The set closed out with a riotous hurricane of wailing guitars and crashing drums. Rocket have everything: catchy choruses, expertly written no-nonsense songs and mountains of manic, excited energy.
It was then downstairs to the Black Cherry Lounge, Rock City’s smallest room. Designed to look like a classic old-style jazz lounge, the venue felt more like an urban skate park as Melanie Baker brought all their punk energy to the stage. Baker’s songs are frenetic and restless, and her performance is full of rough and jagged edges.
Their music is a whirlwind as melodies go flying around the place in all directions. It sounds like a panic attack in motion. They are dripping in chaos and noise, and the gleeful smile on Baker and their entire band’s faces are utterly infectious.
Songs like Bored and HAHA! sounds like someone threw some pop songs in a blender, cranked it up to overdrive and let them spill out all over the place in wild, scrappy abandon. Baker commented about how difficult it is to be a touring musician in the current climate, and it’s a testament again to Dot to Dot for giving these artists the opportunities to showcase their music on stages like this to a bunch of new faces. Set closer AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!! absolutely brought the house down, and just goes to show that it’s performances like this that make live music so worth it in the first place.
As ever, throughout the entire day, Rock City proved why it is the crown jewel in the UK’s live music crown. Each room feels like its own distinct, unique venue. It isn’t possible to have a bad view in any of them, and the sound is always great, no matter where you are. The festival in general was incredibly well managed, but Rock City in particular operated incredibly smoothly. Through excellent staffing and really well thought-out timetabling, the venue never felt too busy, and the flow of people was always seamlessly managed. It can easily go unnoticed, but without the care and attention put into managing things like this, the festival wouldn’t be half as much of a success as it was.
After a brief break to catch some air and some food, it was time to head back over to The Bodega for North Carolina singer-songwriter Eliza McLamb. On a day absolutely overflowing with incredible songs, I don’t think I heard a single one that got me quite as amped up as McLamb’s Mythologize Me. It’s the sort of huge, guitar-driven pop anthem that Taylor Swift stopped writing after Red, but that floods of songwriters have tried to attempt on a near-yearly basis ever since. Nobody is quite able to write songs in this style as tightly or with as much spirit as McLamb.
On stage, her confidence belies the anxiety within a lot of her lyrics, and it’s hard to resist a huge smile on your face hearing her and her wonderfully tight band play these songs. Like The Boys is another highlight, but really, all the songs played from her latest album, A Good Story, sounded fantastic. After the show, McLamb was selling t-shirts out of a box to a large queue of fans, and the sight of artists forming impromptu merch stands at the back of venues was not uncommon throughout the day. Perhaps having a dedicated space for merch, either at each venue or one consolidated stand elsewhere in the city, would help artists make the most out of their newly acquired fans and maximise those ever more important merch sales.
I must admit that I had never listened to NewDad before I saw them back at Rock City that evening. They had been on my radar, but I had never quite had the chance to sit down and play through their albums or catch them live. Dot to Dot was a perfect opportunity for discovery, and they certainly didn’t disappoint. Their ethereal Slowdive-inspired vocals mixed with the Joy Division-style driving rhythms pulled you in and refused to let go.
They sound like the sort of band that would be playing in The Roadhouse during the third season of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. It was the busiest Rock City had been all day, and it wasn’t hard to see why. They had the crowd in the palm of their hands. They knew when to turn things up and exactly when to dial things down. If you’re into shoegaze, they really should be your next favourite band. They certainly are mine.
Completing the Rock City hattrick, it was time to head down to Beta for Los Angeles alt-rockers Jawdropped. The band looked like they’d catapulted straight out of a ‘90s teen movie with their nonchalant energy and twin Thunderbird guitars. New single Monday was tons of fun with its shared vocals between the two lead singers. The swapping of vocals between members makes each song feel so alive and spontaneous.
As the band kept yelling ‘fuck it!’ with a vengeance, it was clear that everyone inside Beta was having tons of fun, band and audience alike. Jawdropped are a throwback to when alternative rock had a snarly attitude but wasn’t too cool to have songs that are simply irresistibly catchy. They have big fat chords, a powerhouse drummer, incredible hooky melodies and absolutely restless tambourine playing thrown on top to boot. What’s not to love? The band mentioned that they were mostly playing new songs. Their next batch of recordings is definitely not one to be missed.
There was just enough time after Jawdropped to catch some of Lambrini Girls’ hotly anticipated headlining set inside Rock City before Eaves Wilder closed out the Beta stage downstairs. It took less than thirty seconds for Rock City to transform into one mountainous mosh pit as Lambrini Girls took to the stage with enough power and vengeance to fuel a large aircraft. It certainly felt like they were flying as they rifled through their songs with more righteous power and energy than I think I’ve seen from any other live act in years.
They are a force to be reckoned with live, and they are absolutely not to be missed if they ever come to your town. They incited the crowd into bloody murder before they had even played a single note. Dipping out of their set early felt like an absolute crime.
After catching most of Eave Wilder’s set downstairs, I was able to get back in to see the band putting together what they claimed to be ‘Rock City’s biggest mosh pit ever’. I certainly wouldn’t be arguing with that. Punk never went away, but the sprawling mass of bodies inside Rock City showed that Lambrini Girls are intent on making sure it’s never anything other than standing front and centre, loud and defiantly proud.
Unfortunately, it was clear from watching Eaves Wilder set up that there were some technical issues going on for what seemed like the first time in the day. Their set started a bit late, and the band members seemed to be trying to fix things after each song. It was a real shame because Wilder’s debut album, Little Miss Sunshine, is one of my favourites of the year so far and is absolutely bursting with great songs. There appeared to be an issue with getting the backing tracks working, and, in truth, Wilder’s band is so good that they don’t really need to use backing tracks compiled of background vocals and textural sounds anyway.
The band kicked into a triumphant Just Say No! before a fantastic sounding Daisy Chain Reaction. Hurricane Girl is another incredibly written song that struggled to take off live, as it seemed tethered to the backing track. Great Plains followed with its big, sing-along chorus. It was a shame their set got disrupted but, one thing is certainly clear: Wilder has a great band and an even better collection of songs. It certainly won’t be the last time I see her live, that’s for sure.
Closing out the day, for me at least, was the incredible ‘90s alternative rock-inspired Opal Mag at The Bodega bar. Taking influence from the likes of Mazzy Star and The Smashing Pumpkins, the band have a small but incredibly potent collection of songs. The band were set up and crammed into what looked like the world’s smallest stage, and the bar audience were initially quite noisy. It didn’t take long for Opal Mag to win everybody over.
These are songs that are just too good to be ignored and too infectious not to allow yourself to get caught up in. World End, the recent single from her upcoming EP, Goodbye Lavander, is an infectious slice of dream pop that is packed with everything that makes a pop song so fun in the first place: loud guitars, crashing drums, shiny synths, sugar sweet choruses, heavenly harmonies and tons of raucous, fervent energy. If you don’t fall for Opal Mag and their swirling, dreamy, infectious anthems, then you just aren’t paying close enough attention.
And just like that, another incredible edition of Dot to Dot reached its conclusion. I got to catch ten bands in eight hours, and I could easily make a case for each and every one of them being my favourite for a catalogue of different reasons. The atmosphere inside and outside of the venues was idyllic, and it really was wonderful to just get caught up in the exciting whirlwind of joy that only live music can produce.
In a time when touring is difficult and being in a band is becoming ever more challenging and expensive, it’s especially important that we don’t take artists for granted. Dot to Dot is a beaming beacon of light in an increasingly dark climate, championing the best new music and giving fans and artists the platforms to connect and find each other when they need it most. I’m already counting down to the days until next year.
