If you’ve been sleeping on Portishead for the past two decades then maybe you’re not aware that the Bristol bunch aren’t renowned for being the most cheery lot. Apparently that chilly disposition extends beyond their elegantly detached trip-hop and into their outlook on the glut of big festivals overseas which the band have been booked for over the European summer with band leader Geoff Barrows firing off a few piercing verbal attacks the other week. We’d say he’s shitting where he’s eating but he probably doesn’t care.

In the interview with Pitchfork Barrows makes his discomfort with the big festivals quite clear when he bemoaned his band’s presence at some “bullshit” festivals in the Northern Hemisphere.

“You end up playing these festivals, and people there are just taking photographs with their friends to take it off their life-experience list. It’s not really about music,” Barrows explained before naming a few acts that Portishead have shared bills with that have really rankled him. “Playing next to Coldplay, with their water cannons or fucking fireworks or whatever the fuck it is. Come on. Fuck that. Or Bruno Mars, man. I’ve just been speaking to Mogwai about it. You just play with some fucking mental stuff. You just go, ‘How the fuck did we get on the same bill as him?’ And then you realize that if you’re playing the same bill as those people, then it’s the right festival for them and the wrong festival for you. You should move. It’s not them.”

Luckily for Barrows he and Portishead should be in good company come November when the newly founded Harvest Festival debuts in Australia with The Flaming Lips, Death In Vegas, PVT and more on the inaugural Harvest lineup.