The Great Escape Festival has announced its first fifty acts for 2023, including Spotlight Show headliners Maisie Peters and Arlo Parks.
The two lead sets will take place on May 12th & 13th at Brighton Dome Concert Hall, with some of the first fifty acts having already performed at a London showcase last night (November 15th) ahead of their full festival appearances next year.
Maisie Peters is set to lead the 2023 celebrations, offering cuts from her 2021 debut LP, ‘You Signed Up For This’, which Dork’s 4-star review described as, “much of a rollercoaster ride as real life is at this age”. The Sussex singer has followed that up with a string of singles this year, including ‘Cate’s Brother’, ‘Blonde’, ‘Good Enough’, and ‘Not Another Rockstar’. As well as being set to join Ed Sheeran on tour once again, Maisie has also sold out her own UK tour including a headline slot at London’s 02 Brixton Academy.
Having held her first official gig at the festival in 2019, Mercury Prize-winning artist Arlo Parks returns to The Great Escape next year with a formidably versatile discography. She’s had a fairly quiet year since her acclaimed debut, ‘Collapsed In Sunbeams’, dropped last year, with February’s ‘Softly’ landing as her only single release so far, but her live shows continue to prove her talents. Her final show of 2022 was at last week’s Iceland Airwaves festival, on which Dork said, “it’s no small feat to make a cavernous main stage show feel as beautifully intimate as Arlo does”.
Soaring London five-piece The Dinner Party may be yet to release a tune, but they’re already shaping up to be one of the country’s buzziest live acts. Having already sparked interest with their swaggering glam-pop, Dork has described their Neighbourhood Festival appearance as “a preview of how encompassing they are about to become”, with the following Live at Leeds set proving “a breathless, captivating set that leaves the room in awe”.
NYC outfit Been Stellar fuse shoegaze, grunge-rock and dream-pop into one sound with a plethora of tunes that delicately balance noisy appeal and melodic charm. “We have a load of shades of blue, and a load of shades of red; but we want the album to be purple,” guitarist Skyler St. Marx explained in the recent Dork interview feature – with a debut EP in the bag, there’s plenty more to come here.
The list of talent available to see goes on, with goth-meets-indie-pop singer and producer Jessica Winter, hip-hop masterminds Joey Valance & Brae, confessional songwriter Blondshell, & many more artists appearing on The Great Escape’s impressive bill for 2023.
You can view the first fifty acts announcement in full below:
Tickets will be available here from Friday, November 18th.
