NOS Alive review: a festival of contrasting styles
Olivia Rodrigo, Justice and Nine Inch Nails lead the Lisbon event plagued by cancellations but driven by eclecticism
Not everything went right for the 2025 edition of Lisbon’s NOS Alive. The beachside festival – a smaller and less frantic alternative to the Brits favourite that is Barcelona’s Primavera Sound – had to contend with cancellations from two of its big headliners, Kings of Leon and Sam Fender. Those flying out for a weekend of sun then end up leaving a UK heatwave for a comparatively calm and cloudy weekend.
You feel particular pity for the group of around 20 friends milling around the festival site on the Friday afternoon in matching Newcastle United shirts. Presuming they’d be spending their weekend seeing their hero Fender in blistering hot sunshine, instead they are given The Wombats as a replacement, along with the need for a jacket.
Luckily for the Geordies and the other 55,000 in attendance, there is plenty else on offer at this eclectic festival. Thursday night was all about Olivia Rodrigo, who takes the Guts tour that saw us declare her the best headliner at last month’s Glastonbury to the continent. A superb and captivating performer, she’s both a howling rocker and pristine pop star, proving beyond all doubt that she belongs on these stages.
The bustling and sold-out Thursday with Rodrigo is replaced by a comparative ghost town on Friday. Maybe it’s those from the North East staying home with no Sam Fender performance, or a line-up with less of a defined style, but those who do head down to the waterfront are rewarded with another example of why Justice’s current and ongoing world tour is the best around right now.
Biblically loud and with an unparalleled light show, Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay’s current live set sees them riding a new peak and setting the bar for live dance music. In Barry Can’t Swim, they have a younger, hungry counterpart who also excels during his NOS Alive set. The night before the release of his new album Loner, he mixes the punch of dance music with the humanity and warmth of piano chords in a refresh of his live show that will go on to headline All Points East next month.
Other highlights of the weekend come from CMAT, who rides the wave of her unstoppable summer and munches on a pastel de nata from an audience member along the way, and Bright Eyes, who returned in 2022 with live shows led by a concerningly sloppy Conor Oberst. Here, he’s on fine, magnetic form as he leads his band through fired up renditions of ‘Road to Joy’ and a banjo-led ‘First Day of My Life’.
The festival then closes with two titans of modern rock music. Muse – who are here to replace Kings of Leon – show the stark gap in quality between their early work (‘Plug In Baby’ still sounds totally divine) and the diminishing returns of recent albums, though do perform to the biggest crowd of the weekend.
Nine Inch Nails, meanwhile, feel like they will never go out of style. With a moody and superb light show to rival Justice’s from the previous night, the band scythe their way through a diverse and always-excellent catalogue. Throughout the set, a handheld camera swirls around the stage, following Trent Reznor as he darts frantically back and forth. Reznor proves that he is still the furious, fabulous star of the show even as he enters his sixties, wrapping up a festival that doesn’t go down quite as expected, but always has a surprise around the corner.