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

For anyone with even a passing familiarity with the work of Belle and Sebastian songwriter Stuart Murdoch, God Help The Girl – his debut as a writer and director – will hold few real surprises. The action takes place in a rarefied version of Glasgow, peopled by remorseful outcasts and socially awkward geniuses. The focus is on a pretty but troubled girl and a hopelessly love struck boy. Spectacles, berets, charity shops, bicycles and mix tapes all figure highly, while characters possess a kind of unaffected sweetness as they dream, read, walk, discuss music and sing – sing – SING! As you may have gathered, God Help The Girl is essentially Murdoch’s highly singular vision translated from song to screen: a whimsically nostalgic musical fantasy inhabited by pale, serious boys and girls in bobs and polo necks. In fact, God Help The Girl has had been an ongoing side-project for Murdoch for several yearns now, generating several singles and, in 2009, an album before shooting began in 2012 on this Kickstarter-funded feature. The film itself strives for the light-hearted mood of Bill Forsyth but, as Murdoch’s protagonists wander dreamily round Glasgow like kids on a perpetual school holiday, it more closely resembles – tonally, at least – an updated take on something like The Swish Of The Curtain, where a group of plucky children enjoy a spot of amateur dramatics. Indeed, Murdoch’s film features a canoe trip along the Forth and Clyde canal that calls to mind another piece of post-WW1 children’s fiction, Swallows And Amazons. The film centres on Eve (Emily Browning), a resident in a mental health unit who is undergoing treatment for anorexia. She is prone to escaping, however, and one night at the Barrowlands she meets James (Olly Alexander), singer with a band, King James The Sixth Of Scotland, who is instantly, inexorably smitten. Pencil-thin and bespectacled, with a self confessed “constitution of an abandoned rabbit”, James improbably works as a lifeguard at the university swimming baths. The two click and, along with Cassie (Skins' Hannah Murray), a rich girl James is giving music lessons to, the three decide to form a band. In the bed-sits and bohemian cafés of Glasgow, Murdoch’s twee trio argue about band names (they settle on God Help The Girl) or whether they need a drummer, print flyers, and go about their business preparing for The Big Gig. There’s something faintly strange about a film set in Glasgow where everyone speaks in polished middle-class English accents (Cassie is English; James is Scottish born but has lived in England all his life; Eve is an Australian); the only time we hear dialectical Glaswegian spoken is when the three are briefly pestered by some lads who take a shine to Cassie. Snobbishly, James describes Murdoch’s adopted hometown as “a Victorian theme park run by neds”. Is this Murdoch’s own opinion? One hopes not, of course, but it’s telling that the action in God Help The Girl takes place in a hermetic environment that could easily be transposed to any city where pensive, arty types can take shelter in cafés and bookshops away from the great unwashed masses. In many respects, God Help The Girl is the least Scottish film I can think of: Forsyth aside, Murdoch’s reference points appear to be Jacques Demy or Truffaut, Pennies From Heaven and Sixties’ British pop musicals as well as the giddy thrills of Nesbit, Blyton et al. Whether or not you like God Help The Girl inevitably depends on whether you’re prepared to commit to Murdoch’s vision. The songs themselves are predictably lovely - it’s difficult not to be swept along by them - but his three leads are, by turns, endearing and infuriating. As an iteration of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope, Eve alternates between neurotic, capricious and winsome. Needless to say, Murdoch’s camera adores her, framing her wide eyes and bob like an infatuated teenager. It’s a questionable decision, I think, to give one character a serious eating disorder and then suggest that singing some pretty songs can alleviate it. Murdoch also struggles to fill the run time - close to two hours, when 90 minutes would have been punchier - which is partly down to the fact the film lacks much in the way of dramatic incident. There is no crisis to avert: no rival bands intent on derailing the band’s musical vision, no hostile landlord to evict them, no trust fund about to be cut off. No struggle, no grit. But I suspect Murdoch isn’t particularly concerned with the real world: he is warm and sincere where his characters are concerned and you could reasonably assume that it is the specific detail of their lives he is more interested in than any bigger picture stuff. You can see it in the way the camera closes in on Eve’s handwriting on the label of a home-made cassette, or the lettering on a band flyer and the books his characters are reading. These are what count in Murdoch’s universe: not the more mundane business of who’s paying the rent. “No one ever cried at a Bowie song,” James says at one point, and you suspect Murdoch’s characters would rather live or die by a point like that than anything else. God Help The Girl opens in August 2014