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The arrival of V Festival is always bittersweet.

Bitter, in that this is the last festival of the summer. The last time you’ll stand in a field with thirty thousand strangers, hands in the air, dizzy from junk food and sunburn that doesn’t matter because you love everyone and it all sounds so good. Bitter because six months of cold, wintery, festival-less discontent lies ahead.

But it’s also sweet. Really sweet. Knowing that in the next eight hours you will see the latest Mercury Music Prize winner, the bands that wrote Employment and Hot Fuss, indie darlings M83, some hot local bands, Madness, Duffy, Snow Patrol ... the crowd seemed intent on sending the summer into the sunset with a bang.

Walking through the gate the sweet sounds of Tame Impala washed over everyone. Battle hardened from playing every festival that mattered this summer, Tame Impala delivered another flawless set including Skeleton Key and the chugging psychedelia of Half Full Glass of Wine.

With a crowd half the size of the Big Day Out, V Festival organisers opted for a more compact four stage arrangement helped by the fact that the whole venue was licensed and not divided up by fenced areas. Getting between stages was easy and the queues were tolerable. Nokia “angels” wandered the crowd offering everything from icy-poles to photos to massages, and even they seemed to be enjoying the sunshine.

Howling Bells’ lead singer Juanita Stein did her best to coax the seated masses at the main stage into coming closer, but sitting down with beer in the sun was just too comfortable. Living up to their NME reputation, the Howling Bells played a tight, rocking set. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Louis XIV who came across as a poor man’s Jet. And given that Jet are a poor man’s everything else… well, you get the picture.

“Hello. We are The Dough!” yelped the pint sized Olivia Merilahti, lead singer of French art-rockers The Dø. Despite the drummer hitting everything from pots and pans to tin lids and spanners, The Dø was refreshingly melodic. Wearing purple leggings and hooped-earrings, Merilahti was every inch the rock chick and she strutted about the stage to tracks At Last and On My Shoulders. Clashing over on the Green Stage were Garage2V winners Villains of Wilhelm, fronted by a livewire singer who spent most of the set flailing about and cracking onto every girl in the crowd.

Back on the main stage, Welsh blonde-bombshell and Dusty Springfield lookalike Duffy gave it her all. An odd choice for a rock festival, tracks Rockferry and Warwick Avenue went down surprisingly well, but it was Mercy that really got the crowd swinging. “Was it good for you too?” she crooned.

The choice between Elbow and M83 was the hardest of the afternoon. From all reports, M83 were amazing, but it was Elbow that won out on the day. “You’ll see my pale English skin go red by the end of this gig” quipped Elbow’s squinting singer Guy Garvey, as the band eased into Station Approach and Leaders of the Free World. The pacy interplay between percussion and bass is the key to Elbow’s unique sound, most evident on Grounds for Divorce and Newborn. Closing with On A Day Like This, almost the Hey Jude for the new millennium, Elbow’s set was over all too quickly.

A brief wander round the other stages saw The Kills playing a lacklustre set on a dim stage to a small crowd, and Children Collide going off. Back on main stage, kitschy UK ska heroes Madness were here to party, and party they did. As the sun set, classic songs like Welcome To The House of Fun and Our House got the crowd dancing. Even their new reggae-tinged track The Liberty of Norton Folgate got a healthy cheer. Despite not having been to Perth in 23 years, age has certainly not wearied Madness’ live show. Closing with It Must Be Love, Madness might never be back, but they won’t be forgotten.

Oh dear. Half a song in and Kaiser Chiefs singer Ricky Wilson’s voice is gone. Which is a problem, when most of your songs are shouty terrace anthems. Wilson struggled through Everyday I Love You Less and Less and Ruby, but by Na Na Na Na Na he could not sing the chorus. Encouraging the crowd to sing-along, Wilson found some voice later in the set for Never Miss A Beat and I Predict A Riot. Running to the other stage where Snow Patrol was setting up, Wilson was grappled by an unsuspecting security guard who thought that Wilson was a stage invader. Maybe they were playfighting, but the swing Wilson took looked real. Wilson finally rasped his way through set closer Oh My God – not the best night for the Chiefs.

With names of cities scrawling across the giant video wall now flanking the main stage, Snow Patrol appeared bearing schoolboy grins. With so many hit singles to their credit, every song saw the crowd singing louder, as Gary Lightbody urged the crowd to “sing so loud it shifts the Earth into another dimension”. The heart-achingly beautiful How To Be Dead segued into an acoustic version of Run, in which the crowd drowned out Lightbody’s vocals. Whilst a Snow Patrol set rarely yields many surprises, their live sound is tight and the addition of an extra acoustic guitar gives the new songs a lift. Judging by Lightbody’s smile, the closing track’s refrain “I Love This City Tonight!” was truth.

The Killers’ stage setup resembled something more akin to a cruise-ship cabaret lounge than a rock band headlining a festival. Brandon Flowers looked like he’d picked a fight with a fur coat and lost. But despite having traded their – œfast cars and faster girls’ rock sound for gospel-tinged Americana, The Killers were on top of their game and sounded fresher and hungrier than their last visit to our shores. Knowing how to work a crowd, Flowers urged the crowd into massive sing-alongs. The fields of arms swaying in unison was an awesome sight to accompany each song.

After an interruption to break up a fight that erupted in the front row, the set lagged as a string of new material drew a weaker response than older favourites. The now (thankfully) coatless Flowers lead the crowd into Smile Like You Mean It and Human, but most were content to chat during lesser known tracks . The Killers had many aces up their sleeves, and closed their main set with stomping versions of Mr Brightside and These Things That I’ve Done. The band returned to the stage for an encore of Bones and Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine to rapturous applause. When You Were Young brought the curtain down on the V Festival and indeed the season. A fitting song to end it all, really.

Let’s do it all again next summer.

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