"I wish that bubbles could be part of the weather." The label flaps in the wind, tied to a tree with hundreds of other labels bearing wishes. It sums up the whimsy of Green Man, and this year that wish has come true; the sky is filled with bubbles rather than rain, the ground is dry, and there's no mud (but still people wear wellies, as if waiting for a quagmire that never materialises). The great big orange blob in the sky has got his hat and shades on and he's coming out to play...

This is a special festival. The venue - the beautiful Glanusk Park Estate near Crickhowell in Wales - adds to the fairytale sense of charm; it's the only festival I can think of where the main stage sits beneath the silent, dramatic backdrop of a mountain. But it isn't just about the setting and this is also an event into which the organisers put great effort; you could of course say that about many festivals but every time I visit Green Man I get the sense that a lot of careful thought has gone into the line-up, the amenities (some wonderful real ales and ciders in a new courtyard bar this year) and the tiny little details. Like the temporary paths that were put down near the entrance to the arena, obviously in anticipation of the mudbath that didn't happen - it got very swampy there last year, and had it been similarly wet in 09, this would have helped enormously.

Green Man keeps getting bigger and last year, an increased capacity meant that there were one or two bottlenecks around the site during busy periods. This time around they changed the layout, moving some of the smaller stages around, and it made a real difference. It's rather dull to harp on about logistics but when you've experienced the war of attrition that big events like Glastonbury can sometimes turn into, this sort of thing makes a difference.

Your correspondents arrive on Thursday - campsite already noticeably busy - and pitch in the rain, a not particularly fun experience but this does turn out to be the worst of the weather, with hardly any proper rain for the rest of the weekend.

Not all of the site is open yet but the food stalls and most of the bars are, so we wander around in the drizzle, fill up on veggie curry at the Thali Cafe and enjoy a couple of cloudy ciders in the bars before hading to Chai Wallahs. It has a large tent - a stage, really - new for this year, serving various teas as well as food and hot alcoholic drinks. There are DJs and a hookah smoking area; throughout the weekend this proves a very popular part of the site. And it's a good place to round off the first night, brandy chais in hand, mulling over the programme.

Friday 

After a few feisty showers in the morning, the sun's out. People stumble out of tents as if stunned by the brightness and begin to wander about, drinking coffee, reading papers and eating toast. Green Poll winners We Aeronauts open proceedings on the main stage, followed by 6 Day Riot, whose bright, breezy folk seems to fit the weather and the gentle pace of the slowly awakening festival.

Over in Einstein's Garden, there is science busking and a workshop where people learn to make yurts. Although not exclusively for children, this area - with its interactive shows and things to make and do - is very popular with the little folk, and it is a relaxing, interesting new space for 2009. Twisted Ear wanders over to the Science Tent in another part of the estate to watch It's Only Water ... Or Is It?, a show about the properties of water.

The line-up in the Literature Tent is exciting and varied this year, with quite a few big names. Sci-fi writer Alastair Reynolds talks about the pressures of signing a £1m, 10-book deal and reads a short story before Keith Allen takes to the stage to perform extracts from Two Pikeys On A Minicruise, his spoken-word album. There are a lot of people in to watch, and it starts out interesting, but after a while begins to feel a little self-indulgent and, well, rambling.

Later on in the evening on the Far Out Stage, san Francisco's Wooden Shjips are ragged and raucous, playing their trance-like shimmer-rock. Twisted Ear leaves the tent happy but disoriented and wondering whether its hands are actually melting...

Same venue, different dimension. Keiran Hebden is pretty much a Green Man perennial (albeit in numerous guises) and it's for that very reason that it's been a while since last hearing something from Four Tet. Last time out he was nudging his seasonal downtempo hip-hop ever closer towards euphoric, club-inspired dynamics. Even so, the staples were still evident: no matter which direction taken, nor which genre lilypad hopped onto, those rattling beats, that twitching timbre, the glitchy melodies and those bloody wind chimes could only come from the hand of Hebden.

So it's something of a surprise, a delightful surprise in fact, that with this new material, he's divested himself of the superfluous dressing and worked up something streamlined, something packed with vim, something to the point. Yep, on tonight's evidence Four Tet has spent the summer in Ibiza and come back with straw donkey under his arm and White Island house smile anthems vibrating through his brain.

Over in the Comedy Tent is Josie Long and her endearing childlike mix of innocence and self-righteousness: there's that absolute and unswerving belief in everything she thinks being normal and right, when in reality much of this couldn't be further from the truth. That, my friends, like Athlete's new 'dance' single, is where comedy's leylines can be found. One suspects she's a consummate people watcher and the devil - or rather the devil's belly laughs - are all in the details, the minutae and idiosyncracies.

In a way she's quite like Fearne Cotton, albeit with Kathy Burke's physique and a haircut courtesy of dad: energetic, rambling, a serial dropper of words like "Totally!" and "Honest!" like confetti. Only Long is all accidental charm and innocent spirit and not a vacuous shit-preacher, meaning that despite some bum opinion (dissing Dave Lamb!?) we're always on her side. The Cotton comparison may be construed as a slight, but it's not. Honest.

Animal Collective are a bit of a Marmite band. I - Beck - don't get them. Mark does. One of his favourite bands, in fact. So I'll leave it to him to tell you about their set, but not without first saying I don't mind admitting that I was baffled and frustrated by the lack of coherence, the rambling and the loose collection of sounds that, to me, sounded just like that - sounds. You could've stuck my four-year-old nephew on the stage and I don't think his efforts would have sounded too dissimilar to the majority of what Animal Collective played. The weird thing is I've seen them before and quite enjoyed it - they seemed to have more songs that time - and I do think that Brothersport, which they closed their set with, is a quite lovely cacophony, but most of what they did on the main stage left me cold. I clearly wasn't the only one as there are a lot of people that leave during the show, and it's perhaps telling that Animal Collective are the only one of three Main Stage headliners that don't do an encore.

The brickbats above (juvenile, formless, no songs/just noise,) along with the bouquets (inventive, groundbreaking, Beach Boy harmonics,) are now so ingrained in any Animal Collective critical commentary that they leap over the cliché-border patrol and into the no-man's land of 'obselete'. So let's discuss what happened tonight: a course of events that would be adequately described as strangely familiar. The commonplace, which was once quite alien to Animal Collective, is that it's the same set they've played for a while and is begining to reek of over-familiarity: heavily slanted to the bass-peppered pop-soundscapes of Merriweather Post Pavilion; neo-reassemblage of Slippi; Fireworks casting its dreamy drones to unspoilt far-reaching corners. Even the sole new tune's (What Would I Want Sky) loop-heavy proto-skank has been a tour staple for much of 2009.

It was also expected that, like Joanna Newsom at the same festival two years prior, the band would divide more than they would conquer. Set highlight Daily Routine - Panda Bear's sublime hymn to God (and his daughter) in a Kompakt cathedral - is so far out of time and out of step with much of Green Man's surroundings that it's little surprise that calls of disgust ("Rubbish!") and disenchantment abound. With that, it's hats off to Animal Collective to agree to walk into such a shitstorm, and to the organisers to invite the Baltimore convention confounders in the first place. The awkwardness, and subsequent missteps, on the back of taking the headlining slot cannot, though, be papered over or easily explained. Perhaps (or because of) nerves, perhaps due to (lack of) audience appreciation the band certainly play within themselves betraying their usual musical self-assurance: the soundtrack is as widescreen as ever but the personality to amplify and project it is sadly missing.

Set closer Brothersport sees the band disappear within the Main Stage's shadows, only to be upstaged by a two-step dancing, flag waving interloper - not something usually associated with Animal Collective and difficult to ascertain whether they endorsed it, or were embarassed by it. The suspicion is the latter. One thing is certain on the evidence of this headlining display, at least, is that whilst Animal Collective's current mainstream ambitions may be a step too far, they will always stay one step ahead.        

Saturday 

The day dawns sunny and - dare we say it? - quite hot. People sport an odd mix of flip-flops and wellies (still no mud) and Twisted Ear heads to Konstam, Urban Chef Ollie Rowe's on-site restaurant, for a spot of breakfast (very nice, meeting the high expectations set by last night's lovely rabbit casserole from the same venue). And then it's time to get all literary again.

Punky firebrand John Robb is despatched to Green Man's Literature Tent to sing, shout and bark the praises of Manchester's musical heritage. The Blackpool-born former NME writer and Goldblade front man spitballs passion about the myths (escalating attendance records of the epoch-making Sex Pistols gig at the city's Lower Free Trade Hall gig) and the oft-overlooked (Howard Devoto and Morrissey muse Ludus). His enthusiasm is infectious and the crowd would probably sit and ask questions all day if allowed, but there's more on in this tent and not enough time.

You can always find James Yorkston somewhere at Green Man, and although he's not performing solo this year he is appearing in various other guises, one of which is in the Literature Tent alongside Rob Young and novelist Richard Milward. They read extracts from pieces they have written for Loops, a new journal of music writing that's the result of a collaboration between Domino Records and Faber & Faber. Yorkston reads from Perfect Button Drumming, a tour journal; Young  contributes Hearken to the Witches Rune, an essay about folk heroes Dave and Toni Arthur; and Richard Milward reads Drugby Union, his essay about Spacemen 3. The three answer questions before signing copies of the journal, which will be out twice a year.

Bob Dylan expert Clinton Heylin has, quite amazingly, chronicled every song Dylan has recorded, and written about each one in chronological order in two books - Revolution in the Air and a second book still in development. He reads extracts from both this afternoon alongside clips from the songs he talks about. A large crowd listens intently and asks questions; Heylin is fascinating and likeable, very modest for a man who has completed such a huge task.

Closing the literature on Saturday are Joe Boyd & Robyn Hitchcock. The former is like the musical equivalent of Forrest Gump - not a crew-cutted simpleton but someone who, through nous rather than fortune, has had a guiding hand in many of (music) history's defining moments. As a student he crossed paths with Dylan; helped steer Nick Drake as A&R man for Electra and was also the catalyst in the formative years of Pink Floyd and Fairport Convention. It's from this back catalogue of anecdotes, compiled in his book White Bicycles, that Boyd reads from.

Bolstered by the musical backing of Robyn Hitchcock, he has (almost) the perfect context. Pitching Boyd's memories of Syd Barrett, Drake and The Incredible String Band, Hitchcock sings them all; with monstrously affected accents, snake-hipped wiggling and constant flicking of his shock of grey hair, he's the distilled essence of Hunky Dory-era Bowie and a one-man Stars in Their Eyes cut.

Elsewhere...

Must be something they put in the Baltimore water system. Beach House, like their fellow townsfolk Animal Collective, are in their element when testing the mettle and playing in the gaps of traditional song structures. Theirs is not the fitful kalaedescopic melodic collision of AC, but this three-piece on the Far Out Stage are the orchestrators of slow-burning, meditative meanderings. Their set up is simple but sonorously devastating, revolving around Alex Scally's reverb-smeared, ringing guitar and the intoxicating vocal clouds of Victoria Legrand, it is richly textured yet simply layered, dream pop anchored in yesteryear.

Every year there is always one band that takes people by surprise and captures the collective Green Man imagination. In 2009 that band is Grizzly Bear. Riding high on the crest of a wave with the success of critically-acclaimed third album Veckatimest, they ooze sophistication, class and beauty with their intricate, harmonic chamber pop. It feels like one of the performances of the weekend, one of the sets everyone will talk about later. And the more rapturously they are received, the more they seem to flourish - it's one of those special festival moments. Legrand also joins them on the Main Stage, singing the spiralling Two Weeks part-way through the set, which also features the antique Motown heights of The Knife, and the Radiohead-in-waiting wonder of While You Wait For The Others. People will debate the merits or otherwise of various sets of the weekend but this won't be one of them: everybody loves it and the band is full of self-effacing, genuine gratitude.

It's time for dinner by the time Bon Iver takes to the stage (pie, if you are interested. Pie with cheese in it, and beef. Very nice. Thank you). He's quite far away and we can't really see him - it's nice that Green Man has no video screens, actually, because it stops it feeling like some kind of enormodome rock concert. Anyway, as we can't actually see him we imagine that he's emerged straight from the hills with a racoon on his head, chewing the hind leg off a Black Mountain sheep and crying because his woman's bogged off. He does have an amazing voice, though. And he does that one off the telly that everyone knows. Or is that Band of Foxes? Oh, sorry.

Jarvis. Oh, Jarv: national treasure, British institution. It's debatable how many amongst the crowd are familiar with his solo material, but as he is a true performer, a man with charisma by the bucketload, this doesn't matter. He throws candy to the crowd at the start of the set, sings songs about romance in paleontology museums and doesn't do Disco 2000 or Common People. But he sort of gets away with it because he's charmed the crowd (not just with the lollipops) and, with his slinky, high-kicking stage moves, he knows how to entertain. 

After hours, Twisted Ear heads to the Far Out Tent, where people dance badly (still in wellies - they must be habit forming) to psychedelic grooves from Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve.

Sunday

Sunday morning and it's still sunny. Quite hot, even. What's going on? Have they run out of 50ps for the rain meter? Twisted Ear has breakfast alongside Jarvis at Konstam, wanders around the site and doesn't mind when a strange sort of rain starts to fall, on and off. Y'see it's more like wet air, and in the hot sun it's actually quite pleasant. And no, it doesn't get muddy, and people do not run for cover. But they are still in wellies. How strange...

We have spent a fair amount of time in Green Man's Literature Tent this year, which is testament to the quality of its line-up. Sunday afternoon sees Jeremy Dyson, the non-performing and oft-forgotten 'fourth man' of the League of Gentlemen, who reads from his recent book of short stories, The Cranes That Build The Cranes, before answering a few questions from the audience. The tale he tells is Out of Bounds - a typically dark, ghostly story about young boys exploring the eerie cellars of a public school. There is something a little bit Roald Dahl about what Dyson does - a comparison he himself acknowledges - and it's not at all surprising to see a large queue forming at the end of his slot for people who want to buy the book.

In the Far Out Tent, James Yorkston, Kenny Anderson (King Creosote) and Johnny Lynch (aka The Pictish Trail) perform as the Three Craws, singing (mostly) songs by other Fence Collective artists and having a right old knees up. It is hard to tell who enjoys it the most, the crowd or those on stage - great fun. It's not difficult to see why these folk, in their various guises, get invited back year after year.

The Yellow Moon Band is Jo Bartlett and Danny Hagan of It's Jo and Danny - founders of Green Man - together with guitarist Rudy Carroll and Mathew Priest of Jamie Oliver-endorsed Britpoppers Dodgy. Their instrumental, psychedelic folk rock signals the start of the closing trio of bands in the Far Out Tent and is lapped up by an appreciative crowd.

The penultimate band on the Main Stage is Dirty Three. Rent-a-gob frontman (although he isn't really, since they're instrumental) is Bad Seeds violinist and multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis. Like Max Ramsay and Sir Les Patterson, he is your archetypal cantankerous Aussie; his bellicose belligerence is deployed to scattergun effect, raining down invective on the audience, himself, his band and - justifiably - Sting. He says he is "glad to be amongst the good people of Scotland" and of course the crowd love him for it. His banter belies his classical training - he is a fine musician doing all sorts of things with a violin on stage, wrenching all manner of sounds, navigating the trio through symphonies which are alternately melancholic, moving, unhinged and combustible - and always hypnotic. He doesn't have much to say about the Ashes, though.

Potted history time: Humanoid release Stakker Humanoid in 1988, a nascent classic of the acid house order; in 1991 electronic trailblazers Future Sound of London despatch Papua New Guinea, a glistening mirage of ethno-ambient house; FSOL then embark on a series of groundbreaking multimedia voyages of music and video collage and agorophobic touring from within their own studio via ISDN. Humanoid and FSOL comprised of Brian Dougans and Gary Cobain and for this early work they were - quite rightly - much heralded as maverick visionaries. 2009, and time hasn't been kind to Cobain and Dougan.

Their sabbatical away from the electronic front line has seen them re-emerge from this stasis as the exotically named Amorphous Androgynous. On tonight's live showing it seems that this extended hibernation has been spent solely in the confines of a hemp-scented bivouac with only a Hair the Musical soundtrack cd and the long-forgotten Charles Manson-edited edition of Vogue for nourishment. This is just awful fayre: every tired psychedelic cliché from long hair and smocks to beards and sandals is wrapped in the type of retro musical approximations that should be drowned at birth. At least eight-strong Amorphous Androgynous throw resource and effort into meekly retracing the steps of a four-decade old soundtrack, replicating notes and nuance without a glimmer of irony.  This is both painful and ghastly, and were it soul and funk as opposed to ill-founded hippy hippy shakes this band would be known as Jamiroquai. Forget ISDN, these tired spoils are both virtual and, sadly, a reality.

Is there a circuit-working band today with such an encylopaedic yet bum-note defying back catalogue than Wilco? My Morning Jacket, with their wild and hirsute endeavours, maybe. Yet Wilco's performances always generate what dyed-in-the-wool punks might describe as a horror show: they are, to a man (all six of them), technically gifted and consumate players. All of this - stellar track record and frighteningly good playing - rolls from the main stage speakers tonight. Fans subscribe to the notion that the band's sharpest moments revloved around the eclectic twin planets of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost is Born, but this evening the magnetic pull of their spectacle is very much the overlooked Sky Blue Sky. True, these songs are more sedate, but no less intricate and because of it and Wilco, as headliners, create a welcoming, all-encompassing warmth from their playing and disciplined passion, much in the same way as the North American demi-gods The Band. Tracks like You Are My Face unfurl and flourish, twisting gently between the seasonal axis of springtime harmonies and beguiling twilight melodies. Tonight's performance is rounded out with the multi-denoument explosions of Spiders (Kidsmoke) - complete with Queen-inspired clap-a-long - and the duelling axe razzle dazzle boogie of Hoodoo Voodoo: polar opposites in the Wilco canon underlining the band's ambition and adroitness in equal measure.

After Wilco finish, around midnight, a crowd has swelled at the Green Man sculpture behind Chai Wallahs, now fenced off with metal barriers. Word has spread around the festival site that it will be burned at the close of the festival, and to that end, a procession bearing torches appears from the darkness, drums banging, walking towards the barrier. Slowly the arms catch fire and then various fireworks hidden in the sculpture's body (heart, head) are set off, with a larger display behind. There are lots of oohs and aahs and no loud bangs and it's all rather lovely and pagan. We cheer when the man's head catches fire and signals the final few hours of one of the best Green Man Festivals yet.

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