Antony Szmierek: UKNY Q&A
Antony Szmierek (photo by Kara Manning for FUV)
Without question, the Glastonbury Festival reigns above all summer music festivals as a bucket-list gig for musicians — there's nothing quite like gazing out at a sea of tens of thousands of music lovers cavorting in muddy Somerset fields.
Over the past handful of years, Manchester's Antony Szmierek has been on a dizzying ride from dedicated schoolteacher and local poet to a festival headliner, and he will pay his second visit to Worthy Farm this year for a set at Glastonbury's Left Field stage on June 27.
Szmierek's 2025 album, Service Station at the End of the Universe, is a dazzling debut, a confident and adroit mix of his spoken-word roots and a songwriter's lyricism, with a dance beat as a pulse underlying his tales. It was lovely to have a "UKNY" conversation with the engaging and thoughtful Szmierek, recorded in London in April, in which he chats about that new album as well as his first book, Roadmap, a compilation of his poems, lyrics, and sketches.
