Isle of Wight festival 2012, review The inclement weather hadn't dampened the spirits of Elbow's Guy Garvey. "This is one weekend we re-affirm our faith in humanity," he said. The band's graceful indie anthems seem tailor made for festival sets at dusk, and so it proved here on Friday night. Backed by several string players, the Lancastrian quintet focussed on material from their 2008 Mercury Prize-winning fourth album The Seldom Seen Kid, and last year's follow-up Build a Rocket Boys. Songs like The Bones of You were delivered with stately beauty. There's nothing flashy about 38-year-old Garvey, but he was a master at working the crowd. Before 'Grounds for Divorce', he launched into an a cappella verse with altered words: "traffic in cars holding me back / Here we are, getting p****d." The band finished with One Day Like This. The crowd response was as rabble rousing as that of last year's Glastonbury. A suited Garvey conducted with his arms, on a stage lit up like a beacon against the dark. It was a lovely finish. Classic US rockers Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers followed. They concluded a first series of UK dates in 13 years with a joyful greatest hits set. By Saturday afternoon, there was respite for those on site: the sun had come out. This coincided with an afternoon of smart British pop music. Tinie Tempah and Jessie J played their bouncing hits with gusto - the former's Pass Out and the latter's Price Tag were highlights. But the star was Labrinth, whose mix of neo-soul and dubstep was playful and effortlessly cool. Pearl Jam's headline set on Saturday evening was a moodier affair - but that was to be expected. The band were Seattle contemporaries of Kurt Cobain's Nirvana during alternative rock's commercial explosion in the early 1990s. Their debut album, Ten, went on to sell more copies in America than Nirvana's Nevermind. But Pearl Jam spent the rest of the decade sabotaging their stardom, refusing to make music videos and boycotting Ticketmaster music venues. Now in their mid forties, this anti-commercial spirit hasn't been forgotten. Frontman Eddie Vedder could have been plucked straight from 1991, wearing jeans and a baggy overshirt. When he spoke to the crowd, it was with the same angst that had propelled the heyday of grunge. "Give a man a gun and he'll rob a bank, give a man a bank and he'll rob the world," he said at one point. Vedder had a powerful presence, his emotive growl giving form to the band's pulsating hard rock. Behind him, the guitars of Stone Gossard and Mike McReady squealed and crunched in tandem through early hit Even Flow. When the noodling threatened to become an end in itself, Vedder instilled some subtlety into proceedings. His vocals were deft and rangy in gentler, acoustic-led numbers, several of which brought to mind Neil Young. The highlights were the songs delivered with heart. The band paid a moving tribute to the Clash's Joe Strummer, who died ten years ago, covering his later band the Mescaleros's Arms Aloft. A rousing encore peaked with Alive, Vedder's semi-autobiographical tale touching on adoption. It was raining again, but few cared: the music had made it all worthwhile. The festival, come hell, high water or seven-mile gridlock, was still a triumph.