Festivalgoers are being kind to themselves on the final day of All Together Now after burning the candle at both ends on Friday and Saturday at the Curraghmore Estate, in Co Waterford.
Part of that means charging their phones despite an €8 fee, as well as an almost half-hour wait to reach the top of the queue – the price, it seems, of staying in contact with tentmates and the outside world.
Loud huffing and puffing is coming from one not-so-happy camper towards the front of the line, who tells The Irish Times that his battery was on 15 per cent when he joined the wait and is now down to 3 per cent. “It’s a bit of an oxymoron” to call it a phone-charging queue, he says.
Campers are also flocking to the showers after perhaps not washing for two or three days; others are buying breakfast burritos and iced coffees in a pavilion that, only a few hours earlier, was thumping with beats provided by Groove Armada.
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At noon, as the comedian and podcaster Blindboy takes to the festival’s second-biggest stage, in the Something Kind of Wonderful tent, he apologises to the crowd for being on his phone as he came out. “I’m showing my mum that this many people actually showed up,” he tells the thousands of people sitting in front of him.
It’s impressive when any act draws such a large crowd, but particularly so when the artist is first up on the day’s time sheet and will be talking about social issues such as inequality and the effects of toxic masculinity.
He earns chuckles by asking the crowd if they have “sore heads and sore bums” before reading them his short story I’ll Give You Barcelona. The audience are listening to his every word.
Nelly Furtado, the Canadian singer whose first big song was I’m Like a Bird, in 2000, which she followed up with a string of other hits, will be on the main stage on Sunday night to close out the final day of All Together Now 2025.
When she was in Ireland last year, she ended her set at the Forbidden Fruit festival with a mash-up of her song Say It Right with Glue, by Bicep, the Belfast-born, London-based techno duo who headlined Saturday night at All Together Now with strong plays of Glue and other hits, such as Water and Apricots. It was their Chroma line-up – an audiovisual series that harmonises heavy techno with an intense light show – that really stood out.
On Sunday afternoon, All Together Now campers are both hoping that Furtado will repeat her remix and eagerly awaiting their chance to scream 2000s hits at the top of their lungs.
