New stages seem to pop up randomly as you walk around Electric Picnic late at night, writes JIM CARROLLin Stradbally Co Laois
QUESTION: JUST how many music stages exactly are there at the Electric Picnic? And is anyone keeping count? You could start the census with the big official stages and tents like the Electric Arena and the Cosby Tent, the ones which attract the biggest names on the bill, from the new guns hoping their appearance will lead to a step up the ladder to the old stagers who’ve seen it all before.
Then there are various other regular stages to be appended to that list, like the brace of bespoke spaces in the Body Soul’s alternative zen universe.
There’s also the new trailer park area, the dance stages in the forest where things go bump-bump-bump in the middle of the night, the tents for the Silent Disco and the Gramophone Disco and the spaces pressed into service for bands and acts in the Mindfield brain-zone.
But that’s just the start. In the middle of one of the many long lines of food stalls, for example, you’ll come across Jimmie Lee’s Juke Joint. A mobile wooden stage decked out as a down-home US Southern music shack, the Juke Joint featured a ton of lesser-known acts over the weekend.
A portion of the cash to build the shack was raised by the Juke joint promoters via crowdfunding website FundIt and the stage has also featured at the Knockanstockan festival.
The Juke Joint isn’t the only performance space which you could randomly find during a late-night stroll around the site. After the main arena stages have finished for the night, the action moves elsewhere and you’ll find music and bands pumping from tents which were used during the day for yoga or caravans which were serving tea up to a few hours ago.
Some Picnic regulars would argue that these spaces contain the real heart and soul of the festival. But it’s also worth bearing in mind that there are also many who never venture beyond the big stages. In its ninth year, especially with a whole new vanguard of new festival fans checking out its pleasures for the first time, the Picnic is a broad musical church.
That said, it’s clear that some acts were responsible for much bigger ticket sales than others. The Cure’s three-hour stand on Saturday night was one of the must-see events for thousands. Robert Smith and co availed of the time and space (and dry-ice) to put familiar hits like Just Like Heaven and Love Cats and back-catalogue favourites in glorious context. Orbital were at Stradbally three years ago, but their performance then was not a patch on their quite brilliant grandstanding here late on Saturday night. For the Hartnoll brothers, this was proof positive that they still have plenty more to say in their singular electronic music narrative.
Anyone who was lucky enough to catch Patti Smith’s barnstorming performance on the Crawdaddy Stage will be raving about it for some time to come. A set with power, energy and panache, it showed that Smith’s punk rock fervour still burns brightly.
New Irish acts who will be leaving Stradbally with their reputations enhanced include Villagers, Heathers (it’s not just David Guetta who is a fan of the McNamara twins’ perfectly formed harmonies), Delorentos (displaying the magnificent hooks of current album Little Sparks), Seamus Fogarty (it wasn’t just in Croke Park that Mayo were winning yesterday) and Le Galaxie.
As the sun went down yesterday evening, it was the turn of Guy Garvey and Elbow to show just why they’ve become the people’s bands. Bursting at the seams with the unlikeliest of field-filling, fist-pumping anthems like Grounds for Divorce, this was a set to remember long after the sunburn and mud from the weekend have vanished.
The final act on the festival’s biggest stage were The Killers, a band who are no strangers to big days out in the Irish countryside. Oxegen used to be seen as their natural home, but it’s a sign of the changing audience heading to Stradbally that they’re to be found on this bill.
While the set naturally enough featured songs from forthcoming new album Battle Burn, Brandon Flowers and co possess enough gumption to realise that gigs in large fields need familiar touches too in the shape of the starry hits. A gig to send the daytrippers home happy.