Back for the first time since 2019, Electric Picnic takes place this weekend in Stradbally Hall, Co Laois. Alan Corr rounds up the acts not to miss . . .
Arctic Monkeys
I bet you look good in a field in Laois. Having recently announced details of their new album, the bluntly titled The Car, which is out on 21 October, Sheffield's finest have been festival fit all summer. The Car features ten new songs written by Alex Turner, produced by James Ford and recorded at Butley Priory, Suffolk, RAK Studios, London and La Frette, Paris.
Following 2018's sortie into space-age bachelor pad music on Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino, The Car is an unknown quantity so far. However, recent live performances of new song I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am suggest that the Monkeys have found the funk, while There'd Better Be A Mirrorball, the first track on The Car, is languid and sublime.
In a recent interview with The Big Issue, front man Alex Turner spoke in airy non-specifics. "I think we've got closer to a better version of a more dynamic overall sound with this record," he said.
"The strings on this record come in and out of focus and that was a deliberate move and hopefully everything has its own space. There’s time the band comes to the front and then the strings come to the front."
Recent set lists have seen them power through Do I Wanna Know? Brianstorm, Snap Out of It, Crying Lightning, Teddy Picker, Potion Approaching and Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High? They’ll be the main draw on Sunday night.
Orla Gartland
The self-confessed "music-makin' ginger nutcase" from Drumcondra in Dublin began uploading her music to the internet when she was 14 because, as she says, "I was a show-off and too young to play the open mic down my local". Since then, 27-year-old Gartland has built up a quietly brilliant treasury of sparky pop gems.
Behind the music - Orla Gartland
Armed with influences including Joni Mitchell, Imogen Heap, Regina Spektor, Alanis Morrisette, and The Cranberries, she has been releasing EPs and singles for nearly a decade but her 2021 debut album Woman on the Internet was her first long-form venture. With songs filled with stories of growing up and grappling with the onset of adulthood and identity, her weird, wired, and wonderful songs skip across a myriad of styles, from punk rock to pained confessionals and modulated electronica. Gartland’s songs are wracked by insecurities and hang-ups, but her gigs are no pity party - she has the self-awareness and smarts to be funny and witty too.
Fontaines D.C.
The rise of Ireland's best band in, ohhhh, 30 years is a lesson in how it should be done. Fontaines D.C. have released three acclaimed (and increasingly sophisticated) albums in three years and enjoyed the kind of graceful upwards trajectory last seen when new acts were allowed to grow through hard work and raw talent.
Live, they’re a killer combo of brute force and poetic tenderness, with Grian Chatten maturing into one of the most magnetic front men in years. They’ve progressed from small stages to the arena and festival league with ease and without sacrificing any of the passion that marked them out in their Liberties spawning ground. Fontaines have had a string section on stage with them on their current run of festival dates and wannabe guitar heroes take note - the band invited a fan from the audience at last weekend’s Reading Festival up on stage to play on The Boys in The Better Land.
The Florentinas
This Bangor four-piece leapt from the traps last October with their debut single, Sandcastles, a bracing attack of tensile guitar pop topped by expressive vocals and backed by a super tight engine room.
Behind the music - The Florentinas
Having met at Bangor Grammar School's music department in 2019, Paddy Boyd, Jacob Kane, and brothers Luke and Jakob Swann recorded a BBC Introducing Maida Vale session, catching the attention of Snow Patrol frontman Gary Lightbody’s artist development company, Third Bar.
Second single It’s Not In Vain, all slashing riffs and sky-scraping melody, followed last February and they made their television debut on BBC Northern Ireland's Sounds, as well as recording live sessions for Open House Festival and the Oh Yeah Music Centre. In 2020 they signed a publishing deal with BMG in London. If their name conjures up visions of all things fast and jangly, mark them off your EP bingo card.
CMAT
Ireland's newest and best honky tonk woman Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson is a left of centre country pop star from the wild west side of Dublin who dresses up her songs of heartbreak and self-doubt in killer melodies and the cheekiest wink this side of the Shannon.
The Blanch woman released her debut album, If My Wife New I’d be Dead, earlier this year and its artfully oblique take on bayou blues and big city badness has really come into its own in the live arena. Expect mass singalongs down in Stradbally to I’d Want You, Geography Teacher, the techno country squelch of No More Virgos and the blear-eyed waltz of Groundhog Day.
With her outré couture and torch and twang songs, CMAT has become one of the most talked about and gawped at new acts in Ireland and it’s not hard to see why.
Thumper
They may be named after a cute lickle wabbit from Bambi, but this Dublin noise rock sextet play a ferocious heads down rock `n' roll that will scatter the cows in Laois. Throwing art rock shapes and with a real flair for ye olde Pixies/Nirvana quiet/loud dynamic, they come armed with two drummers and two guitarists. Expect a seismic psychedelic rumble at EP. They even released a single entitled Topher Grace. Well, Weezer had Buddy Holly, and Gorillaz had Clint Eastwood . . .
Joy Crookes
EP's Mindfield Arena is always worth a wander and this year it boasts star wattage in the shape of the wonderful Joy Crookes. The Londoner (her mum’s from Dhaka and her dad’s from Dublin) cooks up a bouncing mix of neo-soul and R&B on hits like Feet Don't Fail Me Now and When You Were Mine and touches of trip-hop on 19th Floor. Her lush sounding debut album, Skin, was a fine introduction to this rising star and we may get a taste of some new tracks down in the Mindfield. Plus! She took Irish dancing lessons as a kid.
@AlanCorr2
