Live music review: Warpaint

Forbidden Fruit, Dublin

In the Simpson’s episode ‘Homerpalooza’, the kids are explaining what it is to be cool. Marge: “Am I cool, kids?” Bart and Lisa: “No.” Marge: “Good, I’m glad. And that’s what makes me cool, not caring, right?” Bart and Lisa: “No.” Marge: “Well, how the hell do you be cool. I feel like we’ve tried everything here.”

From the shocking pink hair and camo jumpsuit of Jenny Lee Lindberg, and cerulean hair and Oakland Raiders shirt (among the suckiest of NFL teams) of Emily Kokal, Warpaint don’t care about being cool — and, thus, ooze the kind of cool that Marge Simpson couldn’t even imagine.

The penultimate band at Forbidden Fruit’s main stage, they play an hour of laid-back jams, perfect for a Sunday evening — or so you’d think. “You guys are amazing,” exuded guitarist and singer, Theresa Wayman, after their second song, the swaying, surging ‘Keep It Healthy’, not realising that half the crowd has short attention spans and has headed elsewhere to take more selfies. It doesn’t matter to the cool heads of Warpaint, who just get on with things, tossing away their biggest song, ‘Undertow’, early in the set. Later, they veer from the best track of the evening, ‘Disco/Very’, into a new one, ‘No Way Out’. It’s painfully slow, but eases into a stompingly big tune. A cover of David Bowie’s ‘Ashes To Ashes’ and the non-album track, ‘Elephants’, with its long, jammed outro, finish things off, leaving the remaining crowd in awe.

Warpaint are not the most entertaining of bands to watch and their vocals drift in the open air of the main stage, but they’re in the zone: four musicians who know exactly what it is to be cool.

Elsewhere at Forbidden Fruit, kudos must go to Clare musician Daithí, who releases his debut album on Friday. A mid-afternoon slot on the second stage is not an easy task, but the burgeoning crowd find their feet during irresistibly big dance numbers on which the fiddle-wielding, floppy-haired, bouncing producer thrives.

Daithí is set to own the festival circuit this year.