Sunday best for Indiependence Festival

LIKE any sport that is characterised by endurance this year’s Indiependence Music & Arts Festival in Mitchelstown, Co Cork, seemed to communicate the value of peaking at the right moment.

After doing enough to keep things ticking over on Friday and Saturday the festival reserved all its knock-out blows for Sunday.

Last year, windswept Dingle rockers Walking On Cars were installed in the newly installed Beer Hall stage at the festival. On Friday they were close to the top of the bill on the Main Stage and proved good value for their placement as they climaxed with breakthrough single ‘Catch Me If You Can’. Ivor Novello-award-winning songwriter Tom Odell’s Billy Joel-isms can lean towards the over portentous, as if he’s trying to craft the break-up version of ‘Goodnight Saigon’ but it’s fascinating to see his audience embrace such old school blues rock numbers of his as ‘See if I Care’.

Friday also saw electronic beats meets street poetry, duo, Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip, depart the Irish stage together for probably the very last time. Breezy numbers such as ‘Angles’ and ‘Look for the Woman’ were mixed with darker moments like ‘You Will See Me’. Lyricist Pip brought a new meaning to the term couch-surfing when he crowd-surfed on an inflatable chair. With little ceremony they exited without bows or without arms around each other, while milking the acclaim.

The coming months mark a significant time for a number of the Irish contingent at Indiependence. Hudson Taylor, Hozier and Delorentos are among acts whose forthcoming albums are much anticipated.

Choice Music Award-winners Delorentos announced before the weekend that Universal Music will be releasing their fourth album proper, Night Becomes Light. It is precisely the sort of push the band require at this stage and new tracks like ‘Everyone Else Gets Wet’, with its soulful bedroom disco beat, raise the levels of anticipation for what they might do next.

Before them on the Main Stage, Hudson Taylor delivered what felt like the first big performance of the festival, belying their twee folk pop sound with plenty of anthemic sing-along numbers, such as ‘Chasing Rubies’ and 'Battles’. Their cover of Eminem’s 'One Shot’ received a particularly orgiastic response.

Those performances that will linger long in the memory arrived on Sunday. Opening her set at the Big Top in arresting fashion with a Sean Nós style acapella number Cavan’s Lisa O’Neill showed she is a woman to be reckoned with.

With her wizened appearance and determined demeanour, O’Neill looks like she stepped out of the Ancient Music of Ireland Songbook and quietly devastating numbers like ‘England has my Man’ reveal her as an artist for the ages.

Back at the Main Stage, Hozier demonstrated exactly why his ascension over these past 12 months has been so shooting star-like. It is a wonder how this casually dressed slip of a lad dressed in denim and flannel can possess such a huge soulful voice but this was the best performance since Jesus started giving out loaves and fishes. The biggest crowd of the weekend filled the great tent and countless more stood outside basking in the last rays of sunlight as Hozier delivered the gospel, with tracks like ‘Angel of Small Death’. Exultation greeted ‘Take me to Church’ with the Sunday audience taking particular vocal relish on the “Amen” line.

It needed something really special to top this and veteran hip-hop lords Public Enemy did just that; the irresistible Chuck D and Flavor Flav powered through their greatest numbers, climaxing with a line of excited invited youths adding to the numbers on the stage. Now that was a finale!