All Together Now highlights: 10 acts to see this weekend at the Co Waterford festival
L-R: Lorde, Sugababes and Iggy Pop, some of the headliners of All Together Now
All roads lead to Waterford this weekend as the All Together Now festival returns to Curraghmore Estate near Carrick-on-Suir for a fourth year.
The event has already staked out a unique identity as a big festival with an intimate feel.
And the 2023 line-up is one of its most impressive yet, featuring superstars such as Lorde and Iggy Pop and rising Irish talent, including Villagers, Lankum, and Cork artists Biig Piig and Talos.
Here are 10 highlights.
The English singer is arguably best known among the general public for her food-based Table Manners podcast hosted with mother, Helena, featuring guests such as Ed Sheeran, Kylie Minogue, Paul McCartney, and her friend Sam Smith.
Musically, meanwhile, she’s been going from strength to strength.
Her disco-themed 2020 album What’s Your Pleasure? provided a thrilling jolt of lockdown escapism.
She has built on that triumph with fourth album, That! Feels! Good!, which opens with the record’s title spoken aloud by celebs such as Kylie Minogue, Gemma Arterton, and Róisín Murphy.
It earned Ware a Mercury Nomination for bet British or Irish Album of the Year.
Traditional music folded into dark and psychedelic “drone” music: written down, Lankum’s take on Irish folk sounds niche.
But the Dublin group have had remarkable success with a sound that might be described as The Dubliners meets Radiohead: it’s dense and stormy but with a wonderful cinematic lustre and an emotive punch that conjures butterflies in the stomach and sends tingles down the nape.
Their fourth album, False Lankum, was released in March, and had reviewers agog: Pitchfork praised its “eerie new depths”; the Guardian heralded its “storms of shuddering sound”. They’ve since been rewarded with a Mercury nomination.
The British hip-hop star has a soft centre that we don’t often see in the genre, and is likely to perform tracks from right across his three albums since he broke through in 2017 with Yesterday's Gone.
This Mercury-nominated ensemble struck a major roadblock last year when their vocalist Isaac Wood departed, citing the need to protect his mental health.
The group had just released their second album, Ants from Up There, a slaloming mix of indie, jazz experimental “post-rock” reminiscent of groups such as Mogwai (where soundtrack-style instrumental music builds to a cathartic pitch).
Not to be deterred, the remaining line-up came up with an entirely new repertoire of instrumentals and then released a charming EP, where they juxtaposed covers of Billie Eilish and Magnetic Fields.
Along with Girls Aloud, Sugababes shifted the perception of pop music from disposable aural candy to a vibrant art form in the early 2000s.
Pop had always been vibrant and vital, but Sugababes and their producers Richard X and Xenomania made this point incontrovertible.
They released classic single after classic single, including Overload, Freak Like Me, Round Round, and Strong.
These smashes were ratcheted up amid convulsions in the line-up: but since 2012, the group has reverted to its original trio of Siobhán Donaghy, Mutya Buena, and Keisha Buchanan.
Jazz, funk afrobeat, and hip hop come together courtesy of this London collective who refuse to be pigeonholed into a specific genre – and always deliver on stage.
Fresh from a performance at Cork Opera House, experimental German-British composer Richter will join the RTÉ Orchestra for a reprisal of his deconstructed take on Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
Born in Cork, raised in Marbella, Ardmore, Tralee and London, Biig Piig, aka songwriter Jess Smyth has had an eclectic upbringing.
Her music is equally adventurous: her January 2023 Bubblegum mix tape was heralded for its “distantly whispy voice” and “sinewy grooves”.
Ella Yelich-O’Connor became a teenage superstar with her hit Royals.
That was 10 years ago. In the intervening period, she has released three compelling, often quite avant-garde records, most recently the blissed-out Solar Power – a weird, woozy collection that combines a sensibility the Auckland-born artist describes as “New Zealand gothic” with expansive production from Taylor Swift collaborator Jack Antonoff.
Aged 76, the one-time Stooges’ enfant terrible remains as lean as a whippet and primed like a hand grenade.
His new album, Every Loser, is a walloping return to form, with cameos from Guns’ n Roses bassist Duff McKagan, Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard and late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins.
