Five talking points from Electric Picnic Day One: Crowded campsites and stirring sets
Fans enjoying Hozier at Electric Picnic on Friday night. Picture: Larry Cummins
The biggest pop star on the planet is entertaining tens of thousands of people in a field in Laois. Yes, Chappell Roan made her Electric Picnic bow to play her first Irish show since the Olympia in September of last year.
She’s had major performances at Coachella, Primavera Sound and Reading and Leeds since that point as her star continued to skyrocket.
Over an hour and a half on Friday evening, the Midwest Princess belted through her extensive back catalogue, including what is sure to be a viral overhead shot of 20,000 people during Review here
As it was at Reading and Leeds, Chappell’s carnival of colour acted as the last act before an Irish headliner.
Hozier closed out Friday night as a headliner for the second time.The Bray native weaved his extensive catalogue throughout the set, including a therapeutic rendition of and
There was also a very pointed message aimed at the Irish Central Bank about its role in the sale of Israeli bonds.
With the addition of 5,000 more people on to the capacity of Electric Picnic, you’d expect things to feel a bit more crowded in the main arena.
But a slight restructure of the festival site – including the removal of the old Rankins Wood stage and a couple of new lay outs for vendors – meant that things ran rather smoothly on day one inside the gates.
Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said of the campsites. Due to the sheer volume of people who had opted for early entry tickets on Thursday, five of the seven main campsites were full on Friday morning when gates opened.
This left a battle royale, with a number of extremely tight spaces being found to get a tent pitched.
Stewards had warned that gazebos could even be taken down to add extra spaces, though this didn't yet seem to be the case on Saturday morning.
For all the fear of storms and potential hurricane effects on Friday, there was barely a drop of rain on Friday.
Early entrants would’ve dealt with the odd spell overnight on Thursday, but there was nothing throughout the first official day of the festival.
Things are taking quite a drastic twist on Saturday, which could make conditions a bit more challenging for revellers.
