All Together Now 2026, first day review: Traffic, Pulp, and other talking points
Jarvis Cocker of Pulp performs during All Together Now 2026 at Curraghmore Estate in Co Waterfor. Picture: Kieran Frost/Redferns
We did feel a bit smug. Arriving early on Friday morning via the designated route from Cork, the traffic was so light that the approach to the festival site was a breeze. The car parks and campsites were well signposted, and the staff could not have been more helpful.
By early afternoon, however, some of that scenario had changed. It was taking hours for attendees to get through the last few miles to the festival site. By early evening, latecomers claimed to have taken three hours to travel the 15 miles from Waterford city.
The issue of how to manage festival traffic is a perennial one. A well-managed traffic plan for Curraghmore has ensured that – despite delays – there has been no repeat of the 2019 gridlock that blighted the second festival.
There is no easy solution. The site is in a rural area, serviced by small roads, and the vast majority of the 35,000 crowd want to arrive in the same pre-event window of a few hours.
U2’s 2000 hit came to mind: “The traffic’s stuck, and you’re not moving anywhere.” But hey - once the traffic untangled, and you’d pitched your tent and found your way around the festival site - it was indeed a beautiful day.
All Together Now has traditionally attracted a more mature crowd than some other music festivals. This year, there seems to again be a healthy mix of young stagers and veteran attendees. The mood throughout is extremely positive, even if the smoke from the fires on the surrounding hillsides is a bit ominous.
The atmosphere has also been helped by the extremely pleasant weather. The heatwave highs may have calmed but temperatures are still into the 20s. Thankfully, there is fresh water available at stations throughout the site, justifying organisers’ advice to bring a reusable bottle for fill-ups.
One of the early music highlights was provided by the Trinity Orchestra. Based at Trinity College Dublin, they are billed as “Ireland’s only fully student-run orchestra.” Their early evening suite of orchestral covers of pop and rock songs began with the Waterboys’ : “I pictured a rainbow…” In the baking heat, it was well-nigh impossible to picture such a thing.
There followed a succession of tracks by Irish artists, each performed by a different singer: Hozier, Sinéad O’Connor, Horslips, Thin Lizzy, the Cranberries and Enya. It was so enchanting an experience that most present failed to notice the dark clouds gathering ominously overhead.
Finally, just as the orchestra launched in U2’s the rain fell in a flurry of thick drops. It was a possibility no one had prepared for, but thankfully, the shower came and went in a matter of minutes.
Until last year, Richie Kavanagh, of infamy, was surely the only musician of note to have emerged from Co Carlow. Thankfully, another bilingual polymath, in the shape of SexyTadgh, has arrived in a blaze of corsetry and big band funk/trad arrangements to save the day.
SexyTadgh is Tadgh Griffin of Carlow town, fronting a band that includes a harpist, a piper, and a guitarist who has surely learned his rhythmic chops from Nile Rodgers of Chic. All were dressed in football jersies, though SexyTadgh had added frills.
The songs – – are fantastic. So too was the performance. SexyTadgh moved from behind the keyboard to front of stage and back again, all the while charming and rousing the crowd.
For the last track, the band were joined by a bevy of exotic dancers. My Parade is not so much a song as a manifesto: “I want public céilís in Stephen’s Green/Heels in Penneys that go up to a Size 15.” The future is Sexy.
Of all the music acts currently on tour, Pulp might seem like an unusual choice to headline the first night at All Together Now.
It is nearly 50 years since the band formed in Sheffield, England, and they are now well into their third coming. Without their instruments, they might look like they belonged in the staff room of a vaguely liberal secondary school. One could easily imagine frontman Jarvis Cocker, in his brown suit and shoes, as an English teacher with a penchant for dabbling in verse.
On stage, however, they brimmed with energy. Cocker, inevitably, was the focal point, contorting his angular frame into all sorts of improbable shapes and mounting the speakers to gaze over the audience and declaim his immortal lyrics.
Pulp got everyone in the mood with their Top 10 hit from 1995, while the other biggie was which popped up towards the end of their set. It’s the one everybody knows at least half the words to, and Cocker’s vocal histrionics elevated it to the undisputed highlight of their set.
As they finished with a slow atmospheric number from their 2025 album, people were already drifting away. Above the band, the moon hung like a yellow spotlight in the sky, shining down on a fine first night at All Together Now 2026.
