Electric Picnic: Benjamin Booker - The wild and fiery Stradbally blues

There’s a new guitar-slinger in town. Benjamin Booker blows into Stradbally and it’s like a tornado hits the tent. Straight out of New Orleans, here’s a lad who wields his guitar like BB King, Wilko Johnson and Robert Johnson all rolled into one. You’ll only see licks like this when one of those channels up the dials re-runs vintage TV shows.

Booker is a straight-up showman, leaping into the audience on the second song and bringing a dozen of them onstage for the third. But it’s not just his chops as a guitar hero which are finely finessed: these songs are meaty, raw, elemental, wild, guttural, fiery and stomping topped and tailed by his raspy, soulful voice. If you think the Black Keys or Jack White have the blues revival sussed, cop an ear to this lad.

In three words: Real wild time