ON SUNDAY evening, there was still plenty of acts to entertain the crowds, including the day-trippers availing of the fact that there were day-tickets available for the festival picnic for the first time.
Mick Jones and Big Audio Dynamite provoked a trip down memory lane with a solid performance in the Electric Arena, though there was perhaps not as many people who remember Jones’ post-Clash band as promoters may have thought.
No such problems for Underworld, though, as they lashed out the hits and the eye-candy on the main stage with great aplomb. You’ll never go wrong at a festival with monster electronic beats or tunes like Rez.
But Electric Picnic is more than just music. It’s a magical mystery tour. This is what happens after night falls, the stages fall quiet and the Picnic comes into its own.
By day, the various tribes do their thing in their own quarters. The families gather for the Roald Dahl workshops in the Soul Kids’ area or, in the most incongruous sight of the weekend, the kids drag their parents to the front row of the Rubberbandits’ show.
The indie music fans mark their dancecard by seeing the acts they’re here for on the arena’s stages. Arty folk gather to watch performances curated by the Project Arts Centre on the theatre stage. Ravers, meanwhile, are attracted, like moths to a flame, to any tent blasting out thumping beats. Sometimes you’ll find them dancing manically to the music from stalls selling burritos.
At night, however, Electric Picnic’s various clans come together for the after-hours fun and games when everyone is thrown into the same whirl.
You could start the night in the Gramophone Disco, a rockin’ barn which opened its doors at midnight. It’s a little bit of Tennessee in the heart of the Irish midlands, with DJs spinning sweetheart country and heartbreaker blues tunes until the dawn. From there you could move on to Arcadia for something else entirely. Here, a Mad Max-style burner was throwing flames to the sky while DJs, fire-eaters and acrobats performed their version of an end-of-the-world party.
The forests were where most headed for musical amusements to keep them from their bed. There’s the Salty Dog Saloon, where an oddball collection of folkies held court on the most inland shipwreck in Ireland.
Around the corner, Mr Whippy’s Soundsystem was blasting out bumping tropical sounds from a reconditioned ice-cream van in the middle of the Trenchtown enclosure.
But if all this sounds a little too hectic, there were other options more holistic than hedonistic. Some hardy souls could be found soaking their troubles away in a hot tub in the Body Soul arena.
Of course, you could come to Stradbally, have a whale of a time and never indulge in any of the above. The Electric Picnic has become an event with so many different strands that everyone can go away sated and happy. You might have missed a few acts you came here to see, but you saw someone, something else instead.
In live music Arcade Fire’s return to their spiritual home captured the zeitgeist this year. Thousands willed them to repeat the effect of their 2005 show, and Win Butler and co came close.
Many other acts left a deep impression for all the right reasons. New-school Irish acts such as Tieranniesaur, Moths and Toby Kaar, the veterans who’ve seen it all (and done it all) before such as OMD and The Undertones and festival favourites The Chemical Brothers, The Go! Team and The Unthanks left town with greatly enhanced reputations.
But the biggest crowd of the weekend were here to see the reformed Pulp, the last act in this musical drama. They’re a perfect Picnic choice, a band with nostalgic appeal from their role as favoured oddballs from the Britpop era.
Once Jarvis Cocker high-kicks his way to the front singing Do You Remember the First Time, the die is cast. The Picnic has found its kingpins. For those gathered in a field in Co Laois, this will be a fitting end to the best festival of the summer.