Sunday starts close to (temporary) home with Lianne La Havas charming the undergarments off everyone in the Hot Press Chatroom with an impossibly beautiful acoustic rendition of ‘No Room For Doubt’.
The stage is bigger, but the performance no less intimate a few hours later when a now fully plugged-in La Havas takes more breaths away in the Electric Arena. With Prince and Stevie Wonder both bigging her up, don’t be surprised if Paloma Faith’s former backing singer follows Adele to the top of the US charts. While not reinventing the soul wheel, the 23-year-old has a voice, quiet charisma and a debut album’s worth of great songs – ‘Old’ and ‘Forget’ are among the best-received today – that make her impossible not to warm to.
Elsewhere, The Riptide Movement do the Stones-y blues rock thing better than almost anyone else in the world at the moment. With amps firmly on ‘11’, the likes of ‘Hot Tramp’ and ‘Keep On Keepin’ On’ are perfect early afternoon blow-away-the-cobwebs fare.
As are 76-year-old Lee “Scratch” Perry and 64-year-young Max Romeo, the Main Stage tag-team reggae legends, who could teach many a hipster combo about working an audience. The latter’s standout is ‘I Chase The Devil Away’ which The Prodigy turned into ‘Out Of Space’ and the former’s ‘I Am A Madman’ – a title that not even the most finicky of trade description’s inspectors could take exception to. Resplendent in a Jason-style coat of many colours, Perry may be one drumstick short of a snack-box, but makes for some of the weekend’s most compelling viewing.
Sadly, the same can’t be said of the next Main Stage-gracing act Michael Kiwanuka whose superb voice is let down by the soul-lite blandness of his songwriting.
If you’ve ever wondered what the bastard offspring of Arcade Fire and Mumford & Sons would sound like, you got your answer courtesy of Of Monsters & Men’s insanely packed Crawdaddy Stage set. In diametrical opposition to fellow Icelanders Sigur Ros, the sextet are all about delivering sweet pop hooks with as much gusto as possible. I don’t have my decibel meter with me, but I’d swear the Irish chart-topping ‘Little Talks’ gets the loudest cheer of the festival.
The brilliant mid-afternoon sun means that the Cosby Stage crowd for Rainy Boy Sleep is on the lesser side, but the Donegal Native Also Known As Steve Martin sticks to the task and delivers a gorgeously understated set that sounds a bit like James Morrison on one of his moodier days.
There’s just time to catch Cashier No. 9 being all Byrdsian – ‘Goldstar’, ‘Lost At Sea’, ‘Oh Pity’ et al really are things of West Coast beauty – before The Fat Lady Sings remind us why in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s they were the ‘Irish band most likely to…’
Still the happiest man in rock and/or roll, Nick Kelly looks like a dog with several willies as he runs through ‘Arclight’, ‘Drunkard Logic’ and ‘Fear And Favor’ – songs that in a parallel universe are reverberating around stadiums.
Like Lianne Le Havas, English surfer dude Ben Howard has reached the point of critical mass whereby the Electric Arena is jammed a full half-hour before he comes on. Variously compared to John Martyn and Nick Drake – both are to differing extents justified  – Howard has developed the neat trick of flipping his guitar over and using the back as an extra layer of percussion. There’s nothing gimmicky though about ‘London’ and ‘Promise’, songs that strike the perfect balance between introspection and pop nous.
I’m not sure if journalists are allowed to use words like “otherworldly” and “transcendent” any more, but they really are the best way to describe Perfume Genius, who’d do a decent job of filling in for Jonsi if the aforementioned Sigur Ros were ever short a frontman.
You can hear a pin drop as eyes closed, head swaying, voice immaculate he performs Learning’s ‘Lookout, Lookout’. There’s also rapt silence for his cover of Madonna’s ‘Oh Father’, which with its “You can’t hurt me now/ You once had the power/ I never felt so good about myself” refrain says as much about Mr. Hardreas encountering parental opposition to his homosexuality as it does Mr. Ciccone trying to dictate how his daughter lead her life.
Making her first trip to Ireland – she was down to play the Picnic in 2009 but broke a foot – Natasha Khan is as thoroughly beguiling as you’d hope she’d be, the opening ‘What’s A Girl To Do?’ and mid-set ‘Laura’ the perfect summation of why Bat For Lashes have found such favour with the baroque pop brigade.
“Conas atá tú?” enquires Brandon Flowers in his best Irish brogue as The Killers launch into ‘Somebody Told Me’ on the Main Stage. Preceded by new single ‘Runaways’, it’s the trigger for some of the weekend’s most frenetic front-of-stage bopping. Prone in the past to Ian Brown-style caterwauling, Brandon’s vocals tonight are pretty much perfect and well up to the task of stripping down Van’s ‘Brown-Eyed Girl’. With ‘Mr. Brightside’, ‘All These Things That I’ve Done’ and a dozen confetti guns to call on later, The Killers play with the swagger of a band who know that victory is theirs.