Shock of the new

A music festival is, above all else, an opportunity to hear all those cool new bands whom you’ve seen mentioned on occasion, but might never get to hear live otherwise.
To assist your appreciation of all that's on offer, we hereby provide a Must See Guide to some of the best acts on the Hot Press New Band Stage.

Mumford and Sons – Friday
Learning something from the textured folk-plundering of bands like Beirut and Calexico (who plundered Eastern Europe and the Tex/Mex border respectively), the boys of Mumford and Sons have focussed their piratical musical ears onto their own British folk tradition. Singer Marcus Mumford, who’s probably far too young to have genuinely fathered the rest of the band (although I’m no doctor, and society is crumbling), has written songs infused by both centuries of traditional balladry and decades of bombastic yet reflective indie song-writing. In other words, the Mumford boys gently croon and pick their banjos and guitars by verse, and swell into rousing sing-along swells of harmony vocals, accordions and violins by chorus. If they hand out lyric sheets at the gig, we will be hollering along.

O Emperor – Friday
Gentle and delicate songs, guided by intricate urgently-picked guitars, grinding electric lines, expansive piano playing, some electronic tomfoolery, and wonderfully harmonised vocals — there’s a straightforward sincerity to the music of Cork band O Emperor that one doesn’t usually associate with Cork (hither-to-now known as the home of musical quirkiness). Sounding a little like The Beach Boys, The Band, and The Smiths being digested by a cannibalistic Lee Mavers from The La's, O Emperor haven’t even released an album yet and they’re already better than many decades-old bands I could mention.

Dinosaur Pile-Up – Friday
Dinosaur Pile-up play sludgy early-nineties grungy guitar music with deadpan lazy vocals, generally indicating their dissatisfaction with the venal sold-out concerns of the baby-boomers and how Generation X has been disenfranchised by Reagan’s America. Which is odd really, seeing as how they’re a trio of twenty-somethings from Leeds who are clearly far too young to have fought in the great grunge wars (ask your granddad) or to have shaken their fists in half-arsed anger at Whitesnake on MTV (which used to be a music station, fact fans!). Still, they’ve obviously got large Nirvana, Weezer, Dinosaur Junior, Sebadoh and Foo Fighters collections, which makes them okay by me, and it’s a relief to hear a contemporary band who aren’t grinding out “angular” guitar riffs and yelping in faux-New Romantic/post-punk anguish.

The Phenomenal Handclap Band – Sunday
Some bands are gangs. Some are dysfunctional families. Others are spaced-out cults entreating you to submit. The Phenomenal Handclap Band are in the latter category with at least a hundred members (look, I’m not going to count the people in the photos; I’m a music critic, not a mathematician) and a great line in funky, synthy, hip-snaking, male/female-vocalled, Sesame-Street-influenced, R’n’B, dancing-boot music. It’s wonderful stuff and might be the perfect place to go and submerge your ego. When it comes to cults, all I ask in return for my unthinking loyalty is a good beat, well-placed guitar and organ lines and lyrics about “getting on the bus” and The Phenomenal Handclap certainly have those. All in all, this is great music to drink the cool-aid to.

Wild Beasts – Sunday
Blissfully unrestrained by fashionably cool insouciance, Wild Beasts’ vocals veer from a melodramatic Spandau Ballet croon (from bassist Tom Flemming) to an intense parlour falsetto a la Kate Bush or Antony Hegarty or Tiny Tim (from main singer and guitarist Hayden Thorpe). All the while this is accompanied by stately pianos, tom-and-cymbal-heavy drum parts, and the assertive one-fingered guitar twangs of the post-punk battalion. Named after the art movement the Fauvists ('les fauves', French for wild beasts), the quartet are certainly intent on putting the art back in art rock, and with their occasionally arcane references, they do achieve a nice retro modernism by times. Bring tea and scones to this and prepare to feel strangely patriotic about England circa 1937, whilst casting your mind forward to a Utopian 1984.

Patrick Wolf – Saturday
Patrick Wolf was first discovered wandering around the indie-music wasteland back in 2003, crooning Bowie-like over Atari blips and lush string arrangements. At that point in history, however, eclectic oddness had not yet become a badge of honour and everyone was wearing leather jackets, cocking about on guitars, and hinting that they’d tried heroin. Hopefully this time round, we’ll all clasp Wolf to our bosoms and cherish his weird, wonderful and sweeping electro chamber music. One way or another, his Hot Press stage performance will be a must-see event, after which we will, no doubt, emerge blinking into the cold light of day, shedding our telecasters in order to purchase violins (there’ll be a violin vendor there, right?).

Hockey – Saturday
Even though their Portland funkiness features complaints about having to go to church, working, and people “faking” positions on things (neatly sidestepping issues of quid pro quo and the social contract), Hockey certainly have an emotive, funky, synthy appeal to the teenaged, skinny jeans-wearing hipster within (although not necessarily the comfortably-trousered old fogey without). And even though they occasionally indicate familiarity with the seedier side of street life (a la the Velvet Underground), I suspect they’re all nice boys really. They’re certainly hard grinding musos with a synthy bounce and a guitary grind and, I hear, a rambunctious live sound. Hockey is funky.

Howling Bells – Friday
Here at Hot Press we’re not usually ones to resort to national stereotypes, but Australian band Howling Bells quite wonderfully combine the echoey drumbeats of Midnight Oil, the slick synthy productions of INXS, and the southern-gothic-obsessed croon of a feminine Nick Cave. The fact is, despite their hip reputation, the quartet manage to conjure up the spirit of all of these fellow Antipodean acts, albeit in a strange, dusty, countrified and more lady-like incarnation. And the end result falls easily and relaxedly somewhere between Mazzy Star and Goldfrapp, as singer Juanita Stein croaks and croons, her brother Joel picks out Ennio Morricone-inspired guitar lines, and the engineer adds reverb to taste.

Will and the People – Saturday
Will Rendle is an upbeat and precocious English youngster who culled a bunch of promising young musicians from a music college in Brighton and formed them into unashamed fashionably-haircutted purveyors of popular song. It’s upbeat crunchy reggae-lite for people who like Britpop-era Blur. They’re on this list because we reckon that upbeat English Reggae is probably the perfect genre to listen to when it should be sunny but isn’t, which is a pretty typical festival condition here in Ireland.

Little Boots – Saturday
Stock, Aitken and Waterman were much maligned and underestimated Machiavellian purveyors of manipulative programmatic pop tune-age in the late eighties, and Little Boots is clearly an admirer. The electro-popstress and darling of broadsheet culture journalists understands that unashamedly commercial pop music about nights on the town and bad boyfriends are just what the people need in these straitened times. Lest you think it was going to be all beardy music nerds gathered at the Hot Press stage, Little Boots will also be there to pop your world and fill that giant Kylie-shaped hole in the heart that develops after two days of rock.