There were supposed to be tornadoes but all we get on Day One of Indiependence is sun, good vibes and even better music. Main Stage kicking-off duties fall to Tarantella Fall, four men in black who on songs such as ‘Home’ sound like a rootsier REM. Despite the considerable handicap of having Hot Press-er Graham Keogh on bass – you really can’t get the staff these days, can you lads? – by the end of their polished set they’ve added a couple of hundred people to their fan club.

Taken over for the night by the good folk from the Sargent House – great label, crap spelling – the Big Top doesn’t so much burst as blitzkrieg into life with No Spill Blood, a homegrown proggy techno metal outfit who, keeping their options wide open, also have a pop sensibility.

More meat ‘n’ two veg hardcore are Funeral For A Friend whose cluster of fans include a teenage twosome in full corpse paint. Watching them replicate singer Matthew Davies-Kreye’s kangohammer dance moves is a joy to behold.
There are healthy Bier Halle Stage crowds for Slow Skies who have a bit of a Portishead thing going on – I’m not complaining! – and Walking On Cars who a wag next to me renames Bell X2. A lack of originality – there are also traces of Kodaline and Coldplay in their DNA – doesn’t matter when you’ve songs as insanely hummable as ‘Two Stones’ in your arsenal. A good looking bunch who know how to work a room/barn, you wouldn’t bet against the Dingle Peninsulars having a major label deal by Christmas.

We Are Scientists looked like a band running on empty when I last saw them in 2008. Tonight though they’re nerd rockers reborn with psychedelic-tinged newbie ‘Let Me Win’ suggesting the best is still to come from the Brooklyn residents.
Sadly the same can’t be said of The Fratellis whose boogie is strictly of the leaden barroom variety. For all of their bluster, ‘Chelsea Dagger’ is the only time when the Scots genuinely manage to excite.

It’s a charge that can’t be levelled at Bosnian Rainbows, the dream/nightmare pop outfit formed by former Mars Volta men Omar Rodríguez-López and Deantoni Parks and who boast the considerable vocal and theatrical shape-throwing talents of Teri Gender-Bender (possibly not her real name). A Mexican cross between Bjork and Courtney Love, she turns the Big Top into her personal stamping, strutting and crowd surfing playground. Best band of the day by a country mile.

Which isn’t to say that And So I Watch You From Afar aren’t as pulverisingly wonderful as usual – this was a mosh I was delighted to be caught in – or that De La Soul didn’t deliver some joyous old skool hip hop entertainment. The former have weathered the loss of founder member Tony Wright and come out the other side arguably an even more thrilling live act while the latter are a Californian summer block party on six legs. The Long Islanders stopped being innovative around 1991, but in terms of pure entertainment they’re priceless.

Let us also praise Indiepedence’s crowd control operatives whose good-natured marshalling of the sometimes tired and emotional was top notch.