Live at Electric Picnic: Sunday

Day Three starts with a visit to the Crawdaddy stage where Florence Walsh is achieving the impossible by wearing a gold lamé dress that’s even shorter than the one sported last year in the same tent by Jenny Lewis. Equal parts Aretha Franklin, Sandy Denny and Kate Nash, Ms. Walsh and her band The Machine peddle a neat line in shouty, folk-inflected pop with the politically incorrect ‘Kiss With A Fist (Is Better Than None)’ a top 10 hit waiting to happen.
Light relief required, we debunk to the Comedy Tent where Roscommon funnywoman (no, it’s not an oxymoron) Eleanor Tiernan is getting plenty of laughs with a routine about Irish models and how un-super they are, which you just wish that Glenda and the girls were there to see.
After spending a very pleasant five minutes in one of the deluxe Velvet Toilet Paper portaloos with The Sunday Times, it’s turn right at the topiary elephant and left at the six blokes dressed as bananas (only at the Picnic!) to get to The Cosby Stage where Memphis Industries recording artistes Absentees are doing their off-kilter pop thing with gruff Tom Waits-ian vocal aplomb. Definitely ones to check out when they play their own headline show in Whelan’s on October 2.
Having yawned my way through the first part of Adrian Crowley’s set in the Little Big Tent, it’s off to the Electric Arena where Hercules & Love Affair are throwing the mother of all sleazy ‘70s block parties. No one in Stradbally this weekend manages to out-foxxx Nomi, the collective’s thermonuclear-lunged transgender singer who stirs emotions in me that have lain dormant since Bowie did ‘Starman’ on Top Of The Pops. If only they dealt in tunes rather than everything including the kitchen sink jams, Andy Butler’s mob would be the best band on the planet.
The retro vibe continues on the Main Stage where Candi Staton and her seriously cooking band, which includes former Style Councilor Mick Talbot are getting all Southern soul on yo ass (I think that’s what young people say nowadays). A wonderfully warm stage presence, the Alabama diva rolls back the years with renditions of ‘Nights On Broadway’, ‘In The Ghetto’ and – swoon – ‘Young Hearts Run Free’ that explain why Will Oldham, Lambchop and other alt. luminaries have been queing up to work with her.
The Main Stage baton is passed on to The Congos, arguably the bounciest, smiliest, most roots radical outfit to tread the boards here since Bob & The Wailers at Dalymount in 1980.
The above qualities can also be attributed to Michael Franti & Spearhead whose celebratory ‘Rude Boys Are Back In Town’ and reclaiming of ‘Pass The Dutchie’ from Musical Youth are the cue for the Laois clouds to part, the sun to come out and pale Irish flesh to turn a none too delicate shade of lobster.
I’m so enraptured by the punky reggae party unfolding in front of me that I forget the time and end up having to Usain Bolt my way to the Hot Press Chatroom where I’ve a six o’clock with ?uestlove from The Roots, whose hip hop tales – see News for a sample – are the perfect antidote to Henry Rollins’ boorish rants on the neigbouring Theatre Stage.
?uest does his own impression of an Olympic sprinter to get to the Main Stage in time for a set that Michael Franti, bottle of champagne in hand, suprises everyone by introducing. A throwback to the golden age of rap positivity, the Philadelphia collective’s yo, ho and bitch-free rhymes are underpinned by the funkiest souzaphone player you’ve ever clapped ears on.
While John Lydon is getting his Rotten pantomime gear on, the man who was nearly Sid, Jah Wobble, is gracing the IMC World Music Stage with his new Chinese Dub outfit who, with the exception of the yangqin player, look like vacationing university lecturers. The handful of Pistols fans present are perplexed, but everyone else gets off on their inspired genre-bending.
Underwhelmed by My Bloody Valentine in the Electric Arena – they’ve a triumphant Irish homecoming in them but this isn’t it – I return to the Main Stage where Beth Ditto is paying tribute to Grace Jones with a karaoke version of ‘Pull Up To The Bumper’ that cleverly segues in to Talking Heads’ ‘Psycho Killer’. I’m no great fan of Gossip – too one-trick pony for me – but Ditto is a star of the Janis Joplin old school.
Which brings us to the Sex Pistols whose presence at the Picnic has caused so much outrage in indie schmindie bloggerland. If bands exhuming their back catalogue for six-figure sums is so abhorrent, why haven’t Kevin Shields & Co. copped for the same vitriol? Just a thought.
Arriving on stage to the strains of ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling’, the Pistols tease with a country bumpkin pisstake version of ‘Pretty Vacant’ (thanks for the description Ruraidh) before launching into the real thing watched stage-right by 20 or so bemused members of an Garda Siochana.
For all of Lydon/Rotten making a complete plonker of himself every time he opens his mouth, and Jonesy looking like the before part of a Slimfast ad, the Pistols’ noise remains as gloriously ‘fuck off!’ as ever.

My Bloody Valentine
Electric Arena
The earplugs are handed out for My Bloody Valentine. We don’t get much more from Kevin Shields than “hi” and then that enormous vicious wall of white noise, but that’s ok. It’s a different beast to their earlier reunion shows: the setting less controlled, the occasion not as unique. Up close it’s an impossible feat of endurance, and those who are out of their depth are easily spotted. The middle of the tent, though, is where the music shimmers and the light show makes sense. There’s no compromise whatsoever here: no effort at showmanship, no sense of the festival. Opener ‘When You Sleep’ begins the onslaught, and much of Loveless is aired. ‘Only Shallow’ is a savage gem: “I’ve waited sixteen years to hear that song live,” shouts one punter, finger in ears. The wings of the stage tell another story: from Grinderman to Louis Walsh, a lot of people have waited sixteen years to hear that song live. Their set ends with the by now traditional ‘white noise holocaust section’, a.k.a. a 16-minute version of ‘You Made Me Realise’, which separates the faithful from the curious.