The Coronas and All Tvvins Make It A Day To Remember At Indiependence

Year on year, Irish festivals face a battle with one common and prevalent enemy: the weather. As a seventeen year-old, full of post-Leaving Cert optimism for impending adult life, I hopped on the bus to Mitchelstown for my first festival experience.

Let's just say that I became very acquainted with the Cork mud at Indiependence 2012 – and seriously developed my calf muscles with all the attendant squelching through the quagmire.

This year though, the festival seems to have been much better prepared for the return of my old friend. It hasn’t been especially rainy, but there has been serous squalls. Their effects have been negated, however, by the installation of plastic walkways. It’s a simple step, but – as we’ve seen with the recent fiascos at Truck and Y Not festivals in the UK – it’s not one promoters are always willing to take. The good news is that Indiependence have no problem sacrificing a chunk of their profit for the comfort of the punter.

“We’re gonna go full stadium,” Fangclub frontman Steven King grinned halfway through their stint on the IMRO Big Top. For their first live set after the release of their self-titled debut, the three-piece were in fine form – their crushing riffs made it difficult to disagree with King’s pronouncement. Last time I caught them, they were supporting The Pixies at Trinity College, and they seemed unable to really stamp their personality on the big occasion – but here, in more intimate confines, they really had fun, as King closed the show by playing on the barrier for ‘Bullet Head’.

A sometime lecturer in architecture in UCC, Eoin French of Talos is a man who understands space perfectly. He knows that his compositions from debut album Wild Alee are built for spaces like the IMRO Big Top, and his confidence in them shone through, particularly when he set instrument aside and became a true frontman and bandleader, standing confrontationally at the front of the stage or conducting his bandmates with a drumstick as they bowed guitars, bass and cellos. His belief added a human warmth to songs that can be sparse and coldly constructed at times, and elevated a good set to great. Songs like ‘Contra’ and ‘Tethered Bones’ are destined for bigger stages than this.

Indiependence may well be a little outpost of Terenure for the weekend as it’s pretty much a hometown gig for regular headliners and current Hot Press cover stars The Coronas. The band and the festival have grown almost hand-in-hand, and their main stage headline slot is a perfect showcase for how big both have become. It helps, too, when your manager is among the people who run the festival – the production budget was thrown at them, with lasers, balloons, CO2 and confetti cannons on show.

It all only accentuates the power and showmanship of Danny O’Reilly – whatever the critics may think of The Coronas, you just can’t keep choruses like those on ‘Heroes and Ghosts’ and ‘Someone Else’s Hands’ away from stages like this. Going by this showing, Croke Park is a reasonable target for them.

“We’d like to welcome on stage our special guest,” Conor Adams announced. “I can’t see who it is, it’s too pixellated – is it David Beckham?” Someone’s thrown a cardboard cut-out of a generic handsome white celeb in shorts onstage – guesses range from Beckham to Fassbender to Chris Pratt. Whoever it is, All Tvvins had no need of anyone else's star power to close out the IMRO Big Top: they have a serious arsenal of well-constructed, upbeat pop songs and an electric live presence, given added urgency in the form of livewire guitarist Lar Kaye. ‘Thank You’ and ‘Darkest Ocean’ were highlights, and judging by the smattering of fine new songs played, they’re certain future headliners.

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• Stephen Keegan