Witnness: Saturday Evening ...

Relish

Heavy sunlight on hard tarmac as Relish pump out their patented and polished West Coast funk ‘n’ harmonies fusion thang on the Up stage. Crisp backbeats, quasi falsetto soul vocals, jazzy electric piano and chicky-chicky guitar licks make the Downpatrick quartet perfect fodder for folk who consider hardcore punk and hip-hop as historic aberrations. ‘Rainbow Zephyr’ could be a Lenny Kravitz lyric channelled through the Isleys’ valve amps, while ‘Heart Shaped Box’ evokes Curtis rather than Kurt. Not a bad thing necessarily – there’s very little nitpicking to be done in terms of craft. But if you prefer your rock ‘n’ roll raw and insurrectionist, look elsewhere. At their best Relish are a hit of sunshine, and their worst, a Steve Miller Band revival.

Mundy

Like him or not, Mundy’s Witnness set last year was one of the highlights by anyone’s yardstick. This year he’s well up for a rematch and an upgrade, ambling onto the main stage in white Stetson and 70s cosmic cowboy apparel. The keyboard player has stumbled out of a similar time warp, resplendent, if that’s the word, in Sam Cutler chic, with sheepskin jerkin and green top hat. Pity his theremin was inaudible, ‘cos he sure can throw the shapes.
But never mind the threads, check the tunes. The Birr boy has pruned the lyrical excesses of yesteryear to come up with a set of trim, no bullshit angst-pop standards. Sure, at his best he’s very much in Frames mode, but he’s also well able to evoke the small print of the heart, tales of high infidelities and forbidden kisses. A shrewd cover of The Doors’ ‘Touch Me’ hit the spot mid-set, as did the stadium dynamics of ‘Gin &Tonic Sky’. Plus, his tejano routine about going to Mexico is the best song Jakob Dylan never wrote, and ‘To You I bestow has put on muscle with age.
Result for the man with the red telecaster.

Sugababes

It’s rarely dull when a groomed girl group engages with the festival experience. When it doesn’t work it’s a painful mismatch, when it does it’s a valuable drop of glamour in a predominantly white male indie gene pool.
But the Sugababe babes have no end of guts, moxy, oomph and chutzpah, plus an unfeasible and indefinable gorgeousness. They coax the crowd’s goodwill early on with the smoky funk-pop of ‘Overload’ and ‘Blue’, and while the sound is undoubtedly sequenced and sequinned, the presence of a real live plexiglassed drummer – plus a bunch of musos who know when to keep their chops in their pants – adds bite.
So, they do panto patter, they do bump and grind, they do ballads that translate into Latin, they do the sublime ‘Stronger’, with its feel-so-bad-it’s- good chorus and killer vocal vamps. And then they do ‘Freak Like Me’, which is up there with ‘Teen Spirit’ and Anarchy In The UK in terms of classic singles.
You could say they got away with it.

The Roots
Meanwhile, down at the Up stage, The Roots. Now some of us prefer our hip-hop noxious rather than conscious. We like it when it digs dirty blues rather than godly gospel. We get more of a voyeuristic kick out of Stagger Lee than MLK. Having said that, The Roots deliver the goods in such a combative fashion that they could recite Cliff Richard lyrics (not that outlandish an idea – they interpolate The Shadows’ ‘Apache’ into one tune) and make it sound like Chuck D’s not in love. The dual rhythm assault of trap kit and percussion and the insistent Funkadelic riffs add up to a pretty formidable assault on the senses, and if late arrival on stage makes for a frantic line-check and robust mix, it also lens their performance a nervy edge.

To read Phil Udell's early hours reviews go here