‘This is the warmest welcome we’ve ever had,” says Sprints singer Karla Chubb as the Dublin four-piece play End of the Road’s bursting and sweaty Big Top. It’s a feeling echoed throughout the weekend: Bill Ryder-Jones declares EOTR his favourite gig of the year as he plays a sun-drenched Garden stage in a set that is dripping with palpable melancholy as much as it is understated beauty and quiet triumph, especially during an intensely moving and sweeping version of This Can’t Go on.
That enthusiasm from performers comes in response to a crowd who seem perpetually up for it, whether it is the filthy, riotous techno/acid house workout from Paranoid London or Lankum’s transition to headlining stages – a beautiful thing to behold. Playing to a huge audience, including perhaps to their youngest ever fan, a two-month-old baby, they open with a stretched out version of The Wild Rover and build up drones and engulfing atmospherics with slow, steady, yet often brutal intensity. It’s a masterful execution that is as weighty and dense as it is sparse and restrained.
