In The Meadows – Festival Review

Saturday, 8 June 2024, 3.00pm @ The Royal Hospital, Kilmainham

We need to tip the cap to whoever put this lineup of bands together. With artists such as Lankum, Mogwai, Black Country, New Road, John Francis Flynn, and This Is The Kit, this is one of the best festival schedules in recent years. And so it proved on a sunny day in Dublin…

The festival took place a week after Forbidden Fruit and used the same stages and tents. There were three stages, with the main outdoor East Stage, and two indoor stages; the West Stage and a smaller stage for new bands called ‘In the Middle’.

The main stage opened with Cormac Begley, with a collection of tunes played on a multitude of concertinas. He owns fourteen in total and showed a number of them to the audience during his set. The tunes all came with a story, including the tale of his first love, a girl he fell in love with in kindergarten. The woman in question was later convicted of murdering her husband, but Cormac was saved from this grisly fate as his family moved to Kerry before their relationship could blossom. His skill with the concertina is obvious to all, and he would make an appearance later in the day with headliners Lankum.

John Francis Flynn was the second act on the West Stage, and there was a huge crowd there to see his band with many sitting outside the tent. His latest album Look Over the Wall, See the Sky was released at the tail end of last year and is his best to date. The set featured some of its finest songs including The Zoological Gardens and his innovative version of Dirty Old Town.

This is the Kit recently headlined the National Concert Hall in Dublin and they were next up on the main stage. It was a nice slow set that suited the relaxed vibe on a sunny afternoon. Mercury Rev were next up on the West Stage and played an incredibly loud set including many of their favourites, dating back to Deserter Songs, with Goddess on a Hiway and Holes. The band formed in 1989 in Buffalo, New York and despite various lineup changes, Jonathan Donohue and his crew know how to work an audience.

Mogwai were next on the main stage and they played a 12-song set that moved through their entire career. They included songs from 1997’s Young Team (Yes! I Am a Long Way from Home) to Hunted by a Freak (from Happy Songs For Happy People). It was a set that would entertain the Mogwai purist along with those new to the band.  They closed the set with a banging rendition of Old Poisons from Every Country’s Sun.

The biggest surprise of the day was the performance of Black Country, New Road. It was the first time I’d seen them since the departure of their lead singer Isaac Wood and they are barely recognisable with a change away from guitar music, sounding closer to Sufjan Stevens with piano, flute and vocal harmonies. Their sound might confuse some of their older fans, but it is an interesting departure.

The final band of the evening was of course Lankum, and while it was a festival, it did feel like most people were there to see the headline act. They opened the set with Go Dig My Grave from their recent album False Lankum. It opens with the haunting vocals of Radie Peat which received a huge ovation from the audience. The band were not quite as chatty as normal, saying they had a lot of music to pack into their set, but they did find time to champion their cause of the moment, with Palestinian flags and scarves in evidence. They were joined on stage by the aforementioned Cormac Begley for Master Crowley’s. Another surprise was the addition of their producer John ‘Spud’ Murphy to their on-stage lineup. They finished the set with The Turn before returning for a two-song encore including crowd favourite The Wild Rover.

An annoying aspect of many festivals is the bands play short sets. For whatever reason, the bands played full-length sets at this event and there was barely a bad performance on the day. With an emphasis on modern Trad bands, it did feel like quite a special homegrown occasion. There is no word whether the festival was a one-off, or if we can expect another rendition next year but we live in hope…