Saturday at Vantastival 2014 by Keith Crurrams
If the Friday evening of Vantastival was like the first day of summer – all sunshine and groovy tunes and chilled drinks – Saturday morning broke like a return to winter. Sullen grey skies greeted the campers, threatening heavy rain to come very soon.

Not that this held up the festivities in anyway. Over on the Musicmaker grotto stage the unflappably cheerful folk duo Gigabyte brought their own sunshine with them; giving it socks through a spirited set of upbeat harmony driven acoustic pop numbers. The weather didn’t hold them back, and neither did a few teething problems from the sound desk. The set culminated with a preview of their forthcoming EP ‘War’ and, if it sounds as good on tape as it does live, it’ll be one to watch out for.

If Gigabyte brought their own sun the act that followed them practically reveled in the drizzly overcast gloom. Channeling the gothic creepiness of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Rufus Coates and the Blackened Trees delivered a funereal blues-y dirge, shot through with spooky vocals and chilling lyrics like “Darkness falls/ everybody knows/ it’s all downhill from here”, which was oddly appropriate for the afternoon’s weather.

After that it would have been easy to go back to our tents and brood over cans of beer for a few hours, but over on the main stage The Twisted Sisters provided a nice dose of giddy cheekiness to get us back in the party mood once more. The middle-aged yet still glamorous Armagh sisters delivered a crowd-rousing stormer, with songs like a Big Knickers (“I don’t wanna die in big knickers/ that I’m ashamed to hang on the line”) and a love song dedicated to the clitoris.

As the day wore on a steady stream of fresh festival goers arrived, but the weather didn’t show much sign of improving. One result of this was the fact that our own stage at the Vantastibar (in association with the Spirit Store), located inside a cosy tent complete with warm armchairs and cold pints straight from an actual tap, was tightly packed for most of the day.

The highlight of the Saturday on the GoldenPlec stage was Mongoose, on their second set of the day after opening up the main stage. The jazz-folk four-piece brought a more low-fi vibe to their unplugged set, which ended up lacking the energy to really engage a packed tent filled with chatter.

Slow Burning Feeling is a superb song, but it’s intimate delivery with all four voices lapping elegantly, but quietly, over each other may not have been entirely suited to this particular audience. Fortunately Mongoose more than made up for this with their final song – a cover of a certain Divine Comedy song by the name of My Lovely Horse that was insanely crowd-pleasing for some reason…

Over on the main stage things were moving up a gear in a buildup to the day’s headliners. From Mutefish’s psychedelic prog rock freakout, complete with a shirtless trad flute wielding frontman, to the feel good reggae vibes of The Barely Mob that had old fans and new alike singing along and jumping up and down, the party atmosphere was developing apace, cold and rain be damned.

Meanwhile, on the Vanhalla stage, I’d Fight Ghandi were turning things up loud with their groove and rap fuelled brand of heavy metal. The five-piece band were all sporting One Direction t-shirts, each one bearing a chest sized headshot of one of the 1D boys. It was an odd sight to see five grown men tearing up their instruments and alternating between rapped, sung and screamed vocals with such pure metal fury while so attired, but in a place like Vantastival very little would seem out of the ordinary.

Back on the main stage The Hot Sprockets were barnstorming their way through their own brand of rollicking blues rock. The band are no strangers to the festival scene, and know how to inject equal measures of unabashed rocking out and infectious good time vibes into their set. The pure knees up that is Soul Brother saw the band dancing across the strange, stomping their feet, bashing away at their instruments and generally letting their hair down. New single Shake Me Off meanwhile provided a hint that the young Sprockets still have plenty of fresh tricks up their frilly sleeves.

Once The Hot Sprockets vacated the main stage all that was left to do was wait for the night’s headline act. Fight like Apes teased their audience in with a wall of feedback and a serious amount of electronic foreplay, before bursting into a hi-kicking rendition of Do You Karate?

Dressed in a black dress and sparking gold tights, MayKay launched herself around the stage with fierce lack of restraint, while Pockets slugged from a bottle of Buckfast between songs, eventually resorting to using the bottle as a drumstick to bash one of the support poles of the marquee tent. Lend Me Your Face and Jake Summers amped the energy up even further, with MayKay diving down into the crowd and handing over the mic to a member for the crowd for the chorus of the latter.

FLApes burned through their songs with such sheer intensity that it was bound to wane eventually, and sure enough it did. When they debuted a couple of new tracks from the latest EP ‘Whigfield Sex Tape’, the new stuff just didn’t ring as true as their earlier material, either because of lack of recognition, or because the material just isn’t as good; possibly a combination of both.

But as headline act FLApes bring such explosive chaos to the stage that they’re hard to compare to. Even on the off songs the band were throwing everything they had into being as over the top as possible. Holding back didn’t seem to be an option. No matter how long the day was or how tired the legs, there was no excuse not to go nuts along with them – which wasn’t a bad way to round out day two of Vantastival at all.

Vantastival Saturday Photo Gallery

Photos: Keith Currams