Anyone assuming summer rock festivals are always riddled with Glasto-style cliches of muddy fields akin to the worst atrocities of the Somme is in for a pleasant surprise with West Cork's burgeoning X South West Festival. With its' impressive line-up featuring the best of everything aesthetic from a mobile cinema through to the cleanest portaloos this festival veteran has experienced and food vans offering the best of the slow food revolution, it really does live up to the old cliche of 'something for everyone' in the best possible sense of the term.
This is only the festival's second year, but if it can continue in this vein, then the organisers are on to a winner. Sure, the swathes of blue sky are a help, but the W&H contingent are made to feel welcome as soon as we walk through the turnstiles and given the choice of main stage, De Barra's Sitting Room, Rula Bula tent or something more esoteric courtesy of a programme kicking off at a generous 2pm.
A quick confab and we're soon ensconced amid the sofas and standard lamps of the De Barra's Sitting Room stage, where W&H favourites Stanley Super 800's offshoot THE CEILI ALLSTARS are already digging deep down into the best of the Irish folk tradition. They're a five-man team today, with Stan moving from guitar to violin, Flor swapping bass for acoustic guitar/ vocals and Tosh excelling on banjo.
They're augmented by bouzouki and bodhran and while they're working from within the most ancient of folk traditions, the sound they create is rich and multi-layered and spins into spaces all its' own. The tunes are predominantly instrumental work-outs which leave plenty of room for Stan's dextrous fiddle to weave in and out an the bodhran to fill out the bottom end, but the vocal tunes ('Mary & The Soldier' and the chilling 'The Blacksmith') are also delivered with depth, drama and passion and by the time they've wrapped it up they've laid down a truly inspirational gauntlet.
Already buzzing though it's barely 3pm, W&H wander off for the first of three visits to the cinema. The schedule's on a par with the live music spread across the three stages and one of the programme's highlights is surely Philip King's 2001 documentary 'Freedom Highway' which charts a course through the 20th century's most resonant political songs. It features both vintage footage of the likes of Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger and startling live acoustic performances from Ani Di Franco, a suitably grizzled Tom Waits and Elvis Costello's charged rendition of U2's 'Please'. It's by no means comprehensive, but for anyone keen to discover how Woody Guthrie influenced Bob Dylan who then in turn influenced The Byrds and on down the line, it's a seriously informative place to start and works beautifully in terms of both education and entertainment.
After the dark confines of the cinema, a shufti at the Main Stage seems like a good idea, not least because the mid-afternoon sunshine also brings with it the promise of a set from hotly-tipped Dubliner Richie Egan, aka JAPE. W&H must confess we're more familiar with Egan's post-rock shenanigans as The Redneck Manifesto, but his reputation precedes thanks to the success of the trippily enjoyable 'Floating' and there's a sizeable crowd amassing before Egan and his drumming sidekick even play a note.
Not that the attention seems to sit too easily on Egan's shoulders. He spends an interminable half hour soundchecking and mutters nervously about this being the “first time I've ever played sober at this hour.” Initially, his nerves seem to win out, too, for his set starts out jittery and unfocussed and it takes the hypnotic, Eastern-influenced strains of 'Floating' to set the ship on course. It's hardly plain sailing even after that, although songs like 'Technology' and the closing 'I Am A Man' get the quirky, electro-tinged pop balance just about right. I'm still not entirely convinced by him by the time he leaves the stage in mild triumph, but I guess anyone with the gall to write songs about smoking teabags and “losing my cherry to 'November Rain'” deserves a second chance to shine. Let's take a raincheck on Jape for now.
Back in the De Barra's sitting room, deceptively dynamic duo JUNO FALLS provide us with a far more convincing quirk-out option. They get us onside immediately with a bizarre, but utterly magnificent looped-vocal a capella rendition of Paul Simon's 'You Can Call Me Al', only to drag us into far deeper, avant-garde waters with a couple of starsailing tunes which showcase vocalist Myles' impressive, Tim Buckley-style vocal range before tempting us back again with a hilarious Tim Easton drug song with more chemical references than Queens Of The Stone Age's notorious 'Feel Good Hit Of The Summer'. It's a curious and exotic seduction which could easily be that bit too eclectic in less capable hands, yet seems just right in this context, even if they do cock up their final number. Oh well. Shit happens, right?
A second visit to the gourmet sausage stall, a run in with Poteen-strength Ginseng and the mild disappointment of Johnny Gogan's rather less than comprehensive overview of Cathal Coughlan's fascinating career in 'The Adventures Of Flannery' at the cinema then precede one of the festival's major highlights: an all-too brief Main Stage appearance from Calgary's most potent Alt. Country force THE AGNOSTIC MOUNTAIN GOSPEL CHOIR.
Even if you've never heard a note of their music before, it must be said the Agnostics are visually arresting enough to draw in the even the most casual observer. Heavily bearded singer Judd Palmer leads from the front, plucking a mean, 'Deliverance'-style banjo, bassist Vlad Sobolewski towers over his stand-up bass and coaxes noises closer to an orchestra comprised of bastard files out of his instrument rather than regular basslines and drummer Pete Balkwill is dwarfed behind the most bizarre kit your reviewer has ever clapped peepers on. For the uninitiated, his bass drum and hi-hat are standard issue, but regular rack toms have been replaced by a giant second bass drum and crash cymbals are entirely forsaken for something that looks like the mutation of an army helmet and a giant bike bell.
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As you might imagine, such sonic ingredients mix together something that little bit different and before long, the Agnostics are calling up a mighty roots-influenced thunder. Yes, the cloaked spectre of Appalachian folk hovers most of the time, despite the band's Canadian background, but on songs like the rickety lurch of “The Boig”, they can give talented fellow countrymen like Fred Eaglesmith a run for their money and on further backwoods highlights like 'O Sorrow' and the clap-tastic 'Go Back Home' they create something malicious and tremendous that's all their own. Throw in the seething, malevolent Son House blues they can also crank out when Palmer joins Bob Keelaghan on guitar and the deranged call'n'response routine they dredge up on 'Life Is Long' and you have something potent indeed. The only thing that disappoints is the fact they leave as quickly as they arrived after barely 35 minutes. But hell, leave 'em wanting more and all that, huh?
The abrupt cessation of the Agnostics' set leaves W&H in something of a quandary, though, as the De Barra's stage is currently housing a rapturously-received set by LUKA BLOOM. This well-respected singer/songwriter has a partisan following in this area and all his West Cork appearances are 'celebratory' to say the least. Although not as transcendent as he was years back when I saw him at France's Transmusicales, he's still pretty damn good tonight, too, with a set that takes in the typically moving (a new song of great tenderness about the recent death of a good friend), the peculiar ( a weirdly successful cover of Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton's 'Islands In The Stream') and collaborations with local singer/songwriter Gavin Moore which are received with equal enthusiasm. Bloom's pedigree and hardcore following could just as easily have suggested a Main Stage outing, but the intimacy of the De Barra's stage is arguably more memorable, even if we the crush to leave the building and the set over-running manage to ensure we miss most of AFEL BOCOUM & ALKIBAR'S supple African sounds.
So with dark descending, we're left with further decisions. The efficient, commercial pop sheen of CATHY DAVEY on the main stage? The pounding strains of ANDREW WEATHERALL'S headlining set in the dance-enhanced Rula Bula stage or hang around to see the Punk documentary 'Shellshock Rock' in the cinema? In the end, we plump for a bit of all three. Cathy Davey is familiar from FM land even if most of her songs are interchangeable and she works a crowd with considerable pizazz; Andy Weatherall's set is monstrously loud and while it's both seamlessly executed and revisits his influential past, it's only of passing interest to W&H. Instead, we make a third pilgrimage to the cinema for John T. Davis's warts'n'all 'Shellschock Rock' documentary about the movers and shakers of Punk Rock in Northern Ireland.
Inevitably there's rare footage of The Undertones and SLF (the latter blazing through an incendiary 'Alternative Ulster'), but also lesser known lights such as Rudi, The Idiots and even The Parasites, whose lumpen two-chord thrash makes Crass seem like ELO. In the spirit of the era, Davis shot it predominantly on Super 8 (like Dom Shaw's 'Rough Cut & Ready Dubbed') and it captures both the desperation and sheer excitement of the time to a T.
Fittingly, it ends with Good Vibrations' supremo Terri Hooley barely able to control his enthusiasm in taking the independent game to the Major labels and giving them the fright of their lives. OK, we live in different times these days whether we like it or not, but quietly a similar maverick spirit lives on in events like Cork X Southwest and if the sheer enjoyment of this day can be carried forward, we have the makings of an important rock'n'roll calendar event building up down here in West Cork. Respect due to all involved.
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