Electric Picnic Live Report: MUNA deliver a solidly energetic performance at Rankin's Wood

MUNA has been giving Ireland some love in the last week: from opening for boygenius on Monday night as part of their European tour to playing a headline show in Belfast on Thursday, this is their third (third!) Irish show in five days.

I was lucky enough to attend their opener set on Monday and wrote a live review in which I admitted that I’d kept forgetting I was only watching an opener and not the headline show itself. But after their Electric Picnic performance, I now realise that they’d been holding back: the energy in the Rankin’s Wood tent was electric as they played to an audience made up of a majority of fans there to see just them.

They blasted onto the stage with the banging ‘What I Want’, a queer club anthem that set an electric tone for the rest of the show. Gavin introduced ‘Solid’ as a love song, following it with the energetic ‘Runner’s High’ that left few feet still on the floor.

MUNA at Electric Picnic 2023. Miguel Ruiz.

A thought that struck me during their set was that the members of MUNA are as if a boyband was made for a specifically queer audience. The three members are all heartthrobs in their own unique ways; frontwoman Katie Gavin beamed as she danced around the stage, guitarist Jo Maskin screamed the lyrics along with the audience seeming to know exactly how good she looked holding the guitar, and Naomi McPherson was cool as a cucumber while girls clamoured to hold their attention.

They all seemed to be having the time of their lives. During ‘Home By Now’, Gavin and Maskin were barely able to keep it together as they ran around the stage locked in a quickly intensifying ass-slap battle. They all seemed genuinely regretful when revealing that this was the last show on this tour, and it was clear that they were just as big a fan of their own band as the people in the crowd.

MUNA at Electric Picnic 2023. Miguel Ruiz.

They dedicated 'I Know A Place' to all of the "queer and trans lovelies" in the audience, to a deafening cheer. They clearly know their audience.

The set ended with what is perhaps their most well-known song, ‘Silk Chiffon’, and they dedicated it to everyone named Siobhan in the audience as a coy play on the title: 'She's so soft like silk Siobhan.' Gavin got a kick out of it. McPherson then took over the second verse typically reserved for boygenius’ Phoebe Bridgers, adding some beautiful riffs to the solo with their impressive and under-utilised vocal abilities.

As they finally walked off the stage to deafening noise, Gavin left the crowd with a final introduction that would be self-aggrandising if it wasn’t completely true- true, at least, in that moment.

“Thank you so much, we are MUNA, the best band in the world!”

Stay tuned for more live reports, photos and all things Electric Picnic, live from Stradbally.