Glasto. Oxegen. Picnic. The Clogherhead Prawn Festival. It seems like every year, our favourite festivals, be they big, small or crustacean-based, veer further and further away from the original blueprint, that is, the one set by the Daddy of all festivals, Woodstock.
These days, if you endeavour to kip in a field for a weekend, you’re more likely to see hipsters than hippies, skinny jeans than skinny-dipping and silent discos than dreamcatcher workshops. Your average festival site is equipped with ATM machines, hair salons and phone charging doodads, but these amenities become a distant memory once you step through the gates at Ballinlough Castle. Yup, teepee for teepee, soap bubble for soap bubble, the Body And Soul Gathering provides one of the few vintage festival experiences in the country.
For an event of its size, Body And Soul boasts a fairly solid line-up, but its children are hardly motivated by a tasty headliner or hotly-tipped up-and-comer. They’re all too busy doing precisely what they want, and if that means missing every single act on the bill to do a spot of Yoga on the grass, then so be it. This slightly lackadaisical attitude towards the tunes has its upsides though – the bulk of the punters are off exploring the surrounding nooks and crannies (the craft stalls, travelling minstrels and circus performances could easily pad out this review to a couple of pages), so you’ve got more space to thrash your arms about to the music.
Our first raconteur of the weekend is festival alumni Lisa Hannigan who offers a typically delicate performance, aided by Gavin Glass on guitar, the delightful John Smith on vocals and her trusty harmonium. “Have a brilliant festival,” she purrs before exiting stage right, “and say yes to all adventures!”
As it happens, this is perfect advice. The miraculous break in a week-long downpour gives the feeling that some great, bearded lever-puller has chosen to bless the festival, and that not a minute should be wasted. Non-headliners who impress on our personal adventures include ‘90s covers mob Attention Bébé in the forest and the impossibly tight Torann Drummers in the Orchard.
Back on the main stage, old school electro rockers Lamb crank out songs spanning their 15-year career, but while Lou Rhodes’ vocals are in staggering form, all this willowy trip hop only partially captures the crowd’s imagination. Cork-based beat man Toby Kaar on the other hand, has revellers in a stone cold trance over in the Merkaba tent. Even his self-touted “works in progress” bear impossibly slick grooves, mixing in seamlessly with the rest of his throbbing, wordless
hip-house.
Then it’s up to Canada’s Holy Fuck to engage a restless crowd at the Main Stage, and although the electronic foursome stop just short of their challenge, their experimental knob twiddling is going down a storm. From nifty vocal distortion to powerful percussion, it’s easily the highlight of the weekend. By the time Axel Willner AKA The Field brings his atmospheric techno wallops to the stage, it’s clear that the Ballinlough massive would be happy to bounce around to the sound of a monkey pissing in a tin can, which is a damn shame, as Willner’s set is punchy as heck and filler-free.
Team Hot Press awakens from a not-so-peaceful slumber on Day Two to find Cavan lass Lisa O’Neill exercising sore ears with her growling, Dylan-esque acoustic folk. By the time we leave the fanciful Westmeath haven, a ginormous Ceili has erupted at the main stage.
It’s a pity that over the course of two days, Body And Soul did not deliver a single dynamite performance (if anyone was going to blow our minds, it was the divine Mount Kimbie, who sadly had to cancel). Still chin-stroking and post-gig autopsies are far from anybody’s agenda in a magical asylum like this.
Simply put, the Body And Soul Gathering is the closest Irish people get to real, old-fashioned peace and love, without boarding a plane or taking some form of time dilation pill. It’s a truly wonderful way to spend a weekend, safe in the knowledge that there will always be a tunnel in the crowd and a bubble blowing in the wind.