Trust in the prince

“You don’t have fighting anymore but you still have fucking. “

There may well have been more politically sophisticated points made during this year’s Belfast Festival but it’s nice to know that Will Oldham cares. When it comes to fighting and fucking, after all (or fighting before fucking, fighting after fucking and indeed fighting while fucking), it’s difficult to think of anyone else making music at the moment that’s as thoroughly versed in the Queensbury Rules of carnality. Sounds like he’s advising us to get our priorities right.

As it turns out, 2001’s overall programme is a disappointment – thin on fiction, and innovative drama, and overly dependant on the dregs of the UK’s bankrupt comedy circuit. But the collection of mavericks, visionaries and loons brought together to play gigs is as impressive a line-up as the Festival has ever delivered.

For highlights – while Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Billy Childish, Speedy J, and The Frames all have their cheerleaders – there are a number of shows that are simply unforgettable.

Mogwai, for example, may be fearsomely fashionable (in an abstract sense – when it comes to clobber they remain very much grisly, Scottish indie kids), but their first show in Belfast in three years is a revelation. During ‘Mogwai Fear Satan’ there is a moment – just as a timid flute solo is buried beneath an avalanche of noise - when the critical garlands tossed at the feet of the Glaswegian five piece seem entirely justified. This is powerfully eloquent music, every bit as beautiful as it is periodically brutal. The meltdown at the end of ‘My Father My King’ sees people holding their ears and retreating for cover.

Super Furry Animals, meanwhile, come up with stronger melodies than Travis, more palatable pop songs than Coldplay, and use bigger string sections than Pulp. Don’t let the tanks, the inflatable animals and the banana costumes fool you, they remain every bit as faithful to the trad rock template as those awful Stereophonics spuds.

But Griff and co. are so much more valuable than that. You won’t catch them writing a tune bemoaning their treatment at the hands of music journalists – unless, that is, they can bring along a calypso band, some weed, and Paul McCartney to chew vegetables in the background.

There isn’t a mainstream British band at the moment with a fraction of their gleeful playfulness. As a live draw they’re startling. Visuals pummel, the surround-a-sound sweeps you up, and there is now a fine back-catalogue of material to keep you riveted for the guts of two hours. Do you even remember ‘Ice Hockey Hair’? A song thrown off on an EP three years ago? Well, hearing it live gets you thinking that it’s actually one of the great neglected tunes of the Brit Pop purges. As is ‘Northern Lites’. As is ‘Play It Cool’. As is ‘The Man Don’t Give A Fuck’. In fact, why are they playing The Mandela Hall?

Fran Healy headlined Glastonbury with half as many hooks and he’s full of hippy nonsense as well. So, Super Furry Animals, the band that time forgot? Nah, just, it seems, the band that Alan McGee forgot. Mug.

As for star of the Festival, well, it’s back to Bonnie Prince Billy.

The last time Oldham played Belfast, legend has it that Palace’s set attracted so little attention that he dropped his trousers. This time, though, he is playing very much to a congregation of ardent apostles, and the belt stays buckled. Which is a relief because there’s a wild-man glint in his eye and, throughout the show, a series of unsettling facial tics – lip licks, jaw contortions – that suggest we really don’t want to see him unzipped.

Almost nonchalantly, he treats us to a show that owes as much to ghostly backwoods preaching as it does to singer-song writing and, in doing so, proves that he operates on a plain that the legions of alt-country clowns we’re currently plagued with simply can’t come near.

Festivals, I suppose, should be about spreading art like a virus.

Will Oldham finishes his set with ‘I See A Darkness’, a song so deathly and hymn-like it took Johnny Cash – with a voice equal parts malignant and convalescent – to carry its weight with any conviction.

I’m sure everyone watching got infected.