Tennants Vital Festival

From earnest, indie also-rans to overly earnest, rock behemoth, my how things have changed for* Snow Patrol*. For most of their existence they frequented the suffocatingly intimate venues on the UK circuit and now, a mere twelve years down the line, they’ve attained international status. Unfortunately, good things really do come to those who wait. Brandishing their blandness like a dull pointed weapon and proceeding to cudgel FM listeners into submission, Snow Patrol are now a band capable of selling out the ten-thousand-plus capacity of Belfast’s Botanic Gardens. More than a homecoming, this is a valediction; we can’t keep them to ourselves any longer, so please, take them. But before all that beery-eyed, home crowd bonhomie, there’s time for something a little more interesting.

We thought they only came out at night, but no - unless it’s some fevered mirage, it really is Republic of Loose (pictured, left), those down-and-dirty Dubliners, that've come to shake the Vital crowd out of their torpor and serve up a tasty, mid-afternoon smorgasbord of smut. Mick 'porno for' Pyro looks artfully dishevelled, modelling some striking_ Miami Vice _ finery and outsize sunnies; he exhorts the crowd to "Fughin enjoy yerselves". You dare not disobey the maniacal frontman or the primordial funk that the 'Loose unleash, roiling Chic-like rhythms combining with lecherous Happy Mondays attitude, their sweaty couplings birthing the bastard freak-out of ‘Break’ and_ ‘Comeback Girl’_. And the lyrics, these guys could initiate Peaches into the true ways of the deviant.

After that delightful squalor we’re in need of a bit of spiritual cleansing, for which there's no better man than* Duke Special* (pictured, below right). This travelling vagabond of song, musical troupe in tow, is a late but much-welcomed addition to the Vital bill. The heartfelt minstrelsy of ‘Wake Up Scarlett’ manages to enthrall the crowd, soothing the beast so roughly savaged by Republic of Loose. The embers of Morrissey and Rufus Wainwright smoulder in the Duke’s magical compound;_ ‘Portrait’_ is insightful, poignant and flashes a devil-may-care wit.

By the time* Ed Harcourt (pictured, below left) takes the stage the rain is tearing down, an ominous portent foretelling the arrival of professional gloom racketeers, Editors*. Nonetheless, Harcourt doesn’t seem too perturbed, exhibiting his manly prowess by doing push-ups atop his keyboard and relaying the bittersweet narrative of_ ‘Born In The Seventies’. ‘Undertaker Strut’_ engages at a more physical level, the striating guitar providing a raucous counterpoint to the contemplative fare. And whilst the closing_ ‘Watch The Sun Come Up’_ is not, as hoped for, a weather-remedying evocation, it does at least provide balmy, musical consolation.

Tom Smith (pictured, top) is a terrible old ham. Flapping and gurning his way for the duration of Editors' set, the tortured artiste schtick is just too much. Certainly it’s interesting to watch, guitar flailing as he throws himself into his pirouettes of pain on 'Fingers In The Factories', but it just doesn’t ring true. He’s a toytown Ian Curtis, Editors the public-palatable Joy Division, their black fabric cut to fit the mainstream. It would be churlish to say that they are devoid of musical merit, far from it, and the multitude of deliriously moshing punters during _‘Sparks’ _would certainly testify otherwise, but quite simply Editors are a one-trick-pony in a one-horse-town. And they’re flogging it.

This one’s a home banker. For Snow Patrol’s biggest-ever Belfast performance they’ve hitched their wagon to the big sentiment parade, spruced up and dumbed down and they’re ready to level Botanic Gardens._ ‘Spitting Games’_ signals the band’s arrival, the recently shorn Gary Lightbody - no longer Fraggle-haired and exuding a certain geek chic - states the band’s delight to be back in Belfast. The reception they receive is rapturous, those epic choruses on ‘Chocolate’ and ‘Run’ summoning a wide-eyed, Pavlovian response from the crowd. Indeed, backed by the mammoth Jean Michel Jarre-style light show, it would be easy to be dazzled, to overlook Snow Patrol’s shortcomings. Ultimately though, there’s just not enough finesse or breadth of imagination - holidaying in the lovelorn misadventures of Lightbody, these songs revisit the same old emotional terrain, the songwriting locked into a proscriptive formula. Music should stimulate, should make us feel or think and Snow Patrol, at best, offer only a mind-numbing panacea.

Photographs by Graham Smith - click here for his website