atn in review: do we just call it a victory lap?

When I call this year's All Together Now festival a victory lap for Irish music, I mean it: you'd struggle to say the weekend had all that much new to offer someone who's been keeping up with the scene and going to the gigs, but it took some of the greatest work you've seen in the last few years on the island and give it room to shine. It's hard to write a review of the festival without feeling like I'm repeating stories that are well-tread at this point - nearly all of my highlights were called well in advance. So RÓIS raised the dead, CMAT spoke for economic justice, the Irish Hash Mafia did something equal parts silly and deeply life-affirming — is it a victory lap for Irish music or is it a victory lap for the Fourth Best agenda?

The truth is ATN 2025 deserves a lot of love. It's not a perfect festival, but after swearing against camping festivals before the pandemic, this one reminded me what to love about them. The crowds are bigger in the forest. Thousands of people got to experience so much of what's brilliant about Irish art and got to experience it all at once.

Take, for instance, Bricknasty. Playing to the biggest crowd of their career so far (unless you include a side-quest backing Aby Coulibaly in Croke Park) - declaring on Instagram that they'd filled the Something Kind Of Wonderful stage at its capacity of 8,000. To put that into perspective: it's four times the crowd of their biggest support slots, ten times the crowd of their biggest headliner so far, twenty times the size of their legendary Nasty Sessions. At ATN, their set had all of the manic energy of any of those smaller sets - a charged fusion of jazz, contemporary R&B, threads from hip-hop and even touches of dance music; delivered ferociously. The year they're facing is a crucial make or break point for the band. With an album likely on the way, an Olympia headliner on the horizon, and still on the books for a full month of sold-out stateside shows with Kneecap, ATN marks a farewell for long-time band members Louis Younge and Dara Abdurahman; two absolutely phenomenal musicians that have enormous impact on the band's live sound. In an emotional encore, Louis starts out sitting at the edge of the stage, before climbing right up in front of the screen and delivering his final solos in silhouette against the bright red.

Bricknasty has put some serious work out - for a band that barely actually gets any mention in the Fourth Best blog so far, they might be my actual favourite Irish band working today - I would hazard a guess they're my most played. They've two projects that I think go toe to toe with the best of their years at least nationally. Bringing a language of seamless collaboration and improvisational to a catalog of absolute stompers, at ATN they played their hearts out.

For their reward, hundreds, thousands saw this show for the first time and became new devotees. It's frictionless, it's obvious: when you're with your friends and all there is to do is go see music, you're going to bring your friends to see some music.

Same scéal with Irish Hash Mafia - I called it last year that Rory Sweeney and pals needed their own festival stage, and this year they completely overflowed The Last City - building up to something enormous over the course of their two and a half hour takeover(!). In format, the show was pretty similar to last year's outing - fact is if you give Rory a CDJ for a grime cypher he will play the Dizzee Rascal I Luv U beat and whoever's holding the mic will make the most of it - but in the festival context it felt historic.

This was an opportunity for discovery; so when the space completely packed out for Lil Skag and stayed packed for the next two hours, things felt far less niche. Let me tell you this: playing to a huge home crowd is very comfortable territory for Skaggy. All of my recordings of his set are filled with the sound of actual laughter as the crowd was locked in on his every word. President of silly-wave Ahmed, With Love. of course is on a serious tear at the moment and with a couple new tunes with him he remains one of the most consistent MCs in the country. For friends seeing him for the first time though, EMBY reigned supreme - the look on anyone's face being introduced to All My Life is priceless, and in the cypher he held court as the fastest to lock in over any beat. And while we already knew that Smokey lives for this stuff, I'm kind of shocked how good Sugaboo sounds on some of the grimier beats.

I'm guilty at times of feeling like I've gotten myself too deep as an insider to ideas or scenes that are going to be trapped in tiny rooms forever, and that the Irish music-listening public at large aren't really ever going to get to see this stuff. This site so far has been a lot of telling people who already go to gigs to go to gigs. But ATN this year has shook me out of that a little bit by reminding me that the current cultural moment for Ireland isn't something we're trying to convince to be born. It's out there. It's now. Honestly, I'm kind of kicking myself for not writing a guide to my most anticipated stuff ahead of time.

The festival nonetheless surprised me.

I went in relatively blind to Pigbaby, knowing little about him other than he was Irish, nominally a folk artist, and was signed to Vegyn's PLZ Make It Ruins. The co-signs of both friends and Vegyn convinced me to go for it. His set completely had me. Noisy electronic bridges between brutally honest confessional folk music, in a deep Dublin accent, plus a Phoebe Bridgers cover. There is nobody doing it like him and sadly his Irish outings are extremely rare (with one friend of the site calling this one a "miracle booking", believing it to be only his second gig in Ireland with the project). I will be diving deeper into his work and trying to catch another one of these once-in-a-blue-moon performances. You should, too.

Being mostly unmoved at Wet Leg (I never cared for their first album, and while I stood there, that's what they played) and desperate to get out of the mainstage's radius before Fontaines DC took the stage, I decided to give Stella & The Dreaming a shot on the Hidden Sounds stage. I'd heard great reviews of them around Ones To Watch this year, but missed their set. At first, it seemed risky - the Hidden Sounds stage was beyond packed and the set was running 15 minutes late due to some technical issues. When the show did start, Stella said that her in-ear monitors were gone and she had no idea if anything sounded at all like what it was meant to, that she could hear other stages while playing and didn't even know if her auto-tune was on. In spite of all of this, the band played one of the single most impressive sets of the entire weekend; a stunning display that brought to mind Caroline Polachek or Björk's quieter set pieces; a delicate performance that really could have been vulnerable to issues on that stage; yet every time Stella checks in with the crowd to see if everything's alright, the crowd cheers back. I've since been rinsing the bootleg of their Anseo set (yes, that's another Skelly capture). It's one of my big finds of the week. Hidden Sounds was also just kind of ridiculously small. I would say you'd fit only a few dozen there, and yet it's also the stage Junior Brother played. Felt more crowded than cozy.

Speaking of crowds: at All Together Now, time and time again, if you compared an Irish name and an international name on the same stage, the Irish act would fill the place where the international act might not. On day one, I wandered by sets by Cliffords and Florence Road playing to enthusiastic, packed-out tents - while neither are exactly what I spend my own time listening to, both have picked up massive young audiences, and both were testing the limits of their tents. CMAT and Fontaines pushed main-stage to capacity, and as far as CMAT's set goes, it's hard to make the case for anyone else hitting the bar she set on that stage.

Many have written about her quality live sets and it isn't the first time I've seen her this year. However, it's really clear that she's most comfortable with an Irish audience. When riffing with the audience between songs, saying "Lesbianism is one of the best things to happen to the country, and that's my agenda", the cameras pan to some banners reading "CMAT mar uachtarán". You couldn't write it.

Since we last checked in on the world of Euro-Country, the album rollout has gotten increasingly pointed and political - the title track being one that has resonated throughout the country; more than just how it looks on social media with drone footage of ghost estates or speculation about BBC censorship, it does feel like the bridge of that song is carrying a hefty dose of generational catharsis on its back.

"I don't know if I'm a political songwriter. I don't think I'm that smart at it [...] but it happened really organically. Nobody I grew up with lives here anymore. Anyone who's left behind can't afford basic public services and to stay out of danger. I believe this is the fault of the government we had 20-25 years ago [...], the emotional effects of it are something that I am interested in as a songwriter. I am so sorry that it struck a chord with so many of you."

I'm sure there'll be more to say about that when the album's out. But yes. CMAT mar uachtarán.

That's not even all the Fourth Best favourites that raised the bar this year! Sloucho shut down the Circle stage on Sunday night with a live set on a rig he debuted at AVA and feels almost like it belongs more to the world of the main-stage than to be hidden away for the heads. New songs with Curtisy and Lil Skag sound massive live (with both artists rapping through deep vocal processing chains sounding lush - autotuned Curtisy "HAAH?" included); the festival feels alive when different sides of the lineup collide and collaborate like this. The Circle did feel like something of an epicentre for the festival - Curtisy himself had a massive solo set there, as did two of my favourite Irish performers of the year, Maria Somerville and RÓIS. Somerville's hazy, atmospheric Luster tracks felt every bit at home in the forest, and RÓIS's wake-house bangers have taken on new dimensions; since I last wrote about her work Harry Hennessy has made the live band a trio, at times on vocals but an awful lot of time shaking ass and getting the audience to do the same. It may be RÓIS' best show to date, and bigger crowds yet may live to see her vision of death, mourning, wake and the ride.

Alright. Deep breath. Let's talk about Lewis Doyle Singer.

The Instagram page @lewisdoylesinger is one of the wonders of the modern age; some figure who looks like the human embodiment of the Bold Glamour filter singing beloved Irish classics with an N*SYNC affect along with some pitch-perfect original songs like The 2 Chimneys (Christmas Version)... yeah it's a bit. it's one of the best bits of all time. one of the most committed-to bits in history. I strongly encourage you to just run through the entire @lewisdoylesinger Instagram account oldest-to-newest and then we can talk about what it's like to see it live on stage. A lot of people's reactions after the show were versions of "Ah fuck, he's hot?"

It's also extremely telling that the festival went all in on this. I can't stress how much production went into this, or the fact that there were probably thousands of people there for him. Walking on stage to a very somber instrumental Raglan Road and a screen that simply said LEWIS DOYLE SINGER ❤️, the effort put in began slowly revealing itself. The fact they had sequenced red-and-white lighting for The 2 Chimneys (Christmas Version) loaded up says more than enough. Surely this is an easy pull for Vicar St. in December. Long may the Bit live. Don't fuck it up.

The first real problem with ATN is counter-programming. If you don't care about a particular headliner, as was my opinion for Fontaines DC, there isn't all that much lineup depth there. London Grammar managed to avoid this - Georgia, Gurriers and Fat Dog all offered solid backup plans. But most of the time, most of the larger stages completely avoid clashing the mainstage headliner, often putting anything else going on in the dozens-to-a-hundred scale. Putting all their eggs in one basket except for DJ Egg on the Cambium Clu jesus christ colm you can't publish that

The scheduling gap did bring me to an immediate new favourite stage, the Cambium Club, anchored by the legendary Donal Dineen and home to some of the festival's most effective picks. DJ Egg, of the legendary Ar Ais Arís crew and Limerick's Dyke Nite, held down a devoted crowd in front of one of the festival's most beautiful spaces - a wooden enclave under an illuminated giant tree where bangers were spun non-stop. It felt a festival apart - as Donal announced "the most important band in Ireland" 7of9 to a small but equally euphoric crowd, I did wonder if ATN could have done better work signposting the enormous crowd of Bohs jerseys fleeing the main arena at the end of the Fontaines set towards some of the weird and wonderful happening just a stone's throw away.

Can I be mad though, when ultimately, my own disinterest for the Fontaines is obviously far from the norm? They're unquestionably part of the broader Irish cultural moment, unashamedly political in calling out the ineptitude of Irish neoliberal politics, proudly anti-fascist and willing to put their largest stages to work in calling out the fascist campaign of genocide in Gaza. The nation at large is well and truly behind them. I've even shown reluctant love to that Bohs jersey in the past, even if I did laugh when counting twenty of them a minute around the campsite. Yes, I wish the festival was more capable of counter-programming, but at least they went all-in on a much-beloved act playing a triumphant homecoming.

The scheduling faults really came to a head on the final night, where Nelly Furtado again played mostly uncontested - listen, we love Loose as much as any other nation in the world but given how Irish headliners enjoyed unparalleled crowds for Fontaines and CMAT, a Canadian popstar 20 years out of her prime is an unusual artist to give almost no counter-programming. (I did enjoy the set, but there was a real lull for a while as she went through a series of very Eurovisiony late career singles. Can you blame me that I forgot it was her singing Broken Strings?) It's made hilariously worse by two stages basically announcing nothing at all, their "secret sets" being announced minutes before and ended up being artists who played earlier in the week – earlier that day in the case of Lovely Days' announcement. Particularly taking the piss were Le Boom being announced as the secret act on both The Circle and The Great Oven Disco Cantina barely an hour apart.

While I wasn't present for Le Boom's opening set on Thursday, the group chats tell a bleak story of a "lifeless" set from a band that I definitely once loved but who since the pandemic have made a series of embarassing pivots to yupbro poetry and Lurgan-esque covers of TikTok trending sounds (a comment which is perhaps unfair to some of the bangers the Lurgan kids have pulled off). They're a strange pick for the Thursday set (I asked one fella who was there and he nearly flew into a rage about it), but two surprise sets in the wake of that just feels like the festival flat out ran out of ideas. Don't tease surprises if you don't have surprises. Previously, the festival pulled back the curtain on a much-loved early afternoon set from national treasure Villagers and an unprecedented booking for Sister Nancy, so it's not like they didn't set themselves up for high expectations with the last few unannounced spots on big stages.

In 2019, when I went to All Together Now's second edition, the traffic management was so bad that after seven hours in the car, the lift I was taking stopped up at a random spot along the road and we hiked what should have been the remaining two hours. I think it took me three - you see, I wasn't much of a festival veteran by that point - assuming much a shorter walk, I brought a suitcase with me and a pair of Docs I didn't realise had much more breaking in to do. The stones on the way cracked a can in the luggage, taking some of my clothes out of rotation immediately. I spent the weekend exhausted, wandering around random stalls asking if they sold blister patches.

The weather in '19 was shite - so it wasn't just the cracked can leading to the overwhelmingly damp feeling of the festival, and there was an infamously intense swarm of wasps causing complete havoc, which the festival actually had to investigate and address before returning to the venue. Reopening an ancient Clashfinder to try and jog my memory and running through the lineup, I think of some more disappointments: realising that trapping my friend in a tent for Black Midi when the alternative was torrential rain was likely just as unpleasant, falling out of love with The National as they went all in on their snooziest album yet, finishing up the festival at a Talking Heads tribute act that did not at all deliver on their pivotal time slot.

All things considered, this was an immense improvement. Like the festival still has its big quality-of-life flaws - you'll probably never get to shower, the Londis is a joke, the incredibly good-looking Afterburner stage sounds awful if you're not standing right in front of the speakers and for some reason they dropped it right next to the campsite with nothing to dampen the sound, some toilets ran out of hand sanitiser on Thursday and were never refilled. These are kind of table stakes for a camping festival though. The point is to make it worth the noise and the filth a bit. And this year had me thinking a lot more about returning to the camping festival habit after six years off.

Yet I also think maybe I'll retreat a bit still. The small camping festival circuit, like the much beloved Another Love Story or the North's rising star Under The Drum are nailing that Irish focus. I think I could do these festivals just fine without big international names. In fact I know plenty of people going on to do their tenth Electric Picnic or whatever and I'm absolutely positive they're not going for Sam Fender or Becky Hill. Any festival stands to gain a lot by looking local, and looking forward, I think.

All Together Now has a weird history when it comes to looking forward. This year, I got a lot of DMs from friends asking me if I could pick them up one of those The T In CMAT Stands For Trans Rights t-shirts but they had sold out pretty much the instant CMAT left the stage. Yet only last year year, the festival booked Róisín Murphy as a headliner despite her once framing gender-affirming healthcare as "big pharma laughing all the way to the bank". In 2022, the festival managed to run a talk by Stella O'Malley, who's work speaks for itself no matter how many lawsuits she files. Aiken Promotions, who work alongside POD on the festival, love to put Jordan Peterson on a stage for whatever reason, and his views on trans rights are just as easy to discover.

I want to believe the festival has its heart in the right place. I think I do, to be honest. After all, when it came to UK punk rap duo Bob Vylan, who were widely targeted after opposing the genocide in Gaza at this year's Glastonbury Festival, ATN not only stood by them but apparently gave them a bigger stage along the way. Bob Vylan in return responded with one of the best sets of the weekend, but also a message for Ireland:

As black people in England we understand that our struggle, as it is connected to our homelands, whether it be Jamaica or we trace it all the way back to the African continent ... is the Irish fight. And the Irish fight is the Palestinians’ fight. And the Palestinians’ fight is the fight of all people that have suffered under occupation, under colonialism, under imperialism.

I think I really left the festival with some political hope that weekend. The festival was alive throughout the week with flags, badges and even temporary tattoos demanding that the Occupied Territories Bill be passed, and bands of every size and stature echoed that message. The festival itself made its stance known throughout the weekend, mixing activism and programming with efforts like The Great Oven Disco Cantina, building an oven for Palestine and broadcasting on Palestinian station Radio Alhara. (I caught some fantastic techno with live drums and trumpet down at that stage. If anyone knows anything about what I'm talking about please let me know I have not been able to find it.)

So whatever about the losers in Drumshanbo. You'll find traces of the Ireland to be proud of in the beautiful art being made here across all backgrounds and creeds. For one weekend, it felt like it was everywhere.