Easygoing Five: Five acts to watch at the Body and Soul Festival

Ireland has become quite the festival hub in recent years and Body and Soul, taking place in Ballinlough Castle in Westmeath this weekend, is up there with the best of them. Here are five acts to keep an eye on.

Spiritualized

Jason Pierce’s eclectic outfit have brought the house down in various venues in this country in the past and they will be one of the main draws in Westmeath this weekend.

Reviews for their gig in Vicar Street earlier this year were mixed, but they are likely to feel more at home in an open air setting. Pierce and company’s set will likely include some of their hits from albums such as the critically renowned Ladies and Gentlemen We are Floating in Space, as well as plenty of material from their new album, Sweet Heart, Sweet Light, such as the first single from that album, ‘Hey Jane’.

Villagers

It’s been a while since Conor O’Brien rose to prominence on the back of the multi-award nominated 2010 album Becoming a Jackal, but he’s been keeping pretty busy in the time since.

O’Brien and crew have been trying out new songs on the road of late ahead of a scheduled release of a second album next year and the Body and Soul crowds can look forward to hearing what the Villagers have up their sleeves. They’ll also be treated to the tunes from the impressive debut album, including the title track 'Becoming a Jackal', which won the Prize for Best Song Musically and Lyrically at the prestigious Ivor Novello awards last year.

Hollie Cook

As the daughter of Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook, Hollie’s career path was always likely to take a musical direction, although her reggae sound is a long way removed from the angry punk propagated by her father, Johnny Rotten and company. Sometime collaborator with The Slits, her self-titled debut album last year attracted rave reviews and she’ll be returning to Dublin with the Slits for the Stone Roses gig in Phoenix Park next month.

Gold Panda

Away from the main stage, Gold Panda will bring what has been gushingly described as “a masterclass in electronic production” to the more chilled-out upstage.

The man known to his folks as Derwin Schlecker has been remarkably prolific in the last few years, but is probably best known for his Mercury nominated debut album Lucky Shiner, released in 2010 and from which the track below, Marriage, is taken.

Kormac’s Big Band

A festival favourite, Kormac’s Big Band, directed by the Dublin DJ Kormac, naturally, is an 11-piece orchestra featuring a double bass, a clarinet, a banjo, decks and samplers and a bloody barbershop quartet for God’s sake and as you can probably imagine, they belt out quite a crescendo of noise.

To give you an idea of what they’re capable of, here’s what they got up to in the Cork Opera House in April.