Connect Festival / Saturday

Inverary Castle, Iverary

With a sprawling site in the grounds of an eighteenth century castle, Connect falls at the larger end of the boutique festival market that has grown exponentially in recent years.

Fortunately, this means that in spite of the many logistic challenges – of which the mud and the treck from the car park that would challenge even the keenest extreme sports enthusiasts – the festival is a triumph of considered musical choices rather than the rabble rousing populism of the major U.K. festivals.

Though it does not always work, there are a number of striking performances. Natasha Khan of Bat for Lashes has a voice that can fill the sparsely populated arena she engaged mid-afternoon and Vasthi Bunyan deserves some sort of credit for the quietest, most introverted performance in the biggest space ever. Even so, ‘Window over the Bay’ seems entirely befitting of the setting.

The Only Ones provide a fascinating glimpse of what The Libertines’ reunion in 2030 may sound and look like -and it is considerably better than original fans may have feared. Teenage Fanclub and Rilo Kiley offer the best meldoic pop tunes of the day, but glorious harmonies, whether of the Bellshill or Californian variety seem strangely out of synch with the greyness of the surroundings.

It is for the same reason that Mogwai’s set works spectacularly. With nightfall descending and the rainclouds producing a mist against the backdrop to the stage, the sense of dark foreboding that permeates the occasional prettiness of their tunes seems perfectly in tune with the enviornment.

It also has an edge over Primal Scream’s ongoing attempts to be all things to all people. Nevertheless, during crowd-pleasers ‘Rocks,’ ‘Swastika Eyes’ and ‘Country Girl,’ Bobby Gillespie captures another important aspect of Connect’s appeal: people in their forties pretending to be twenty-something, and for the most part, getting away with it.