Another festival came to an end this weekend - Electric Picnic in Ireland

The Flaming Lips brought Ireland’s Electric Picnic festival to a close last night ( Sunday 6th September), capping the three-day event with a typically elaborate and celebratory stage show featuring balloons, confetti and frontman Wayne Coyne’s trademark man-sized bubble.The Oklahoma group, who headlined in 2005, chose to headline the Electric Arena at the Stradbally, County Laois even rather than the Main Stage as they felt it would serve their stage show better.

Opening with ‘Race For The Price’, the band performed the likes of ‘Fight Test’ and ‘Enthusiasm for Life Defeats Existentail Fear’ over the course of their set.

The weekend also included MGMT, Madness, Brian Wilson, Orbital, The XX and Florence and the Machine, although Bat For Lashes was a late absentee, due to a reported accident at home on Friday, and New York’s ESG cancelled their Saturday Cosby Stage appearance after missing their flight to Ireland.

MGMT performed a number of new songs during their packed set on the festival’s Main Stage on Friday night (5th September).

Brooklyn duo Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser repeatedly told the crowd how much they enjoyed being back in Ireland as they played a set peppered with hits ‘Kids’ and ‘Time To Pretend’, including new tracks ‘Congratulations’, ‘Song for Dan Treacy’ and It’s Working’, all performed in Ireland for the first time.

Klaxons and Fionn Regan also used their respective Saturday and Sunday evening slots to road-test new material for their forthcoming second albums, with Regan performing a host of new songs including ‘Genocide By Name’ and ‘Protection Racket’.

Other huge draws over the weekend included Florence And The Machine, who could have packed the Electric Arena three or four times over on Sunday afternoon, leaving many festival-goers disappointed when they couldn’t get into the tent to watch her 40-minute set.

The XX were also a popular draw, with a mid-afternoon slot in the Electric Arena on Saturday, while a number of local acts such as Villagers and Jape also proved popular with festival-goers.

Although the festival site on Stradbally Estate became extremely muddy over the course of the weekend, fears of a washout proved unfounded with the weekend proving mostly dry with the exception of showers on Sunday.

By early this morning (7th September), however, many festival-goers were facing huge difficulties in the car parks, with many having to wait for tractors to tow them off site after finding their vehicles stuck in mud.

The relatively dry conditions early in the weekend meant organisers managed to sell the remaining tickets for the event by Saturday afternoon, as the festival hit its 32,500 capacity.

Following the end of the festival, organisers confirmed that the event would return once again to County Laois in 2010.