Describe in a Tweet: A pleasant way to kick off an exciting weekend.
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What happened: Team ATL turned up expecting a middle of the road beginning to Electric Picnic and, to sum up our experience of The Little Smoke, we were genuinely surprised. The band clearly had an enthusiastic posse of fans with them but in all honesty they had an intrigued and interested crowd at their disposal: with a sound that crossed lighter elements of Arctic Monkeys with a smattering of Paul Simon they didn't reinvent the wheel but it was hard to find fault with the Laois act. Opener Walk Away provided the band's musical manifesto early on in their set with the eye catching drumming of Enda Fitzpatrick setting the tone and enthralling the audience, providing fairly simple rhythms but delivering them in a lilting and unusual way. While the quality of the songwriting varied drastically throughout (a song could sound like mediocre indie rock at one point and then end brilliantly) it's a lot of fun to experience. It's a tricky thing to be the first band at a festival, but The Little Smoke can give themselves a pat on the back.
Good Fortune: Fitzpatrick's drumming is the core of this band and an immensely pleasing element but it's a track (the finale of the set) where he isn't the star of the show that impresses us the most. It's probably the closest we get to an anthem and deserves to be released as a single, a song with a big chorus backed up with a well sculpted finale.
Evil: Songs can be hit and miss and there's just a sense that some of these tracks are unfinished ideas: good ideas, but certainly needing a little polish in places.
The ATL team write about anything and everything relevant to the Northern Irish music scene, the show itself and possibly some random stuff besides, and invite you to comment, discuss and participate.
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