Nick Cave

Nick Cave played his first Irish gig in four years at the All Together Now festival, just months after a second family tragedy.

And what of the rest of the music? He peppers his set with a recurring motif of "boom boom boom" and "breathe breathe breathe" and returns to the line of crashing his car from I Need You and you realise just what a special performance you're watching. There is family fun to keep the children entertained, young people at their first festival (well it has been three years since we had a proper festival summer), and foodies absorbing all the information from the Grub Circus, curated bycolumnist Joe McNamee, and where the likes of Diarmuid Gavin was talking about sustainability and Darina Allen about provenance. And as he poses once more as the rain comes down, he asks if it looks apocalyptic. A duet with one of the backing singers, who jumps in when Cave forgets the words of the last verse, feels like a special moment for the band as much as everyone else. A two-hour-plus festival slot, it could have been easy for some of the crowd's attention to wander, but if anything, it gets more intense.