Radiohead close Galway's Big Day Out after a day of rain

Radiohead headlined the Big Day Out at the Castlegar Sports Grounds, on the Dublin Road outside Galway, on Sunday 28 July, and it rained steadily on the 15,000 people there. Fans sheltered under plastic sheeting and cardboard, tore strips off the covering laid down to protect the pitch, and wore black bin bags. Many had come by bus and train to make a weekend of it, some carrying tents and hoping to find a field nearby.

The Divine Comedy played to thunder and lightning. By the time Neneh Cherry came on, the sky was clearing.

Radiohead opened with “My Iron Lung”, and Kevin Courtney of The Irish Times wrote that it knocked the wind out of a crowd that had waited all day for them. Two nights after the Olympia in Dublin), the open field made the band sound bigger. Courtney found “Just” lost none of its bite in the larger space.

Thom Yorke smiled all the way through, and took a solo spot on acoustic guitar before the band came back for “Fake Plastic Trees” and “You”. By the end of their set, the rain had given way to sweat.