In The Meadows returns for its second year at Irish Museum of Modern Art, Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin on Saturday June 7th 2025 with a guitar and rock-leaning lineup after last year’s Lankum co-curated billing.
We can expect three stages of music across the day, and today we are looking at the big headline acts playing the one-day event.
Here are five big music reasons we are looking forward to In The Meadows.
1.
Slowdive
The shoegaze originators returned with the nugaze revival at its apex.
The English rock band released a fifth studio album, everything is alive in 2023, their first since 2017, and the band played headline shows for the first time ever in Dublin and Belfast that summer.
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Slowdive are synonymous with the shoegaze sound that has seen a resurgence among young alternative fans – a subgenre known for its introspective melancholic sounds, soft reverbed vocals and guitar pedal fuzziness.
The renewed interest in shoegaze is a boon for Slowdive, an originator of the genre who have perfected evocative swirls of elemental rock noise heavy with feeling every time they return to us since they first arrived in 1991.
2.
Iggy Pop
The Godfather of Punk has never wavered in his passion for live performance and new music.
The Stooges punk and rock’n’roll singer and radio broadcaster is headlining In The Meadows in Dublin on Saturday June 7th, playing for the first time in the city in 17 years, since the last time he played the same venue (he last played Ireland at All Together Now in Waterford in 2023).
Iggy plays The Stooges and his own songs live (including ‘Passenger’ and ‘Lust For Life’) and still brings the manic rock god energy at the age of 78. There’s a reason Iggy is the true elder statesman of rock.
3.
Gilla Band
The Dublin alt-rock band are gearing up for album number four.
Most Normal, the noise band’s third album on Rough Trade in 2022 was their weirdest, most sonically diffusive record yet, and since then most of the band have been worked with others. Daniel Fox has continued producing records for many other bands including Silverbacks, Paddy Hanna, Sprints and Lambrini Girls. Alan Duggan Borges’ The Null Club draws on noise, techno and experimental hip hop with collaborators ELUCID, Faris of The Horrors and Mandy, Indiana’s Valentine Caulfield; while Dara Kiely has provided vocals for Stray Planets.
In The Meadows is the band’s only Irish show this year so far.
4.
The Scratch
The Irish trad-folk metal masters.
No one batters together folk music and hi-octane rock quite like The Scratch, who apply a Dublin colloquial sensibility, power chords, percussion and sometimes, a softer folk lilt to their sound.
The Scratch are a band you could both mosh and bash a bodhrán too.
There is a John ‘Spud’ Murphy-produced (Lankum / OXN / Ye Vagabonds) album on the way to follow up 2023’s James Vincent McMorrow-produced second album Mind Yourself too soon.
5.
Sprints
The Dublin alt-rockers have gone from strength to strength since the release of their debut album Letter To Self.
The Karla Chubb-lead band have garnered a fervent fanbase for how they’ve turned confessional songs into a vessel for cathartic sonic garage punk music.
The music often walks the razor high-wire between hi-octane garage rock and feeling like it could all go kaputt on the next verse.
The band’s live show is where it all hangs out in one big release of rock energy.
In The Meadows lineup so far
In The Meadows Tickets
In The Meadows takes place at IMMA on Saturday June 7th.
Day tickets cost €82.55 plus fees.
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005. He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Cara Magazine, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, co-founder of Lumo Club, event curator, Indie Sleaze club promoter, and producer of gigs and monthly listening parties & events in Dublin.
