Gig played on 09+10+11/06/06

Once more unto the beach dear friends... As the reinvented IOW Festival celebrates its fifth anniversary with a 50,000 crowd over three days - four if you include Thursday night's cheeky impromptu opening of bars and music tents - Friday is traditionally dance music night now, which is good news for the thousands of 'festival tourists' here who don't like their music too challenging.

Bad news though for Goldfrapp, who come on in still dazzling sunshine to perform their hour of retro disco. Sadly, you can bring on as many flexible, bent over, sexy girls in horses heads that you can muster (frankly a bit of a risk with so many locals here), but Alison and her distinctly suspicious looking bunch of musos needs darkness, lights and drama to make it all work. Without that, and with Ms Goldfrapp seemingly unconvinced herself, even "Ooh La La" falls flat, which is a shame.

At least Brian Molko and Placebo look and sound like they mean business - presumably they're camping - and their return to stripped down rock'n'roll on latest album "Meds", certainly seems to have the approval of this crowd. There's still room for some Placebo electronica though, and Brian's rather fetching bouncing around the stage to the intro of "Post Blue" is one of the more memorable sights of the day. The cheer that greets "Infra-Red" betrays a sizeable Placebo fanbase here tonight - the song's "call the ambulance" refrain being instantly adopted by the beer monsters in England football shirts who've invaded this year.

Some of us are still scratching our heads about The Prodigy's bill-topping Friday appearance, but wedged into a sunburned crowd on a still sweaty night, even this eventually seems to make sense. Essex boys turned rave superstars, Keith Flint prowls the stage like a man who's lost his keys, while Maxim directs the crowd and Liam's keyboard stabs send the place bonkers. For the older Eng-er-land lads, it's a return to their teens, for the youngsters a chance to see what all the fuss was about back then. All together now, "Smack My Bitch Up"!!

Saturday is indie day. Hour upon hour of young men - oh and Primal Scream - thrashing furiously, with a couple of decent songs along the way. Unless you're The Proclaimers, of course. England are playing Paraguay on TV, so two Scottish blokes - with no interest in the World Cup - come on to entertain the football widows with their forever cheeky "Letter To America" and their forever irritating "I'm Gonna Be (500 miles)". Perhaps we could suggest that Craig and Charlie should have gone to Specsavers. The widows, however, love The Proclaimers.

Towards the close of Saturday, and Dirty Pretty Things go someway to pulling us out of our scorched torpor by sounding more like The Clash than Primal Scream do The Rolling Stones - which isn't difficult. But we're all just waiting for the 1000th rendition of "Bang Bang You're Dead", itself a distinctly mediocre song that they'll have to improve on if Carl Barat is to outlast the fame of his rather sad fellow former Libertine.

by Andy Strickland