Day two at the Wickerman Festival, and I noticed a strong Scottish path leading me through the stages from start to finish. To get things underway, Edinburgh-based Supa & Da Kryptonites sent a noon-time funk-ska-swing-rap blast out from the main Summerisle Stage to the early revellers. Winners of the Sunday Herald/XFM Unsigned Band competition, they were unlucky enough to have to contend with the only downpour of the entire weekend but that barely seemed to matter as the eight-piece drew more and more people from the campsite to the stage as their set progressed. You could say that they lit the fuse on a party that burned hotter as the day went on.

Programme clashes are bound to occur when there are five or six stages on the go simultaneously, but choosing between Admiral Fallow on the main stage and Withered Hand in the Scooter Tent was a particularly tough one. Fifty-fifty was the only way to go.

Withered Hand saw Dan Willson augmented by full-band format, which really does lift his songs to a higher realm. I’d like to think that changes to the festival’s programming this year, which brought the indie-folk-pop likes of Withered Hand into the Scooter Tent, offered new sounds for the ears of the old punks who make this their festival home. If so, Withered Hand’s selection from last year’s New Gods album couldn’t do any wrong. And the three-voice harmony arrangement behind Willson on Love In The Time Of Ecstasy was so gorgeous, it bordered on the spiritual.

Admiral Fallow meanwhile, from the evidence of the second half of their set, have passed through the transition period that saw a more composed, less poppy approach to writing come into being for their recent Tiny Rewards album. Now the melodies of the new material push to the fore even as the complexity of the rhythms and the arrangements grow denser. An older crowd-pleaser like Guest Of The Government (with a terrifically grippy bass today) doesn’t sound that far removed from As Easy As Breathing, opener on the new album.

If we’re talking dense rhythms and conflicting layers of music, then Tal National picked up from where Admiral Fallow left off. It wasn’t only the traditional African costumes they wore that brought different textures to the Summerisle Stage: the music made by this band from Niger isn’t as easy on Western ears as other African bands who clearly have always paid attention to output from Europe and America. Here sharp pizzicato guitar, chant vocals and dual drumming could, like certain strains of jazz, seem at odds only to fall gloriously into place as a rhythmic/harmonic whole that was fascinating when it released the tension and hypnotic when it kept on rolling. This Wickerman gig was the band’s trip to Scotland on their first UK tour, and they were a revelation.

I’d argue that most of those chart-topping female stars who rap a bit and sing a bit wouldn’t be where they are today if it wasn’t for Neneh Cherry. Her Raw Like Sushi album found a footing in pop for bursts of rap music at the end of the 1980s, after all. What she’s doing these days, after a long absence from recording, still showcases her velvet singing voice and take-no-prisoners attitude to rapping. But working with synth/drum duo Rocketnumbernine has created something darker and more bassy for the Blank Project album that filled out most of the set. Of the oldies, Manchild worked best, Cherry wrapping a white scarf around her hair for this “old school” outing. Buffalo Stance, on the other hand, simply felt like a Rocketnumbernine remix of the original.

Keeping to the main stage, the sunshine moment of the entire festival belonged to Jimmy Cliff. It wasn’t just that his songs often reference the better weather (I Can See Clearly Now being the most obvious); it was his whole demeanour and the yellow glow of the T-shirts worn by his eight-strong backing band. This was how to put on a show, getting the audience to wave arms around, dance in ska styles, indulge in call-and-response. The full-on brass and vocal sound worked for absolutely everything in the set, from his signature tunes (The Harder They Come, Many Rivers To Cross) to a distinctive cover of reggae classic Rivers Of Babylon.

By evening it was time to step back onto that Scottish path. Three years ago, Hector Bizerk played to about 60 people in the Solas Tent. This year, they had a fairly packed Scooter Tent hunched down, waving jazz hands, rising slowly and finally bouncing for The Bigger Picture. Louis has become a frontman extraordinaire, any audience anywhere in the palm of his hand. And even for someone who has seen them a good few times, the inclusion of a small horn section brought extra oomph to Columbus, Skin And Bone, Bury The Hatchet and, appropriately enough as doubtless there were a few on site, Festival Boy. Nice reworking of Blur’s Song 2 for Hector hip hop as well.

Over in the Phoenix Tent, Bill Wells and Aidan Moffat had taken a late-night jazz approach to their live collaboration. As the former Arab Strap man shared his sordid poetic tales, Wells’s piano sat at the centre of some rather bold jazz arrangements, with double bass, tuba, trumpet and saxophone emerging from the overabundance of dry ice and atmospheric purple-blue lights. The set had its own Spartacus moment. “Did you shout for Glasgow Jubilee?” asked Moffat of someone near the front. “Yes,” responded the entire crowd. Thankfully, that was indeed next on the set list.

Last music of the day for me came courtesy of one of the country’s future stars, C Duncan, whose light dreampop provided a gorgeous end to an excellent weekend of music. The three-vocal frontline harmonies brought an airiness to the songs, each and every one of which chimed.

After that, there was only time to watch the traditional burning of the Wickerman, this year an Osiris-style figure with a bird’s head and tail-feathers set on a muscular male torso. Given the difficulties that have befallen the festival organisers this year after co-founder Jamie Gilroy’s death, as well as behind-the-scenes organisational changes in programming, it was easy to read a phoenix-from-the-flames metaphor into this particular burning vision. Obvious, perhaps, but no less true: a transition year has set Wickerman up with the potential to become Scotland’s boldest, most discerning festival where the music is concerned, but always – always – the one with the friendliest vibe.