Recording: Young Galaxy

Artist: Young Galaxy

Song: New Summer

Recorded at Artscape Gibraltar Point (Camp Wavelength), August 21, 2016.

Young Galaxy - New Summer

Following and expanding on the template of last year's successful festival, Wavelength returned to the island with a meticulously-executed event that included an exciting range of music and a beach full of art beside festival headliner Lake Ontario. It also managed to be a stress-reducing rather than a stress-inducing time — rather like a weekend at the cottage, even if the city was just out of view.

It's been rather a while since I checked in with Young Galaxy to see how their continuing evolution away from their rockband origins has manifested on stage. Last year's Falsework sends the band ever-further down the cleanly-produced electro-pop path they've been moving for a while — for my taste, the studio sound has become a bit too anonymously generic, but that's not so much a problem on stage where Catherine McCandless' personality can drive the proceedings. New material like "Wear Out The Ground" came complete with some worked-out dance moves, but in the end it was a spontaneous moment that'll stick with me most — when, most of the way through the set, the generator failed, sending the stage into darkness. Seizing the moment, McCandless beckoned the crowd closer and sang a lullaby-like a capella version of "Blown Minded" that almost rendered the last couple songs (once the power came back on) anti-climactic. And showing that the band still remembers a thing or two about rockband dynamics, Ultramarine's "New Summer" was also a highlight, feeling like an ascending crane shot announcing that even this end-of-summer weekend can feel like a new beginning.