TWELVE: The Wavelength 12th Anniversary Festival
While it's all fresh in my mind, a few notes from this year's WL Fest. Longer, more comprehensive reviews will follow down the road a piece.
Last year's Wavelength festival had a transitional feel, just as WL itself did in shedding its old skin as a weekly series and trying on new formats like so many hats. But throughout 2011, Wavelength really gained strength, with new blood on the programming team and a willingness to try some new and interesting things. It's befitting, then, that this year's festival was more streamlined (down to four nights) and bold in its lineups, reaching out to some bigger acts for the headliners while still mixing in a lot of newer, less-well-known names.
Night 1 @ The Shop under Parts & Labour
Thursday, February 16, 2012. Eucalyptus / Man Made Hill / Slim Twig / Odonis Odonis / METZ
Wavelength is at its best when putting together shows with bands that wouldn't normally be on the same bill. So there was a particularly tasty Wavelength-esque frisson to see calypso-jazz travelers Eucalyptus opening up the festival in the bomb-shelter basement at Parts + Labour. The joint is currently looking fabulous, by the way, thanks to Ivy Lovell's photo installation covering the walls. With a half-dozen players squeezed on the low-lying stage (and a double bass that barely cleared the ceiling on the floor beside it), this is exactly the sort of band that the venue is not designed for, but as the crowd filtered in, Brodie West and company's undulating grooves filled the space up pretty well. I'm pretty partial to the band anyway, so I was definitely getting a kick out of it all — almost as much as the one punk dude who came up front to dance away to the band.
A stylistic lurch after that for Man Made Hill's squelchy mutant dance pop, which packed a certain sort of mind-melting punch. An interesting visual presentation for music that was a little bit like Off the Wall re-imagined after a weekend bender of brown acid and expired cough syrup.
From there, the night played out more like a typical evening at P+L, with sets from Slim Twig, Odonis Odonis and METZ. Slim Twig's new band continues to gel along with his pop sensibilities. The Farfisa-powered grooves were sounding totally fabulous, and couldn't even be disrupted when, in a somewhat random moment, Blake Howard (who'd been playing percussion in Eucalyptus) took to the stage mid-song and seized the microphone to speak to the crowd.
It was finally getting pretty packed up front for Odonis Odonis, who brought some zig-zaggling projections to accompany their electro-surfgaze jams. The songs sound like dispatches from an alternate universe where the JAMC's Automatic redefined the pop music paradigm, and OO took the next evolutionary step of ledging it up with shouty brio.
Listen to a track from this set here.
Closing out the night, METZ delivered their jesuslizard rockstabs with their typical efficiency, encouraging a crowd that was now thick and pulsating on all sides.
Night 2 @ Steam Whistle Brewing
Friday, February 17, 2012. Hut / Silver Dapple / catl / Bonjay / Fucked Up
A shift in scale for night two as the action moved down to the roundhouse on Bremner Blvd. A lot more elbow room and a bigger canvas for General Chaos to project his light paintings. I was actually a little surprised to see Hut up on the big stage — the last time I saw 'em at a WL they decided to rock it right on the floor of The Garrison. But going for the "professional" set up worked well for Daniel Lee's scrap-pop crew, who were now carrying a drummer with a full kit to supplement Daniel Woodhead's stand-up percussion. A slightly muddy house sound kinda suited their M.O. well — to steal a line from Xgau, listening to Hut is a little like operating a bulldozer while playing a Bacharach tape.
I'd been looking forward to hearing Montréal's Silver Dapple for a little while now, based on some of their music coming through the internet. In a world where bands like Yuck are making a splash, this quartet could do pretty well for themselves with their 90's-styled alt-rock jams. Melding controlled distortion to catchy tunes, the band wasn't particularly flashy on stage, but they totally pressed the right buttons for me.
Listen to a track from this set here.
Though I dropped in on one of their acoustic duo sets not too long ago, I hadn't seen local blues-punk titans catl since Andrew Moszynski took over the drum chair. And while the band still knows how to push in and push out — there was an admirably scuzzy run through old fave "Caroline" — it sounds like Moszynski brings a different dimension to the band's more restrained material. A fine set, but I won't feel like I've gotten the full measure of the new material until I see 'em in closer quarters, getting hot and sweaty. With their new album on the horizon, there should be plenty chances coming up.
Speaking of new drummers, this wouldn't be the first time I've seen Bonjay with Kieran Adams on live drum kit, but it was the most punch I've heard since he joined, with some songs being stripped back almost to bare throbbing rhythms. In fact, all three members were playing with intense hunger, and bringing something new to the table. Beat-provider Pho now has a MIDI keyboard alongside his MPC's, creating new sonic possibilities, and vocalist Alanna Stuart was, simply put, on fire throughout, culminating in a powerful shout to end the set that she claimed was inspired by the night's headliners. There were a couple brand-new songs ("Medicine From Melancholy" was one) that went over really well. A triumphant set, though it felt like the crowd was a bit more reserved than the band merited.
I thought at first that might have been because the crowd was out for Fucked Up's punk energy, but looking over the assembled group as the band took the stage, it struck me that the demographic at hand was way more "indie" than "punk". They were still into the band, just not in the manner of the smaller cadre of dedicated types who formed up and waited to leap into the circle pit. Actually, the pit had to wait a good spell to get going, as Fucked Up led off with the live debut of their epic new Chinese Zodiac single, "Year of The Tiger", whose structural DNA is not particularly hardcore, though it is a pretty fab bit of work — and enhanced by some cool real-time video toasting. Once the other shoe dropped though, it was business as usual, with all the accoutrements of a FU gig — including singer Damian Abraham heading to the back of the room and up onto the bar, singing all the way and returning to the stage with his very long mic cord wrapped around his face like some sort of macramé fetish mask. "Anyone can do this," Abraham commented, bringing home Wavelength's DIY ethos, although that most definitely underplays the band's singular live excellentness.
Listen to the epic live rendition of "Year of the Tiger" here.
Bonus content! I shared my audio with Graeme from NOW, who put together this overview of the night:
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