Gig: Wavelength FIFTEEN - Night 3

Wavelength FIFTEEN – Night 3 (feat. Bart / Tenderness / New Fries / Fresh Snow / Mozart's Sister / Look Vibrant / Cellphone)

The Garrison, Sunday, February 15, 2015.

The three nights of this year's Wavelength festival were each loosely themed around the notions of "past", "present" and "future" and it was the third and final night of those that brought the most satisfaction. Focused squarely on emerging bands that are doing great work right now, this is the sort of show that could send people home with a new favourite band they'd be eager to see again. With an extended 4 a.m. last call, it was also a long night with bands on stage from 8:30 'til nearly three in the morning.

Getting things started, Bart packed a lot of music into less than a half-hour on stage. Led by Chris Shannon (ex-Elwins) and Nathan Vanderwielen (ex-Ruby Coast), the pair switched quickly from parallel dual vocal leads and doubled guitar lines to dartingly-interlocking bursts on both. They were backed by Hooded Fang's Lane Halley on guitar as well as Biblical's rhythm section (Andrew Scott and Jay Anderson). With the high vocals, shifting time signatures and fiddly guitar parts, there was definitely a prog rock thing at play here — but (as of yet, anyway) don't expect any side-long suites detailing Middle-earth battles. So far, their album cover style would probably be more pop-art than Roger Dean, reflecting their quick pop-structured songbursts — maybe let's call 'em "jukebox prog" for now. It's that spirit that sees four songs crammed into the twelve minutes of their début Bart by Bart 7". Heady stuff.

Listen to a track from this set here.

With only Steve Reaume's pixelated geometric abstractions lighting the stage, Chrissy Reichert (who performs as Tenderness) played a set focused on the new material that will be making up the project's sophomore album. There's a lot of variation within the cluttered bricolage of her dancefloor-friendly aesthetic, ranging from touches of hip-hop to galloping dabke beats to a gorgeous slo-jam that sounds like the last dance on the last night at church camp. I am admittedly a little partisan when it comes to the Reichert's work, so take it with a grain of salt, perhaps, when I say that this was the night's headliner-quality set.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Up on the big stage, New Fries played a more focused set than when I last saw 'em on New Year's Eve, but that doesn't mean it was necessarily more straightahead, as there were still a series of gestures that seemed designed to destabilize the standard rock-show dynamic. Once again there was a bit of bait-and-switch at the outset, with Ryan Carley's weird fugue-y keyboard lead-in providing accompaniment for some jibbering crooning from bassist Tim Fagan.

Once Anni Spadafora (guit/vox) and Jenny Gitman (drums) kicked in, it lurched back into rock'n'roll mode as the band reeled off the tunes from their Fresh Face Forward (plus a new one!) in a fairly brisk manner. During closer "Plexiglass" (which received a freeze-frame two-chord breakdown that was longer than the song part of the song) a mysterious pale figure in a white gown emerged on stage and assumed a Jesus-y pose before slumping forward. It's art when deliberate gestures are offered without obvious answers, and punk as hell when a band is presenting music with their own coded massages on their own terms.¹

Listen to a track from this set here.

Notwithstanding a special night of some live film accompaniment and suchlike, Fresh Snow have been keeping a lower profile since last summer's WL Island show. A split single (with Reel Cod labelmates Mimico) added a cover of "Mony Mony" to their repertoire, and word is that a new EP is in the can and being readied for release. The results of that time away from the stage were apparent in a set that featured almost entirely new material — perhaps considered enough of a novelty that the band presented it in a pretty frills-free manner, sans masks or any of the other dramatic devices they're known for. (Well, there was a fair amount of dry ice.) That left the focus on the music, and it sounds like there's a lot to look forward to as we wait on the band's next release.

Listen to a track from this set here.

I will confess that I initially approached Caila Thompson-Hannant's solo project Mozart's Sister with some probably-unwarranted baggage after having read that she had been a member of Shapes and Sizes — a band that I remember being utterly turned off by at a gig back in '07. That said, the first time I saw this project I was — if not overwhelmingly convinced — able to see that she's on to something in this incarnation. Dance-pop doesn't tend to do much for me, but seeing a second performance managed to push me towards begrudging acknowledgement of what Thompson-Hannant is up to.

It was also a chance to situate her on a spectrum of broadly-similar acts at the festival: next to the previous night's Lowell set, this looked like the work of a musical genus; next to the evening's earlier Tenderness performance, it felt a little tame. Thompson-Hannant's stage manner (complete with dance moves) is engaging and about half the material registered with me, so I'd say the performance netted out somewhere above the meh zone, even if this isn't something I'd go out of my way to see a third time.

Listen to a track from this set here.

That was the programmatic peak of the night, and not unreasonably a lot of the crowd headed home, leaving a lot more elbow room for Montréal's Look Vibrant, a young quartet radiating bouncy energy on stage. The band looked maniacally happy to be performing, and they got the crowd (about half of which seemed to be friends who came along up the 401) jittering along. Their hypercaffeinated tunes came across a bit like listening to a Todd Rundgren tape while mashing down the fast forward button, and while I suppose it was fun, it didn't register as my kind of fun. I wager I'll be more into the next wave of bands that some of these lads will end up in a couple years down the road.

Sending the night off with a roar, Cellphone took the stage at about twenty past two to an even more thinned out crowd. That didn't phase the band, who turned in a solid performance that was one of the best-sounding sets I've heard from them in a while. In the DIY spaces I've mostly seen 'em in, minimal PA scenarios tend to hide the vox and synth behind a wall of guit/bass/drums, but here there was a bit more balance that really showed off their unique thrash/new wave fusion. They seemed to be in the mood to play, and after announcing their last song a couple times they ended up playing on. Hopefully I will run into them in such circumstances again. Well, maybe not quite at three in the morning.

Listen to a track from this set here.

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¹ The set's other moment of punk rock instability came when a noted local musician (with a bit of a confrontational bent) made his way up to the front to tell the horde of photographers (who'd been swarming the front of the stage for the duration of the set) to get their damn cameras out of the way and let people watch the show. Clearly not recognized as someone who had probably played more Wavelengths than some of photographers had attended, he was treated with derisive scorn, and there was a brief moment of weird tension.

Gig: Wavelength FIFTEEN - Night 2

Wavelength FIFTEEN – Night 2 (feat. Ginla / Last Ex / Del Bel / The Acorn / Lowell)

SPK Polish Combatants Hall, Saturday, February 14, 2015.

The Present is an uncertain place, lacking the hopeful glow of The Future and the retrospective adjustability of The Past. The middle of three nights of the Wavelength festival — thematically split into Past, Present and Future — was no less so, feeling a little inadequately stirred up. Which is to say, that although I liked most of the bands on the bill on their own merits, juxtaposed against each other the night's curation felt too safe, lacking any sudden left turns.

Maybe that notion of safeness was also lingering in my mind after the afternoon's artist talk with Art Bergmann, who complained about the suffusion of bland "beigeness" in the world at large. So, yeah, on the whole, this night was a little too beige.

There were good vibes in the room, mind, and it's always nice to be able to take in a show at the Polish Combatants Hall, where even a healthy crowd (as this gig had) meant you'd still have some elbow room, and the high walls behind the stage also make it an excellent canvas for General Chaos' visuals. I was glad to see that there were heaps of young first-timers out at this all-ages show, even if the big draw for them turned out to be a fairly uninterestingly generic pop singer.

Opening the night was Ginla, a duo on their studio recordings but playing as a trio live with guit, moog and drums. Offering some hazy popstuff, the tunes as of yet offer a bit more atmosphere than hooks. Attending to their gear, there's not much showmanship, making them a bit more suited to the bedroom studio than the stage — although having the live drums in the mix adds a spark. The sensibility was also a bit too straight-ahead to really stand out, so hopefully there's a weird leap forward yet ahead for the group, though there's already potential on display here.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Last Ex is also a core duo performing live as a trio. Simon Trottier and Olivier Fairfield, who play together as members of Timber Timbre, started the project to further the work they did on an unreleased film soundtrack. Both of those touchstones are present on their album and in the material they performed live, though Last Ex hews more towards cinematic abstraction than anything you'd head on a Timber Timber record. Live, they were joined by Mathieu Charbonneau, who also plays with them in TT — though his former work in epic-instrumentalists Torngat is also a fitting sonic touchstone here.

Their set started a bit roughly, with Trottier having some guitar problems. Fairfield would also have some issues with his drumside synth, but when things were smoothed over, this was a satisfying set. Their expansive sound is a natural fit for Constellation Records, but their music doesn't have the grand sweep of, say Godspeed You! Black Emperor or Do Make Say Think, preferring instead self-contained hazily evocative sonic miniatures. There's also enough forward thrust for it to be more than just background-y instrumental music, but this was arguably not the best situation to spotlight that, as the crowd largely treated this as something to chatter over.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Del Bel's mid-bill slot also doubled as the album release show for their self-titled sophomore effort. That probably made it additionally frustrating for the band that their set was plagued with sound issues and technical difficulties, including a recalcitrant synth that was vexing bassist Tyler Belluz to no end. Even after a pause to set that right, the mix was still wonky.

But things improved as the band persevered, and at least the last few songs sounded pretty great. The icing on cake came when horse-stealing death ballad "The Stallion" was chased with a "schmaltzy" closing cover of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" — that juxtaposition perhaps getting to the heart of what makes Del Bel so appealing. And if nothing else, going out on a high note mostly obviated the memories of the rough start.

Listen to a couple songs from this set here.

A post-album pause turned into a few years of hiatus for Ottawa's The Acorn, with frontman Rolf Klausener devoting his energy to co-founding the Arboretum Festival and dance-oriented side project Silken Laumann. The rhythmic pulse of the latter seems to have stuck with him, as several of the songs in a set filled with new material were based around simple drum-machine beats. Those rhythm tracks seemed to keep both the tunes and the parka-clad Klausener rooted in place at first, but as he warmed up he stripped off layers and heaved some Valentine's Day condoms into the crowd. Some of the new material sounded a little staid next to the couple familiar ones that were mixed into the set, but it's possible that the new material will find its pulse in time.

Listen to a song from this set here.

The night was capped off by Elizabeth Boland, who performs as Lowell. (She was backed on stage by an un-introduced Matt Fong on guitar.) I'd say that her electro-pop stylings more or less missed the mark, but would also note they were exceedingly popular with the enthusiastic young crowd that was there to see her. Boland wobbled a bit when technical problems took her beats and vocals out of the sound system, but after being unsure whether she should retreat from the stage while things were worked out, she eventually managed to own the moment with the help of a megaphone and some crowd interaction. So points there for fast thinking and keeping things interactive, but there wasn't much to recommend in her songs.

That closed the night out on a rather beige note, but at least there was still the Future to look forward to.

Gig: Wavelength FIFTEEN - Night 1

Wavelength FIFTEEN – Night 1 (feat. Skeletones Four / More Or Les / Lockbox / Hervana / Delta Will / Most People / Art Bergmann / controller.controller)

Sneaky Dee's. Friday, February 13, 2015.

Dividing this year's three festival nights into past, present and future, the opener saw the band returning to Sneaky Dee's, home to the series for the bulk of its lifespan as a weekly series. It's not a venue I find myself at much these days, so there is a faint hint of nostalgia in being there. Upstairs, not much has changed. The paint on the ceiling is peeling a little, adding to the sensation of stepping into a dusty memory. But the drinks are still cheap.

The evening was split into two distinct parts, the first of which was a series of cover sets which saw the sorts of bands you might see at a Wavelength nowadays covering the sorts of bands you might have seen onstage in the series' early times. This turned out to be a great success, with all of the bands pulling it off — some even managed to impart their own spin on the material. And even with three-song mini-sets, quick turnovers managed to keep the momentum up.

Skeletones Four started the night off by paying tribute to WL's Guelph connections, covering the songs of Jim Guthrie (who just happened to be in the crowd). "Evil Thoughts" could have passed as something from the band's own catalogue and the band brought a nice menacing undertone to it; "Virtue" and "So Small" had a bit more lightness to them.

Listen to a song from this set here.

That got things started, but the still-growing crowd was really fired up by More Or Les, who gave a quick history lesson in T.O. hip-hop, pulling out tunes from Saukrates and Kardinal Offishall before calling up some of the all-stars of Hip Hop Karaoke (including Kryptonite, Mr. Mischief, June & Pilaf, Dirty D) to bring Rascalz' posse cut "Northern Touch" to life. The coup de grace here was getting Thrust, who appeared on the original, to join in.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Keyboardist/vocalist Laura Barrett was later heard asking around if anyone could identify what genre Lockbox fell into, a fair question given the range of sounds they had to tackle to play the songs of Owen Pallett. Playing the songs without a violin would give them a different sound, but doing so without the use of Pallet's loop pedal meant having to reconstruct them from the ground up. The recent "Song for Five & Six", with its squiggly Abba-esque synth line required the least re-jigging. "Keep the Dog Quiet" registered as jittery new wave while "Many Lives → 49 MP" (with a Tubular Bells kind of vibe) progged out — "be prepared to dance in a bunch of different time signatures," was the warning at the outset. Barrett, a fine singer, sometimes seemed a little unsure whether to go high or low to match Pallett's vocals, but on the whole the re-constructions came together rather well. This was the début for this new unit (with Sarah Buchanan on drums, Jeff DeButte on bass and Niall Fynes on guit), and hopefully we'll be getting a chance to hear them tackle some original material.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Hervana (who are, as their name implies, an all-female Nirvana cover band) tackled Constantines, a rather different sounding band, theoretically united by the fact that both were briefly on Sub Pop. The fact that the band's re-interpretations felt a bit less "lived in" than some of the other covers could have made them the superficial work of, well, a cover band. But the Cons were at their best when things were fiery-fresh and uncertain, so Hervana's sense of newness worked in their favour. "Soon Enough" felt a bit inert to start, but "Young Lions" and "Shine a Light" had the right sort of raw energy.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Delta Will gave a historical overview of Manitoba/Caribou, leading off with "Hendrix With Ko" from Dan Snaith's artistic breakthrough Up in Flames. The band, this time out a four-piece with Sexy Merlin's Sean Dunal on drums, caught that song's reconstructed psychedelic vibe quite nicely before moving forward to "She's the One" and "Can't Do Without You", each a bit more dance-floor focused than the one before. Frontman Charles Tilden brought a particular sense of detail to matching up some of Snaith's sampled sounds.

Listen to a song from this set here.

The perfect Broken Social Scene cover set would probably involve someone rambling onstage for fifteen minutes about hugs, the power of forgiveness and the existential consequences of feeling fucked up inside while a dozen people milled around behind them tuning endlessly. Instead, Most People focused on the songs, doing a superior job of re-interpreting them in their own voice rather than slavishly copying them. They slid further in that direction over their trio of songs, with "Sweetest Kill" coming off the closest to the original while treating "Lovers Spit" and "7/4 (Shoreline)" more like Most People tunes — instead of finding a Feist fill-in on the latter, Paul McEachern handled the high vocal parts. Closing out the first half of the night, this definitely had a headliner vibe.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Even after half-a-dozen short sets, the night was only halfway over. Celebrating the past in a different way, Can-rock icon Art Bergmann made his Wavelength début. Ever since forming the K-Tels in 1978, Bergmann has been a voice in the wilderness and a cog in the machine, trying to slip his raw testimonials into the prevailing discourse. Fighting health troubles and a depleted muse, Bergmann has been living in Alberta for the past decade, mostly off the radar (save for an occasional special appearance), and it was a pleasant surprise last year to hear of his return with a new EP. The four tunes on Songs For the Underclass are as pointed as the disc's title in their last-chance lamentations for a world gone wrong.

Whether all that would be appreciated by the large segment of the crowd that looked too young to remember his cultural presence looked uncertain. "Yeah, we're covering something named Art," Bergmann off-handedly muttered near the start of his set, picking up on the vibe. That double joke sailed over the audience's heads, and Bergmann seemed a little disappointed at these modern audiences that don't boisterously rise to the occasion, or even heckle more than half-heartedly.

He was definitely not disappointed with his "Toronto band", who were in fine form. Powered by Chris Wardman on guitar, Bergman was soon swapping grins as the band powered through his back catalogue. There's an embarrassment of riches in his songbook, and it was a thrill to hear high-powered versions of "Remember Her Name", "Beatles in Hollywood", "Bound For Vegas", "Contract" and more. "Drones of Democracy", the first track from the new one provided the set's climax, a sweeping song that owes more than a little something to the slow-burning lament of Neil Young's "Cortez The Killer."

Some of that goodness was definitely lost on the crowd, who started to drift away as the set wore on. After the short, sharp bursts of the cover sets, the hour-and-a-quarter here felt a little long in the context of the night, and too much perhaps to engage the casually interested. But I was glad to have seen Bergmann put on an impressive show that maintained its power and focus throughout.¹

Listen to a couple songs from this set here.

The crowd was listing a bit and the hour was growing late as the night's last act took the stage. Still, given it was about seven years since controller.controller last played a proper gig, waiting up past one in the morning probably wasn't too much of an extra burden. Precisely of their moment with that mid-aughts hi-hat riding death disco sound, it's probably been long enough for them sound to feel fresh again, and the band hit the stage with a jolt-you-awake groove, launching the slashing dual guitars of signature song "History" into a suddenly-heaving dancefloor.

A couple missed cues and other signs of rustiness couldn't spoil the celebratory vibe, though a bass malfunction after the second song momentarily brought the energy back down. (Ironically, it happened right around when Basnayake was singing "if things can go wrong, they'll only go wrong" during "Silent Seven".)

Once Ronnie Morris secured a replacement (courtesy of Most People), he did his best to bring things back up, mugging expressively, dancing as he played, and eventually taking to the crowd. Meanwhile vocalist Nirmala Basnayake was all smiles as she made the obligatory getting-older jokes and cajoled drummer Jeff Scheven to try and approach the tempos they could tackle in their heyday.

A new twitter account implies this reunion wasn't a one-off and the reaction from the crowd implied that some of the folks that missed them the first time around were taking notice. Stay tuned.

Listen to a song from this set here.

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¹ After the set, I saw Bergmann popping out of the off-stage area with a cigarette in his hand, which he proceeded to light and take a puff from as he stepped down from the stage. While I was amused at the punkrock disregard for the rules that was more evident in the sixty-two year old singer than in the audience, I didn't realize 'til after the fact that that transgression was enough to get Bergmann bounced from the venue. When's the last time any of the would-be young badasses you saw perform manage to get turfed from their own show?

Currente calamo: The ALL CAPS! Island Festival 2013 (Sunday)

The ALL CAPS! Island Festival 2013 — Artscape Gibraltar Point

Day 2 — feat. Watershed Hour / Pachamama / EONS / Elfin Saddle / Magneta Lane / Beliefs / catl / Rich Aucoin)

While it's all fresh in my mind, a few notes from this year's ALL CAPS! Festival. Longer, more comprehensive reviews will follow down the road a piece.

Scale matters. There was a hugely different vibe at something like this than at a giant mersh festival where you're penned in all day. Room to move, an understanding that you can wander away and come back. Glints of recognition — even when it's just a quick nod to a familiar face who's not a friend yet. Heck, on Sunday, when we strolled up at the start of the second day, the security guard at the gate recognized a friend of mine and commented that she looked less stressed out than the previous day. Somehow, ALL CAPS even managed to curate compassionate security guards.

The second afternoon of the fest again started with the day's youngest band. Watershed Hour had a few years on the previous day's Unfinished Business, and they'd clearly put the time to good use, learning now only how to master their instruments, but also how to mess with that as well — as evidenced by the bucket that Laura Klinduch has appended to her drum kit. She was joined by Natalie Paproski-Rubianes on bass, and the pair proceeded with some thick and ferocious rock jams.

With hints of DFA1979 (but with more of a slop-prog edge), there was all sorts of fun here, from the balaclava-clad bell-ringing assistant to the fingertapping basslines to the cowbell mini-breakdowns. Paproski-Rubianes handled the bulk of the vox (including one song that referenced Doctor Who) though Klinduch did some fine sing-shouting on one song ("I'M SORRY SIR / I JUST COULD NOT BE BOTHERED") in a mock-British accent that brushed up against sounding like an angry Spinal Tap. Coming in with no expectations here, I enjoyed this a lot, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one making "more like Watershred Hour, amirite?" jokes by set's end. Could they be the most exciting thing to come out of Whitby since, Oh, I dunno, Cleavers?

Listen to a song from this set here.

After that, a most pleasant change of scenery as the festival moved down to the beach for a couple sets. The beach stage was a small platform that looked like it could have been a reclaimed raft that Pachamama might have arrived on, nestled underneath a giant beachfront tree. This liberation-music percussion duo is a joint effort between Alexandra Mackenzie and Brandon Valdivia, who both have a lot of ongoing artistic projects (the former as a visual artist and the latter as a busy member of the city's improvised music community). But it might be easiest to get a grip on their approach here by viewing the partnership through the lens of their respective solo music projects, with Pachamama absorbing elements of Petra Glynt's handcrafted electronic loop-pop and Mas Aya's Latin American percussion bricolage. Together, it makes the project a fusion of organic drum-pounding essentialism with technologically-created sonics, all in the service of body-moving social uplift.

For this set, the pair were joined not only by a dancer who ranged freely around the beach, but also by Eric Woolston and Lido Pimienta who rounded out the sound with even more percussion and another layer of vocals. That added something new to the songs, but I think nature's stage was the most powerful collaborator here. I've been seeing this band a fair bit lately, as they're pretty electrifying when they're on their game. But having a chance to stand at the edge of the lake, waves lapping at my feet while they sang about, say, the true value of water and how it's cheapened by commodification, felt pretty amazing.

Listen to a song from this set here.

It was also amusing to see the festival-goers mixing with the passers-by who were simply working their way along the Island's beaches. Some looked suspicious, a few stopped to listen, and as EONS began their set, one guy in a canoe even held his spot a little ways off shore to listen a while. In contrast to the funky clatter of the previous set, Matt Cully brought some introspective songs from his brand-new Arctic Radio album, accompanied only by his guitar and co-vocalist Misha Bower. Doc Pickles, the day's MC, was not wrong when he introduced the set as "Lake Ontario, featuring EONS", as the sound of the waves completed the folk-y excursions, filling in the vast yearning spaces in the songs. A gorgeous time.

Listen to a song from this set here.

The extra quiet time at the main stage had been put to good use, for by the time the crowd straggled back up from the beach, it was rather filled with all manner of unusual equipment. Foremost among them would be a tape loop stretching out about six feet from a reel-to-reel player as well as a long tube that looked somewhere between a didgeridoo and one of Jean-François Laporte's compressed air instruments. These were just some of the tools that Elfin Saddle would employ in their set.

The quartet led off with a drone-y sort of folk song faturing Jordan McKenzie's slowly unfolding, flattened keening vocals. This was a very "Wavelength" sort of moment, a taste of something avant and not easily digestible that many in the audience might otherwise pass by, but here sitting back on the lawn and absorbing it. The band's contrasting textures were provided by Emi Honda, whose Japanese vocals had a different sort of distancing effect. But then, as if to remind the crowd that even if they tend to work in a more experimental sonic space they were still from Montréal and on Constellation records, all at once the drones broke into a rising post-rock swell. I'd seen the band a couple years back and was left feeling fairly neutral towards them, but between the green grass and the greyish sky this was much more to my liking.

Listen to a song from this set here.

If that was an example of Wavelength nudging the audience a bit towards something that might be at the edge of people's comfort zones, then following it up with a set from Magneta Lane may well have felt like a soothing balm afterward. And if there was something prototypically Wavelengthesque about the Montréalers' weirdness, this might have felt a bit correspondingly out of place and somewhat too-straight up. Now celebrating a decade as a band, Magneta Lane are somewhat cursed by that longevity, never quite getting popular enough to "break out", but never being weird or obscure enough to gain defenders among the indie-rock cognoscenti. They are also cursed, in that same regard, for having a career based more on consistency rather than on the sort of "growth" or "reinventions" that make for convenient narratives.

And yet, Magneta Lane are a Wavelength band as well, and they were palpably happy to be playing the show, talking about how important the series was to their early formation. I have no doubt that the blasts from their Marshall stacks were too straight-ahead for some in the crowd, just as Elfin Saddle's droney weirdness was not straight-ahead enough for others — and such is the Wavelength continuum. The trio proceeded to blast away with some crunchy riffs, mixing some older tunes with material from their recent Witchrock EP. I hadn't really paid attention to the band in a while — their-straight up rockitude generally places them in different circles than I usually travel in — and even if this didn't make me think I'd rush to got out of my way to see them again, this was a pleasing enough re-introduction.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Beliefs also offer guitar-rock with plenty of volume, but their penchant for leavening their sound with squishy noise and distortion puts them closer to my heart. Hearing the shoegaze-y quintet out in the open was an inneresting sonic experience, as I've always thought of the bombarding echoes reverberating off the walls as a key element of their sound. But here, having the soundwaves expanding to the sky brought a pleasingly expansive clarity to their sound. It helps that the band is in fine form right now, getting heady for a European tour (and to record their sophomore album on their return).

Listen to a song from this set here.

With the daylight beginning to falter, there were a few scattered drops from the clouds overhead, but the weekend's perfect weather held. I'd timed my beer buzz to correspond with catl's return to ALL CAPS, and their punk/blues dance-noise did a good job of warding off the chills as evening turned to night. There's been a couple rounds of changes for the band since they played in the backyard to close out the festival in 2010. Down to a duo, the band features now-unseated guitarist Jamie Fleming alongside Sarah Kirkpatrick, who has shifted from keybs to stand-up drum kit. When I first saw the duo incarnation of the band in a back patio gig one of my first reactions was that they'd need more volume to really get over — and this set would prove that hunch correct.

Playing as a two-piece also has the advantage of pushing the band back to the scuzzy rawness that they're best at, and several new songs showed that off to good effect. Holdovers in the setlist ("Caroline", "Hey Hey", "Gold Tooth Shine") were served with pulsating abandon as well, and the set ended with a supercharged version of "Working Man's Soul".

Listen to a song from this set here.

As catl played, there was a flurry of activity off to the side of the stage, with a circle of volunteers loading the confetti cannons and unpacking the rainbow-coloured parachute. Even a a few minutes of extra setup time dealing with a recalcitrant projector couldn't dampen the sense of enthusiasm. After giving thanks to the crowd, WL organizer and festival founder Ryan McLaren had a question: "How does ALL CAPS! end?"

"With an exclamation mark!" In finding the right way to close out the last night of Wavelength's last island festival, the organizers reached out to the night's other returnee, as Rich Aucoin is basically the human embodiment of that exclamation mark. Aucoin's greatest talent is to make affirmations seem joyful to make even the most jaded want to carpe the hell out of the diem. The manipulated viral videos and disco-y dance rock are just the tools with which he's accomplishing that, but they certainly help in his uplift party plan.

After sharing a few new youtube finds, Aucoin established his familiar pattern of teaching the audience the chant-along chorus before launching into each song, and then launching himself out into the crowd to lead the sing-alongs. There's not much more to say about it — the in-the-moment-ness that he inspires needs to be experienced rather than dissected. I'll only passingly note that besides upgrading to a full live band somewhere along the way, Aucoin has also upsized his parachute to a huge thing that, once efficiently unfurled with spontaneous co-operation, was sufficiently large to encompass the field full of people, an embodiment of the shared experience that somehow manifests itself. The fact that a large portion of the crowd didn't even notice the fireworks being launched from the beach says something about how engrossing this is.

Listen to a song from this set here.

And thus ends ALL CAPS! Any sense of sadness at that fact was forestalled by the satisfaction of a perfectly-executed weekend. As next summer starts to wind down, I may well get to missing the festival, though I have a hankering that Wavelength is going to have some reasonably-diverting new experiences ready to go by then.

Addendum: I have more photos from the weekend posted in an album over at the MFS Facebook page.

Currente calamo: The ALL CAPS! Island Festival 2013 (Saturday)

The ALL CAPS! Island Festival 2013 — Artscape Gibraltar Point

Day 1 — feat. Unfinished Business / Most People / ev ree wuhn / beekeeper / Shotgun Jimmie / Bizzarh / Hooded Fang / The Blow

While it's all fresh in my mind, a few notes from this year's ALL CAPS! Festival. Longer, more comprehensive reviews will follow down the road a piece.

Over each of the past four years, Wavelength has thrown an Island festival that has gotten bigger and more ambitious in scope — and become for some folks a tentpole summer event. When word of the fifth iteration came with the adjective "final" in its title, there was certainly cause for consternation. And yet, that "final" also fit right into the Wavelength ethos: on the one hand, it served as a focusing device, a reminder to be alive to this moment, because this is it. It also served as a reminder of WL's playful self-rejuvenation, as if the organizers were saying, "All right, we've finally really figured out how to do this, so let's start something new from scratch and make some more mistakes again."

And indeed, at a logistical level, this went off without a hitch. It helped that that ever-mercurial weather co-operated beyond all expectations, with pleasantly warm days turning to gorgeously cool evenings, and no threat of rain. But beyond that, the festival went off like clockwork — having nearly all the music on the roomy outdoor stage meant that the next band up could be gathering their gear together and getting ready to set up even before the band ahead of them finished playing. In fact, for the diligent music-listener, the main stage operated so efficiently that there was hardly time to check out the rest of the festival, from the game zone with ping-pong table and a giant Jenga set, to the open art studios, to — ah! — the beautiful beach. That also meant that people could customize their experience: for some, the music was merely the background to the camping, hanging around, beach-going, etc, and that's cool too.

I was mostly sticking around by the stage, mind, and I made a point of being there early enough to see the lightning-fast set from festival openers Unfinished Business. I'd seen the teenaged trio a few times already, and they always play with refreshingly unjaded joy. The youngest band at the festival (now savvy veterans at thirteen and fourteen years old!), they also helped to reinforce ALL CAPS' all-ages ethos, playing songs they've written about superpowers and #epicfails. Their music also brought some of the crowd's younger members right up front, so hopefully the we can do it/you can do it message is being passed along. The confetti cannon blast at the end came after only about ten minutes of playing, but the band packed in a full set of quick songs. [By the way, if you act fast, you can still get in on the rewards of the band's crowd-funded vinyl release plans.]

Listen to a couple quick songs from this set here.

"Incubator" band Most People have played the anniversary festival and celebrated their album release with Wavelength, but outside on a sunny afternoon seemed like their ideal environment. Although the songs' electronic spines feel like they were laptop-crafted in the bedroom, they have an expansive languidness that opens up underneath the sky. The echo-y atmospheres recall Dusted at a few points, but without the glumness. Employing guitar and bass on top of backing tracks, Brandon Gibson-DeGroote and Paul McEachern also take care to craft a concert experience that feels "live", whether joining in on a dual-drum breakdown or in striking a winking rock-star pose during closing statement of purpose "Young and Wild".

Listen to a song from this set here.

Name-wise, ev ree wuhn [sic] might sound more expansively ambitious than "Most People", and indeed, there's more reach in their post-bedroom breakbeat-informed wooze. That's not always to their credit, as that widescreen ambition sometimes led to a blockbuster-esque generic-ness. For example "Turquoise", featuring an over-emoting Devin Wilson (of local "apocalypse pop" unit Bravestation), sounded like the band was imagining themselves playing an arena show and reaching for the cheap seats. Some of the more textured material, such as "Paper Tokyo" came off better, and closer "Colours" seemed like an appropriate soundtrack to lean back and watch the clouds drifting overhead.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Taking the stage to the pre-recorded voice of a "bad advice hotline" would be the first sign that Vancouver's beekeeper is leavening their pop-punk-y tunes with a fair bit of whimsy. To put it another way: it was not a shock when the drummer punctuated a song by pulling out a kazoo. Usually, a little of this goes a long way, but I was actually surprised that I enjoyed the band's goofiness more than the music. When they broke into a (gleep) Alanis Morissette cover, at least Devon Lougheed had the decency to run down to the ground in front of the stage to solo among the first row of spectators. But there were some hints (such as the power pop of "It's The Blood") that the band's music might yet become as inneresting as their antics.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Hopefully they stuck around, as they could have no better guide to integrating whimsy and strong songwriting than Jim Kilpatrick, who operates under the nom de guerre Shotgun Jimmie. Often (such as at his Wavelength-abetted album release show) playing as a one-man band, Kilpatrick was backed here by a rhythm section of Jay Baird and the Cannon Bros.' Cole Woods. Having musical support behind him gave Kilpatrick a chance to untether himself from the songs a bit, leading to some pleasingly goofy "jazz" excursions and lounge versions of some of the tunes. The pair rolled with the sudden shifts, laughing along, and could also provide a powerful new wave crunch when the band attacked the songs head-on, such as on Transistor Sister's "Suzy". And more than at that album-release show, Kilpatrick was tossing out songs from throughout his career.

On the surface, these are simple songs presented in an uncomplicated way, but Kilpatrick's wit and presence elevates the material quite a lot. Maybe not so much that I'd want to join the trio of sing-all-the-words superfans who spent the show at the lip of the stage, but this was still pretty great stuff and one of the festival's highlights.

Listen to a couple songs from this set here.

Had I not seen Bizzarh just a couple weeks ago, I might have been dubious about the pair, as their hip-hop/R&B style is not the sort of music that I usually gravitate towards. But that Regent Park gig was a good reminder that talent trumps genre every time, and I left totally impressed with the duo.

Charli Champ and Dollar Paris play off each other with the ease of telepathic twins, spitting rhymes and singing hooks with a natural ease. That said, as they took the bigger festival stage, they looked a bit more nervous than at that last time 'round and it took a couple songs for them to really find their groove. But as they moved along, it seemed as if they realized the crowd was really into this, and they got back to their confident swagger. If we didn't get the front-porch a capella the pair threw off at Regent Park, we did get a string of rapid-fire hits, and there was so much packed into the quick songs that I was surprised that the set was done in twenty minutes.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Relative veterans, Hooded Fang showed how to keep the show moving forward even when there's some bumps in the road. After easing in with instrumental "Big Blue", the band leaped into their Gravez-garage-gloom, only to have both April Aliermo's bass and vocalist Daniel Lee's microphone come unplugged. The rest of the band plunged on, Lee gave a smile and a shrug and all at once they took off. As the band careened into "Ode to Subterrania", a small (and fairly gentle) moshpit formed up front as Lee and fellow guitarist Lane Halley threw in some fresh licks and noise-twists into the songs. Spreading the banter around also let the band's personalities shine, with the crowd getting to hear from an erudite hobo perfessor (drummer D. Alex Meeks) and sassy activist Aliermo. Even in the moments where things were falling apart a bit — or especially? — the set was a superb mix of technicolor slop and motorvatin' gusto.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Given that I had never heard of The Blow before, I simply had to trust in the curatorial skills of the Wavelength crew. But it didn't take long for Khaela Maricich to establish her headliner bona fides. All of the rock'n'roll gear stripped away, Maricich entered to a stage that was empty, save for her microphone stand, and proceeded to fill up the whole thing with her goofy/manic/sexy energy. Collaborator Melissa Dyne worked from a platform behind the audience, and as she'd start tracks and drop in skittering rhythmic complications, Maricich moved like one of the pied piper's rats, twitching and suddenly possessed by the music. (And if that makes it sound like a disagreeable experience for Maricich, do note that she'd frequently implore Dyne to never, ever let the rhythm stop.) It's a bit too bad that "Step Into My Wiggle Room", which would be an entirely apt album title, is already taken.

There was an element of performance art at play here, but it was never at the expense of the music or having fun. Debuting a set of almost entirely new material, there were some rough edges, but the anything-could-happen sensibility was a thousand times more fun than over-polished professionalism. Maricich got the crowd on side (demonstrations such as "Six Things My Butt Never Does" were a big winner) and even enlisted volunteers to operate the smoke machine at the edge of the stage. She also solicited ideas from the crowd, doing a cartwheel when one was called for and all-but-daring the crowd to command her to take off her pants. By the end of the set she spent most of one song singing while crowd surfing ("don't put me back! I don't want to stand!") — and eventually, the pants came off. That's always a satisfying way to end an evening.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Addendum: I have more photos from the weekend posted in an album over at the MFS Facebook page.

Currente calamo: NXNE 2013 (Saturday)

NXNE 2013 (Saturday, June 15, 2013)

While these shows are fresh in my mind I want to get some quick notes down. In the fullness of time there will be a more complete accounting of the night that'll include even more details and recordings.

8 p.m.: Andrea Parkins @ The Tranzac (Main Hall)

After some daytime excursions, I made my back to The Tranzac for what would definitely be my main stop of the night. I would have been going to this even if this show had been going on outside of NXNE, so the fact that it was integrated into the festival was even better. For all that, the crowd looked more like something you'd see at a Burn Down the Capital gig than your typical venue-hopping festival-goer.

That sense of "outsiderness" was enhanced when the night began with a set from New Yorker Andrea Parkins that would be anything but standard NXNE fare. Featuring extended technique for accordion and electroacoustic improvization, Parkins has been recording and developing her style (inspired by Fluxus and John Cage) since the 90's, and here unleashed a variety of sounds (from accordion, laptop, electronics, bells, and a roll of packing tape) with a sense of calm stewardship. Elements of noise and distortion were balanced with ethereal waves of sound, a lot of with with a frisson of sheer unexpectedness — this is not your typical accordion set. This one was totally an unexpected delight.

Listen to an excerpt from this set here.

9 p.m.: THIGHS @ The Tranzac (Main Hall)

After that, the night shifted to a different kind of noise as THIGHS began building their wall of amps on the dancefloor in front of the stage. I was amused to note the band setting up in such a manner that they'd be face-to-face with the sit-down crowd — and I was guessing that most in the front row might not have seen frontman/howler Mark Colborne in action before.

One the band let that wall of amps loose, a few of those first-row patrons moved back to protect their ears, but they were probably still within Colborne's range as he, as always, wandered off as far as his extended mic cord would allow, channelling his inner genteel psychopath — or, possibly, an alien sent to earth in human form who isn't quite sure of which things he should acknowledge/ignore/bump into/rub up against, sputtering half-intelligible bursts like "I LOSE HOPE!" all the while. The band's tightly-controlled cacophony, with its razor-sharp stops and starts, ground out behind him — a little slower and less frenetic than in the past in the first of what would turn out to be several numbers that were new to me. From the sounds of it, the band has turned over their setlist a fair amount from a year ago, with fewer of the songs from their album peppered throughout. I've been a fan of this band since I first encountered them, but this was the best-executed set I'd seen from 'em — truly a cut above.

Listen to a couple tracks from this set here.

10 p.m.: Lean Left @ The Tranzac (Main Hall)

I've already talked about this amazing set here. You can also listen to an excerpt from this set here.

Midnite: Tangiers @ The Garrison

After that, I headed into the sweatbox of The Garrison's back room for another highly-anticipated set. Tangiers released three very fine albums before packing it in, but coming out at a time when I was just starting to go to more gigs, I missed out on seeing them. Now, celebrating the ten-year anniversary of their debut Hot New Spirits, co-leaders Josh Reichmann and James Sayce had reassembled the lineup that recorded that album. Headlining a night-long showcase put together by local label Hand Drawn Dracula, there was a tightly-packed crowd that looked like they'd been waiting (all night/several years) to see this set.

When they emerged to the darkened stage, the band pulled it off with tightly-coiled, fuss-free intensity that gave them the appearance of a well-oiled touring machine more than guys who casually picked it up after such a long gap. Switching back and forth on lead vocals, the songs sounded a bit like variations on "Pirate Love", but I totally mean that as high praise. The band were focused enough on executing that there wasn't much in the way of stagecraft, but the audience was so buzzed at the start of each song that the set never lacked for palpable excitement.

It's perhaps a sober realization of age and experience over youth's dazzling energy that it seems clear that these guys could stick together and make a totally credible go of it, but that (from all reports) they don't feel the need to extend this reunion past one show — one burst of rock'n'roll glory instead of a return to the spirit-breaking slog.

Listen to a couple songs from this set here.

Currente calamo: NXNE 2013 (Friday)

NXNE 2013 (Friday, June 14, 2013)

While these shows are fresh in my mind I want to get some quick notes down. In the fullness of time there will be a more complete accounting of the night that'll include even more details and recordings.

10 p.m.: Mexican Slang @ Creatures Creating

After spending the day at the 159 Manning BBQ, I took a quick trip just around the corner to drop into the Creatures Creating gallery, home to a three-night stand of NXNE shows curated by Wavelength. The spot was easily recognizable, given the swirling colours of General Chaos swirling in the front window, but the show turned out to be in the let's-call-'em-cozy environs of the low-ceilinged basement, with a stage at the back similarly receiving the GC treatment against the backdrop of Alex MacKenzie's glittery backdrop.

I was just in time, with Mexican Slang finishing their preparations and launching into their set. I'd been hearing good things about vocalist/guitarist Annabelle Lee's quartet for months, but had never worked things out to check for myself. As it turned out, this was right down my alley, with their "fuzzy heavy dreamy punk rock jams" sounding something like a poppy version of Homestead-era Sonic Youth that had installed Kim Gordon as fulltime leader. The band was rough around the edges in the best way — though the collapsible NXNE backline might have contributed to that. Racing through a short set, this definitely left me wanting more.¹

Listen to a track from this set here.

11 p.m.: We Were Heads @ Creatures Creating

I stuck around for one more set to check out another band that was totally new to me. Hitting the stage with enough enthusiasm that they got started early, my initial impression of We Were Heads was a shouty sort of metallo-funk party band. After a few songs, I got a sense of the cultivation behind the clatter, and a notion that you might want to append a semi-ironic "avant" to whatever genre tag you'd assign 'em. They didn't make as big of an initial impression on me, but I'm sure I'd find them suitable for further evaluation. If nothing else, give them points for having the good sense not to end their band name with a "z".

Midnite: Bill Orcutt + Chris Corsano @ Double Double Land

If Wavelength are mildly-unexpected presenters at NXNE, then having a couple Burn Down the Capital shows under the festival's umbrella was an all-out jaw-dropper. In the best way, mind you — I was thrilled that as another option on the schedule grid that some folks might get exposed to some of the city's most dynamic cultural programming. This set was the capper of a night of full-on noise-rock at the (equally-surprising-to-be-a-venue) Double Double Land that saw sets from Brian Ruryk and a temporarily-reunified Induced Labour.

I've heard a bit of Chris Corsano's apocalyptic drum work, but I mostly knew of Bill Orcutt (and his time in Harry Pussy) by reputation. As the pair settled in to play, Orcutt looked fairly relaxed — almost professorial — sitting on his amp. It was quickly apparent that these two were working on a pretty advanced level. Where a lot of improvised music works on the principle of starting off and kinda meandering along until the musicians lock into an idea, this set dispensed with that. Each of these pieces hit the ground running, compressed as tightly as diamonds, a controlled burst of energy and then done. Even while marshalling spazzy explosions from his guitar, Orcutt managed to convey a sense of restraint. Corsano was a bit more openly galloping along, but his playing always had a laser-guided sensibility behind it. It was less than twenty minutes into the set when Orcutt called out the last song, but it still felt like there was more musical content than most sets of double that length. Next level chaos theory, expertly applied.

Listen to a couple tracks from this set here.

1 a.m.: The Luyas @ Sneaky Dee's

Wanderin' circumstance ended up re-programming my night, which is how I ended up seeing The Luyas. Not a band that I sit down to listen to very often, I have come to enjoy them as a live act, and given I'd last seen them on the cusp of the release of their Animator album, I was curious to see how things had developed.

Even in a smaller venue for a festival-sized set, the band had brought along their DIY lightbulb rig — and there was a larger sense of scale at play as the band was willing to play fewer fully-fleshed out songs than try and trim and tuck more tunes in. In that regard, album-opener "Montuno" sprawled over the middle of the set, its lowkey pulsations managing to capture the attention of a somewhat wayward crowd. Though stretching out to forty-five minutes, this felt like a quick set and that the band had a whole second act that they had to hold back on.

Listen to a track from this set here.

2 a.m.: Majical Cloudz @ Sneaky Dee's

I think I've already said what I have to say about this here. You can listen to a track from this set here.

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¹ Prolific recorders, the band also has a quartet of EP's available for (free!) download on their bandcamp. Recorded with a rough-and-ready lo-fi aesthetic, there's a bit less groove than in the live incarnation, but also shows off the range of Lee's compositional interests.