Recording: Duchess Says

Artist: Duchess Says

Song: I Repeat Myself

Recorded at Longboat Hall (Camp Wavelength – Night 2), August 19, 2017.

Duchess Says - I Repeat Myself

Since 2009, the summer Wavelength festival has been a highlight of the season, slowing down the hectic "festival experience" to an Island pace and making the whole thing as much about the vibe and the location as the (always well-curated) music. When this spring's floods shut the Island down, there was a ripple of apprehension from many quarters at the loss of favourite summer hangs, culminating in the festival decamping to the mainland. The WL crew did an excellent job in emulating the festival experience in the outdoor/daytime portion, but it was harder to feel the same sense of relaxation and freedom in a bar.

There was a bit of that WL festival déjà vu with this Montréal quartet reprising their appearance from the sixteenth anniversary party. It did, however, give vocalist/keyboardist Annie-Claude Deschênes a bigger room to rampage through, escaping the stage to sing from the floor for the whole middle of the set.

Recording: Duchess Says

Artist: Duchess Says

Song: Narcisse

Recorded at The Garrison (Wavelength Music Festival 16 – Night 2), February 13, 2016.

Duchess Says - Narcisse

Wavelength's sixteenth anniversary festival was a little less adventurous than last year's sesquidecade spectacular. For the first time in recent memory, the festival settled into one home base for three nights (along with one daytime excursion off-site) and the programming eschewed retrospective turns for a future-focused weekend, daring audiences to invest in the musical here-and-now. The festival's middle night saw the most rock action and the biggest crowd, packed in on a cold night to get sweaty. Some of the members of this long-running dance-punk unit have recently been focusing on Montréal side-project supergroup PyPy, but there wasn't any rust as they electrified the crowd to close out this night, sounding like a disreputable party that'd broken out after an explosion in a lab that was trying to crossbreed "Oh Bondage Up Yours!" with "Rabies (Baby's Got The)". Vocalist Annie-Claude Deschênes provided plenty of entertainment, leaning forward to get in the crowd's face before simply directing the audience to clear one section of the dancefloor for her to come down and take over. The favour'd later be returned with a dance-party crowd invasion on stage — a well-rehearsed series of gestures that still managed to work the room up into a frenzy.