This summer's been pretty good to me, musically. First, that batch of songs I posted in the last missive were part of a solid soundtrack for July. Second, my wife was kind enough to take the kids for the long weekend as I hopped off to Montreal to attend the 10th annual Osheaga music and arts festival. This is really only the second music festival that I've attended in the sense of being on site trying to see as many acts as possible, start to finish. Ottawa's Bluesfest and Folk fest don't count - too few acts or too many days. I though that the line-up was pretty strong, although the distribution of acts I was interested in was a little lopsided. Day 1 had some points of interest, but gaps big enough that I could take the time to wander the grounds and get used to the layout (most importantly, being able to figure out timing, such as the travel time between stages, average wait time for food and water, etc.). Day 2 was seriously cobbled together from past Bluesfest pre-headline acts, artists that if I were on-site, I might check out...but I'd never buy a ticket just to see them. Day 3 was a heart-attack though. There were a pile of bands that I would have loved to see if only they had been scheduled on other days as opposed to against bands I was more excited to see. Sigh. At least I wasn't let down by anybody on Day 3 - choosing one band over another and then being let down would have left me wondering but now I have no regrets.
With regards to overall comments regarding the festival, the layout is great in the sense that the stages are far apart from one another that there is little opportunity for sound bleed. Furthermore, the main stage area was large enough to accommodate over 20,000 people on either the flat ground or the grassy hill at the back of the site (the hill was actually so far back from the stage that the sound and video were out of sync!). However, the layout stinks in that the ways in which one can get from a grouping of stages to another are limited and so thousands of people all taking the same path tended to bottleneck at times, making it tight to get from one set to the next. However, the flow back and forth between the two main stages was seamless - one act would finish on one stage and the other would start up within a minute or two, tops. Also, the park is on an island and so, generally speaking, the only way off at the end of the day is by subway. The line-ups to get on the subway were horrendous. I actually left a few minutes early twice to avoid the brutal wait I suffered on night 1.
Just as I made adjustments to my plan of attack after the first day of sussing things out, the festival also made some adjustments. For example, the way in which they funnelled people into the site was made much smoother (yay) and they took away an entire water station (boo). Seriously, was that a cash grab to take a bottle-filling station away? Kind of a safety issue, no?
While it was still to see so many cans and bottles discarded on the ground, I have to commend the festival for having a grounds crew working all day long to pick up garbage as shows were going on and for adopting an eco-cup system whereby drinkers had to pony up $2 for a cup in which draft beer could be poured all weekend and then the cup could be returned at any point for a $2 refund. This probably put a dent in the mountain of trash.
As for the acts themselves, just like March Madness where the top seeds pre-tournament don't necessarily win the whole shebang, I was interesting to see how my anticipation of shows didn't necessarily correlate with how good they turned out to be. Angus and Julia Stone disappointed; George Ezra, Zhu and Ryn Weaver (honourable mentions) surprised. The moment of the festival might have been when a severely disabled man in a wheelchair was crowd surfed to the stage where he was greeted by the lead singer of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and then invited on stage for the band's finale, "Home". Pretty cool.
Because I like to rank things, here are my favourite 10 shows from the weekend:
10: Hot Chip - well, they didn't win the fashion award...but then again neither did most of the festival-goers (note for next time: cut my hair short, grow a thick beard, wear a crazy print - preferably floral - on a tank-top, weave a tiara out of something that looks like a flowering vine and apply glitter press-on tattoos). The musical highlights might have been the book-ends, "Huarache Lights" and a cover of "Dancing in the Dark"
9: Of Monsters and Men - I'm not too familiar with much of their repertoire aside from "Little Talks" but it was a strong set with a little bit of banter. Side note: in the same way that nobody ever knows what DJs look like from the sound of their voice, I had no idea what the male vocalist looked like before the show. Now I do.
8: Alt-J - expectations were high and unfortunately they didn't really engage the audience and messed up the lyrics pretty badly twice. They definitely played the right tracks and played most of them really well, I just wanted more.
7: Iron + Wine with Ben Bridwell - this was unexpected. I like Band of Horses quite a bit and have heard a few Iron + Wine tracks, but I hadn't heard anything from their joint album of covers. A fairly stripped-down early-afternoon set, but it had a mix of tempos and they got the crowd into it. It was apparently their last show together too so that was neat.
6: The War on Drugs - primarily a hit-the-highlights run through Lost in the Dream, they played pretty much every song I wanted to hear except maybe "In Reverse". Adam Granduciel hurling his guitar on the stage and walking off to close was a nice touch.
5: Weezer - I was warned that these guys didn't have it anymore. Psshht. Weezer whipped through a number of their best-known songs in a 1-hour set. Occasionally, a couple of kids ended up on stage: a girl who looked like she might have been 7 or 8 took over on the keys for a couple of songs and a younger boy showed up twice to rock out on an inflatable guitar. The entire band wrapped by hammering out a group drum solo (?) that hearkened back to tam tam jams on Mont-Royal.
4: James Bay - this guy might not have the biggest fan base, but it is young and hungry. The entire set, which I got to enjoy right close to the stage, was one big sing-along and James enjoyed flashing a "yeah, I got this" smug sneer between tracks while pointing to people in the crowd ("did you see that? I killed that.). A very enjoyable show.
3: Sylvan Esso - I was expecting to sit in on this set for 20 minutes or so on my over to Future Islands. Sorry Future Islands, this NC duo DESTROYED their side stage with a bass-heavy organic-feeling dance party. The highlights for me were "Coffee" and some new song that they didn't name and setlist.fm doesn't seem to list. Argh.
2: X Ambassadors - This was the biggest surprise of the weekend. All I knew of them was "Renegades" and that they were featred in a Jeep commercial. Well, their lead singer laid it all on the stage. Lots of charisma, relatively strong vocals (including a wicked falsetto) and can handle guitar, bass guitar, the sax and drums. In fact recorded tracks on the album VHS are a bit of a letdown...that has to be the sign of a good show. Also of interest: their keyboardist is visually impaired. Not something that you see every day.
1: Florence + the Machine. Earned top marks for everything I'd want to see in a show: great music and vocals, chit-chat from the artist and engaging/interacting with the audience. They only missed bonus points for a left-field cover, but that's just getting picky. Great song selection, 7 musicians and 5 backup vocalists (3 of which occasionally formed the horn section) on stage for creating a wall of sound. Florence herself was a dervish, whipping herself all over the stage, getting into the crowd and clearly enjoying herself.
Now that I've spent this much time blah-blahing, I'm just going to lay out my top 10 new tunes of the month without any comments. Enjoy!
10: Passion Pit double shot!! Lifted Up (1985) and Pay No Mind by Madeon
9: Feki - Remember
8: Grimes - REALiTi
7: Billie Black - Hung Up
6: Alessia Cara - Here
5: Sjowgren - Seventeen
4: The Black and the White - Torn Up
3: Freedom Fry - Yeah You
And I know that I'll be spinning these next two into the winter:
2: Jamie xx - Loud Places (feat. Romy)
1: Rudimental - Rumour Mill (feat. Anne-Marie and Will Heard)
