RSS

Until last weekend, I hadn’t been to Montreal’s Osheaga festival for the past two summers, which I always regretted to a certain extent (namely missing out on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and reformed Stooges) but never completely. The first two years of the festival will always hold fond memories for me. I remember seeing Sonic Youth for the first time and literally crying, getting messed up and freaked out by We Are Wolves, touching that giant Wayne Coyne-captained Flaming Lips ball and basically just spending two glorious days in the hipster utopia that was Jean Drapeau Park. However, as the years went on the line-ups generally seemed to get, well, shittier; less interesting groups like the Killers were headlining (although I will begrudgingly admit I have a soft spot for them) and the whole festival just seemed a bit more corporate and gigantor, kind of like the one time I looked into Lollapalooza only to discover the exorbitant cost of seeing bands more than 50 feet away, their million dollar VIP lawn chair section passes and the various festival/hotel/tour bus packages available to the general public. Osheaga’s 2010 line up was the first in a little while that legitimately sparked my interest, mostly due to the presence of both Sonic Youth and Devo. Part of me expected to return to the familiar island paradise I had experienced years prior. The more rational sector of my thoughts was telling me the whole thing would be fucked. And you know what? It kind of was.  

So I guess I should start from the very beginning of Day 1. Actually, let’s start the day before day one. In this scene, I am exploring the depths of the World Wide Web (stolen, of course) in order to get a taste of what to expect the following day. Told to focus primarily on Canadian and local acts (which I mostly ended up doing), I decide to hit up some of the Montrealers performing on Myspace. That last sentence made me sound like a huge douche bag, I know, but that’s exactly what I did so I won’t take it back. So yeah, I’m checking out this whole MySpace deal and the local bands playing at the beginning of day 1 sound boring. “Oh great, a bunch of fucking generic Montreal indie bands, quirky female singer songwriters that make me barf and a watered down Southern tinged rock groups. Whoopee.” The headliners for the evening are the Arcade Fire, who I’m also not super excited for because a) they played my high school cafeteria and b) the single off their new album is so not badass. I figure I’m basically so over the indie thing that tomorrow will be a shitty day and I shouldn’t expect much. The words I used in my notes were “potential snooze fest”, actually.  

Saturday I get up too late, which was kind of expected. I’m unorganized and don’t fully know how to access my press pass at the festival, but decide I’ll figure it out. It wasn’t that hard at all. I get to the festival around 1:30 with my friend Nina and by the time I get my pass and all that taken care of it’s about 2. Fine. We enter the festival gates only to discover we will basically be imprisoned for the next 9 hours; the new policy at Osheaga does not allow an individual to leave the site or bring in food. Fuck, you know, fries are like $10 and I won’t be paid until Thursday. In addition to this, the security staff empty out any water you’re planning on bringing in, cutting out at least 15 minutes of music and fun time to line up for their one station of designated water fountains. Fine, assholes. I guess I don’t have a choice. Our first stop was to see Owen Pallett, who I thought was called Final Fantasy but I guess that’s old news, at the Green Stage.

Now, what I find puzzling about Owen Pallett has nothing to do with his music. In my opinion, he’s clearly a talented musician (I guess you have to be if you’re gonna play live using a loop pedal for each song) who produces a less abrasive, experimental and interesting version of Slim Twig’s records that rule. Owen Pallett’s music is pretty good, but turns into a bit of a slumber inducing drag within 15 minutes. What I find so strange about Owen Pallett has more to do with his sense of logic, I guess. Okay, so for a while there he goes under the name ‘Final Fantasy’. Great. You think, “I guess it’s a band” but then it turns out to be just one dude. Right on, that’s cool and impressive. However, when he performed on Saturday under the name Owen Pallett, he had some other quasi paedophilic-looking hipster dude on stage with him who was actually a much more fascinating, though absolutely infuriating, performer. This guy was rocking out like a Red Hot Chilli Pepper on the guitar with a skeezy baseball cap and pedoglasses and stealing my attention. While I didn’t at all approve of his actions or performance, this guy obviously deserves to be part of a band and not a solo project. All in all, a decent and pretty sounding set, but the real highlight was seeing these two guys together looking like a sex crime waiting to happen, what with Pallett resembling a young boy and all… 

Next up on my schedule was Final Flash, one of the groups I had checked out online and been disappointed by the day before. This being the case, I decide to grab a beer, which was stupid. I wait in line for the ATM for 20 minutes and subsequently miss the set. Whoops. From what I hear from my friend Marie Soleil, the group was “medium to bad”. English isn’t her first language, but I trust her opinion.  

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros were awesome and either on a bunch of drugs or just insane hippies by nature. An incredibly energetic psych tinged Southern jam band, their set sounded like the soundtrack to a really cool movie. I would liken them to a dirtier, well rooted version of the Polyphonic Spree; their performance felt like a sort of church sermon, but more in the vein of a badass Southern Baptist Gospel church as opposed to the Spree’s artificial, ‘let the sun shine in’ starch white cult proceeding. I felt as though we should have been sweltering in 40 degree weather, and even despite the heat we would still be dancing and having a good time. The band was huge, boasting trumpets, harmonicas, multiple guitars, a great male and female vocalist and a seemingly tie dye enthusiast drummer. They all seemed like freaks, and I loved it. I want to know more about this band and anyone reading this should look out for them. I think they have a single, but I’m not totally sure. Definitely one of the highlights of the festival’s first day.  

From what I had gathered, Little Scream was a quirky acoustic singer songwriter chick. Blech. But she is local, so we went to see her. It turns out she, much like Owen Pallett, also has a band and none of us know which guitar wielding female this ‘Little Scream’ was. The program said something about her howling like a banshee, but this statement was total bullshit as far as I saw. We assume the chick who sings the most in the group, who happens to be wearing a jean jumpsuit, is Little Scream. I am by no means a sexist individual, but I felt like I was watching Jem or Josie and the Pussycats. The music itself was like if the Dixie Chicks experimenting with stoner rock, the novelty of which wears thin very quickly. NEXT!

Japandroids began as an utter disappointment, exactly like the time I bought a ...And You Will Know Us By Our Trail of Dead album expecting Death From Above 1979. I’d hear the band relatively recently, but they sounded significantly different than I remembered; they were more melodic and by the books than I recalled. I also thought they were kind of a weird electronic noise rock band. Either way, the first half of their set was awful and boring and slow and nearly intolerable. It basically sounded like the Blink 182 reunion tour. Maybe more like Boxcar Racer. Some shit like that. Kids are literally sleeping in the grass by the stage. By the second half, a few loud and noisy songs kept me interested, beginning to live up to my original expectations for the duo’s sound. All in all, the set was nothing special and most of their songs sound the same. From what I gathered (again with the help of M.S. who was more familiar with the band), the boring part of the set was potentially new music of theirs, so fuck Japandroids. Just because you think you’re clever doesn’t mean you’re talented. Maybe I should keep this in mind pertaining to my writing abilities as well.  

I thought Stars were fine. I expected to hate them more than I did, so I guess I was impressed. My two friends, actual fans of the group, said the performance was a disappointment so I would trust their opinion if I were you. I can understand where that opinion came from. The group upped the stage antics by attempting to jump around but they just looked old. The main dude in the band looks like Clinton Kelly from "What Not to Wear". The stage banter focuses a bit too much on “What can’t we all just love each other” type hippy dippy bullshit, which is always annoying. But I thought they played well aside from all that. Maybe I’m just too nostalgic and a sucker for anything relatively anthemic. After Stars came Keane, and the only word written below their name in my notes is “Whatever”. Then we swing by local Marie Pierre Arthur’s set, who I figure will be exactly like Little Scream; they are both female singer songwriters with backing bands, so they basically must be the same person. Arthur’s music is surprisingly more interesting than Little Scream’s, a little more like poppy alt country. It’s still relatively boring though. We leave shortly after. I can’t help it, I just hate boring music and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.  

Beach House takes an extra half hour to set up, which blows and makes me think they are divas. Eventually they play a very delightful-sounding set, but it makes me a little sleepy considering I’ve been existing on a diet of sample pita chips, hummus and Budweiser. Also, Budweiser blows. I’d fall asleep to their music, which sounds like an insult but it isn’t. It’s just straightforwardly pretty music. We leave after a bit to check out the end of Pavement, which was not my bag. I’ve seen so many '90s band reunion shows and this was definitely the worst. Just dull. If I were more depressed I might have felt it, but I doubt it. The band looked at least 50, which I later learn is 10 years older than they actually are. Whoops. After we wait half an hour to see what Robyn’s comeback is all about, but refuse to wait any longer and give up.  

As you can imagine, I’m kind of losing steam by this point. We go see Montreal’s the Unsettlers who I’ve definitely seen before in various incarnations, but I guess they’ve settled on this ‘dark carnival le freak’ sort of stage performance which literally makes me want to shoot up the joint, slit my wrists and die. Do I ever hate that shit. First of all, it’s the absolute worst incarnation of Goth and secondly, it’s so fucking played out by now what with this universal Twilight obsession. They have a half naked fat man standing on stage right clapping along to the music and all the backup singer chicks have this cabaret kind of choreographed dance going on, and when they’re not dancing they’re swaying in unison and dramatically eyeing the audience. It’s like a cabaret kitsch Sharon, Lois and Bram and it actually angers me to think about it. Those phony motherfuckers.  

Finally, we saw headliners Arcade Fire who were surprisingly great. As I mentioned earlier, their new music sounded quite boring recorded but when performing them live it’s was like a season of HBO; the songs started out mediocre and continued to build in a ‘rocking’ fashion and left you needing to hear more with cliff hanger endings. The whole band looked pissed off which I loved, especially after those cheesy Unsettlers. Arcade Fire was also the only group of the day whose catalogue I was pretty much fully familiar with, so it was nice to hear some old favourites. The band just exuded such an incredible energy throughout the set that I didn’t want to leave. It was grungier and more rock and roll than I expected. It was pretty xHARDCOREx. This performance rekindled my love for the Arcade Fire that I thought was lost forever. Two nights ago, Nina and I drunkenly sang along to ‘Intervention’ at the top of our lungs at 4 am after a night on the town, because I was convinced it was “totally, like, the best song ever I swear to God”.

All in all, Osheaga Day 1 was not great. I had fun and it served as a decent lead up to Day 2, but I had little interest in most of the bands playing. Tons were dull, some were pretty good, and Edward Sharpe and the Arcade Fire were awesome. Stay tuned for my review of Day 2! Sonic Youth! Sonic Youth!