Duchess Says are from Montreal. They're described as dance-punk veterans and they headlined the second night of Wavelength Festival at The Garrison. Singer A-Claude certainly makes a strong impression with her facial expressions and jeering, taunting gestures towards the audience. She might be trying to coax a reaction, she might be trying to start a fight and she might be trying to hurt herself.
The music has a funky, art-rock vibe with enough hooks and dance-ability to keep the band and the crowd moving. A-Claude's crazy eyes and highly interactive presence mix well with the band's 80s new wave influenced vibe. They've promised new music this year, so be on the lookout.
Soupcans were the fourth band to hit the Wavelength Festival stage on the second night of the festival at The Garrison. They're billed as a noisy aggro garage punk trio and they certainly got the punk rock in some audience members going with a small but mighty pit in front of the stage.
Their powerful sound was in full effect from their opening chords and their set ranged from frantic hardcore to a slow, Sabbath-worthy dirge. A cool musical assault to keep our attention focused.
Beliefs were the third band to take the stage at The Garrison as part of the second night of Wavelength Festival. They were the one band on the entire bill that I had seen before, dating back about two years to a show they played at The Horseshoe, very early on in my concert photographing days.
Once the psychedelic flowing lights were rearranged and smoke filled the stage, it was time for some Fender distortion to begin swirling around our heads as Beliefs began their set. They've got a sound that's at once familiar and original. The shoegaze distortion mixes with their songs' gorgeous melodies into all-too-pleasurable waves that wash over you from the set's beginning to it's end.
The thermometer in my car read -18 Celsius when I arrived at The Garrison for night two of Wavelength Festival. The "feels like" temperature was -28 Celsius which is just inhumanly cold for Toronto. I was pretty happy to get a parking spot right outside the doors of The Garrison.
Partner were up pretty early on the Wavelength bill - they were the second band to hit The Garrison stage. Partner was one of the bands that I was most looking forward to seeing at Wavelength. They're billed as a "queer neo-grunge duo" from Sackville, New Brunswick, but showed up as a full band. They have been building on the buzz created by their name-check song "The Ellen Page" and its accompanying video featuring Ms. Page dancing around.
I liked what I heard on-line and was looking forward to seeing the band's live show. They certainly delivered. They were tight, rocked hard and had a ton of fun. They even inspired a Tweet of "Partner are amazing! What a powerful set of cool tunes!" from little old me, who usually holds judgement and resists "live Tweeting" in the moment. Someone described Partner as your new favourite band and they were right.
Singer Josee Caron was super-personable, serving up stories about their tunes which range from songs about finding your room-mate's sex toy while searching for a roach, to the women of your dreams, to existential epiphany while eating chips and how sometimes everyone knows you're high, to a brand new song about sports (yeah, right) called "Play the Field", and finally "Ambassador to Ecstasy", which, apparently is not about drugs. All of this was delivered as tight, grunge-influenced pop songs with fun lyrics, a wall of 3 guitars and ripping guitar solos, too.
Check out Partner's music and add them to your list of "bands I've gotta see".
Versa describe themselves quite accurately as post-rock meets live painting. They were the first act to hit the stage on the second night of Wavelength Festival. Their noisy jamming meets the live creation of visual art. We got lots of dynamic shifts from this band in all-white and some pretty visuals during and after the show.
