Day 2
The second day of the festival got off to a fantastic start at the semi-famous Bonsound day party as Duchess Says commandeered the pool. As a band dedicated to making things as weird as possible for their audience, singer Annie-Claude Deschênes quickly made her way from the opposite end of the pool where her band was set up to perform in the midst of the crowd. Whether it was climbing over audience members while screaming at them, throwing berries at them plucked from a nearby tree, or just swigging from a bottle of wine, Deschênes had the crowd enraptured. The band kept up very well, with their swirling, echoing art rock seeming out of place on a sunny afternoon pool party, but very much in synch with each other.
The afternoon featured the Pikogan Pow Wow, which was a major selling point for the festival this year, a collaboration with the local tribes in the area. Beginning at the festival site several dancers in traditional garb led the growing crowd down to the banks of the Osisko Lake where a whole area had been set up. As Richard Kistabish recounted stories and the group continued to dance. It was wholly a remarkable experience and truly something I was glad to have experienced as the sun set over Rouyn-Noranda.
The evening programming kicked off with another set from Zen Bamboo, suddenly with so much more space the energy of the band expanded to fit it. Somehow taking their set from the previous day and turning it to 11. Following them was Elephant Stone, the Montreal indie rock band which showed fairly conclusively that you can rock out really heavily with a sitar in your band.
The real highlight of the show though was New York based noise rock band A Place To Bury Strangers, with a fearsome live reputation to live up to the band brought everything to the table. Within a few minutes of the set starting guitarist Oliver Ackermann was slamming his guitar against the stage as the waves of sound crashed against the audience. After finally destroying his first guitar and moving onto the second the band were propelled through their set. I’d asked the band earlier about how they adapted their visual presentation to each show and they mentioned that they’d only brought the bare minimum for this show. The bare minimum however somehow included three projectors, and several strobe lights, one of which would eventually end up ground into a guitar towards the end of the set. Closing with an extended jam which brought out a saxophone and Rishi Dir from Elephant Stone with his sitar, the band were determined to make an impact, and remained a talking point for the whole weekend.
Duchess Says, Canailles, Pikogan Pow Wow, Zen Bamboo, Elephant Stone, A Place To Bury Strangers, AeroBrasil, Docteur, Chocolat
Duchess Says
Canailles
Pikogan Pow Wow
Zen Bamboo
Elephant Stone
A Place To Bury Strangers
AeroBrasil
Docteur
Chocolat