LIVE: Wolf Parade Appropriately Blow Away Wolfe Island Fest
Tuesday August 14, 2007 @ 01:00 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

The crowd makes its way across Lake Ontario on the Wolfe Island ferry Photo by Noah Love

August 11, 2007
Wolfe Island
Kingston, ON
by Noah Love

I've been living in Toronto since 1999, but I grew up in Kingston, Ontario, the former capital of Canada, home of Sir John A. Macdonald's grave, and birthplace of Bryan Adams. Kingston is a funny place. It's a smallish city with a big city mentality (where Brampton is somehow a huge city with a small town attitude), a place I like to visit more than live. Since I left, however, club bookers emerged and started bringing big name acts to town, fostering relationships with them and scoring the best and brightest in the Canadian indie scene (Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene). In the past few years, the gemstone in Kingston's concert calendar has been the Wolfe Island Music Fest.

The problem for me has been getting around to going home and seeing it. The daylong event (which is preceded by a hootenany in Kingston's downtown core the night before) takes place after the Lollapalooza weekend and I'm typically not in the mood to spend another full day listening to bands after three days of the same. Last year, booker Virginia Clark drew a stellar lineup that included Constantines and Jon Rae & The River among others. But this year, she scored an even bigger get: Wolf Parade, who would perform for the first time in 10 months, and for the first time in Kingston, so far as I could tell. It was enough for me to suck it up and make the trip.

A side note before I get to the music: There are things I love about Kingston in the summer. On this day, the city was hosting the music festival on the island, an extremely tacky but immensely popular poker run (some bizarro combination of speed boats and motorcycles that filled Confederation Basin) and a gathering of golden retrievers. As I crossed to Wolfe Island on the ancient ferry, there were no less than 40 of the dogs on board. It was just a weird, colloquial moment.

Wolfe Island Fest crowd Photo by Noah Love

When I finally arrived, I was shocked at how different the above photo was from this. I mean, it's not like I was expecting much, but it's pretty amazing to go from the biggest stages in North America and the best skyline to a tiny field and an even tinier stage in the course of less than a week.

Here's what I caught when I got there:

Spiral Beach's Maddy Wilde Photo by Noah Love

Spiral Beach
I saw these art school kids at the Horseshoe Tavern last December opening for Tokyo Police Club and was impressed then at their ability to blend a Flaming Lips-like rock sound with a poppy Metric-esque one. Their set on this afternoon was a bit more whimsical, drawing from their forthcoming Ball LP. Singers Maddy Wilde and Airick Woodhead were still a fairly precocious team, but I didn't feel like their material was as strong in this setting as it had been in the club. Perhaps it was the fact that the speakers weren't at a very high volume early in the day that led to a decided lack of punch. Still, for a band playing at 2 p.m., Spiral Beach gave it their all and the crowd seemed to enjoy their songs, so this was a decent way to start the day.

Basia Bulat (right) Photo by Noah Love

Basia Bulat
Here's a case where I think the venue helped the artist. Once again, I saw Bulat open for Maria Taylor at the Horseshoe this past spring, and I couldn't really get into it. She was peppy and sweet, but her band were a little on the side of too big for the stage and their songs sounded too canned and radio-friendly indoors. It was a shame, because Bulat has a great voice and will probably get a lot of notice when her Hardwood debut, Oh, My Darling, comes out this fall. Playing outdoors, Bulat and her group — far tighter and more confident than they were five months ago — positively soared. The songs had a lot more orchestral pop and I completely reversed my opinion on Bulat during the course of the set. Before, I thought she mostly had potential for the KISS FM set, now I think she'll hold her own in the indie circles as well.

Born Ruffians' Mitch DeRosier (left) and Luke LaLonde Photo by Noah Love

Born Ruffians
I began sensing a trend by the time Warp signees Born Ruffians hit the stage. Once again, my opinion of a group was turned around. I'm not a big fan of the group's EP, but the songs they played from it worked way better on stage. The real excitement here was their new material, which will see the light of day on a full-length that they announced would be out in February. In addition to being the second-best act of the day they a) were the first band to get a decent number of people standing and b) had the best banter of the day. Drummer Steve Hamelin told an extremely dry story about coming over to the island with Sarah Harmer ("She talked to us!") and bassist Mitch DeRosier petitioned Wolf Parade to take them on tour. It was a charming, winning set, and I couldn't be more excited about the group's forthcoming LP.

Weeping Tile Photo by Noah Love

Weeping Tile
And then things took a turn for the worse. Weeping Tile obviously think it's a big deal that they get back together sometimes, but truthfully I don't think anyone else does. I'd take solo sets from Sarah Harmer and Luther Wright in a heartbeat over Weeping Tile's increasingly dated alt.rock. I'm not saying I don't enjoy hearing some of the songs, but Harmer hasn't been passionate about these songs for a long time and put barely any effort into this performance. Perhaps if the group got together and wrote some more relevant material, the old songs would be more welcomed. I really can't say anything else about this set because I can't stress how profoundly disappointing it was.

Apostle Of Hustle Photo by Noah Love

Apostle Of Hustle
Like I said, it was a little strange going from Lollapalooza last week to Wolfe Island this week. Even weirder was the fact that I saw Apostle Of Hustle in both locales. Last week, I raved about how Andrew Whiteman's set was an early Sunday highlight at the Chicago festival, and this week's set followed the exact same high-energy rhythm for the first half-hour. Then the rails fell completely off. It what can only be described as the strangest thing I've seen this year, Whiteman strung up a clothesline of bandanas or small flags (it was hard to tell), blindfolded himself and proceeded to play what I can only call a psych, electro rock opera. It was pretty terrible, but it was also just hilariously bad enough to be sort of good. I can't really give the second half a pass, because it was so overtly inspired by drugs and wankery, but it was an interesting change of pace in the day.

Holy Fuck Photo by Noah Love

Holy Fuck
Perhaps Whiteman just wanted to give Brian Borcherdt's dance-rock crew a proper lead-in. The group are newly signed to XL offshoot Young Turks and a notable Beggars Banquet contingency attended the set. The performance started out strong, thanks in part to drummer Jon McCann's ability to mesh with the rest of the group on short notice. They screwed up two songs near the end and played a closing number with Wolf Parade's Hadji Bakara that dragged on forever, but there's no question that most of the crowd didn't want them to leave the stage, even though they had no idea what was in store. I know Borcherdt prides his band on their ability to fall apart, but it almost felt as though their ramshackle moments were scripted, which made the overly long set a bit of a drag. When they were on, however, they showed tremendous potential for their debut LP, which is set for an October release.

Wolf Parade's Dante DeCaro (left) and Dan Boeckner Photo by Noah Love

Wolf Parade's Spencer Krug (left) and Boeckner Photo by Noah Love

Wolf Parade
In late 2002, I saw Constantines at Lee's Palace. At the sold-out November show, they debuted most of Shine A Light and the feeling in the building was electric. Every song brought the intensity level higher, and it was one of the few times I've been at a concert and felt like I was a part of something. Experiences like that are few and far between, which is why I haven't been able to stop talking about Wolf Parade since Saturday night. Let me be absolutely clear: this was the best set I've seen from any band this year, and it was entirely because of how good — nay, amazing — their new material is. I saw the group plenty of times before Apologies To The Queen Mary was released and knew before I had it in my hands that it would be my favourite record of that year. I'm far more excited about the new record, if that's even possible. With Dante DeCaro in tow, the group's sound has taken on a lot more weight, which is utterly perfect for Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner's chilling vocal interplay. They must have played a little more than half of their new songs — interspersed with classics such as "Dear Sons And Daughters Of Hungry Ghosts" and "I'll Believe In Anything" — and every one was as compelling as the last. The only regret was that I had to catch the midnight ferry back to downtown Kingston and couldn't watch the tail-end of the performance, but my mind had been sufficiently blown by then. If you already have tickets to see Wolf Parade at the end of the summer, get ready to lose your shit now. If not, lie, cheat and steal to get yourself into one of their shows. They're officially the best band in Montreal, probably in all of Canada, and maybe even in the world.

To view more photos from the Wolfe Island Festival, click here.