Weirdness Reigns At Over The Top Festival

Let's just get this out of the way: Eric Warner is a brilliant booker.

"If you see him on the street give him a big hug," said Mayor McCa.

Of course, if you did see the short, bespectacled indie kid, you'd be forgiven for thinking he was just another short, bespectacled indie kid. But underneath that tousled hair is the brain that put Bob Wiseman on stage with Daniel Johnston and finally brought Matt & Kim to Canada.

Unlike NXNE and CMW, which both put business before pleasure, Over The Top is actually a good time for bands and audiences. This year's lineup was cohesive and thoughtful, and the schedule was full, but not overwhelming. The band list featured solitary geniuses and quirky duos. Wide-eyed innocence was the common theme, highlighting Over The Top's greatest virtue: as they are every year, all the shows are all-ages events. Being too young to drink shouldn't make you too young to see great music. Here's a rundown of this year's festivities:

DD/MM/YYYY @ Sneaky Dee's
If only I didn't blow most of my cash on beer before their set, I would have bought DD/MM/YYYY's new album. The first song they played was different from the angry robot spasms I expect from the Toronto yellmeisters. OK, maybe there were some robot spasms, but the razor-sharp math-rock corners were smoothed by a solid melody that had my foot tapping. Apparently their whole new LP is like that. If that sounds like your bag, join the DD/MM/YYYY bandwagon. Spots are filling up.

Matt & Kim @ Mod Club
It's hard to recap Matt & Kim because I was too busy having fun to write any notes during their set. Watch their "Yeah Yeah" video on YouTube if you haven't already. Just open a new browser tab right now and search for "Matt & Kim Yeah Yeah." My scintillating prose can wait for three minutes. Done? Notice how they acted like they were high on pixie sticks? That's called "glee," and they're full of it. It isn't fake cheerleader glee smeared over their tour fatigue like cheap makeup, either. Real emotion like that is contagious.

Matt & Kim's Mod Club concert and their smaller matinee show the next day at the Tranzac both turned into hyperactive love-ins within a couple of songs. I was a teenager in the '90s when showing any enthusiasm for anything was irredeemably lame. I'm glad that crap is mostly over now, because it feels much better to like things.

Japanther @ Mod Club
Japanther turned the Mod Club into their basement, where they spent the afternoon skipping school and playing along to their older brothers' cassettes. I was a little disappointed because the Over The Top website made a big deal of their past onstage gimmickry, like the use of puppets and synchronized swimming. All I got was Ian Vanek with his shirt off. Looking back, my expectations were too high. The duo's spazzoid dance-rock didn't need frills.

Meligrove Band @ Mod Club
After Matt & Kim and Japanther, Meligrove Band were a little plain. When most people talk about "indie rock," they're referring to the Meligrove Bands of the world. They're good musicians, but their music doesn't sound much different from what gets played on your average alt.rock radio station. And, as people with internet access know, 90 per cent of the music on mainstream radio isn't great. To be fair, I left after four songs, so it's possible they were amazing after that. Apparently there were horns later on, and I like horns.

The Yah Mos Def @ Sneaky Dee's
After giving up on Meligrove Band, I got to Sneaky Dee's in time to catch The Yah Mos Def. For the record, they're not a Mos Def tribute band. If the Chipmunks grew up, moved to Philadelphia and made hip-hop with heavy drum lines and hardcore samples, they'd sound like this duo. I expected more dancing, but the crowds at Over the Top seemed to prefer head-nodding over limb-flailing. Ninja High School MC and YMD superfan Matt Collins started a mosh pit, but it only lasted one song. The YMD's main fault was a lack of dynamics. Between the distorted vocals and repetitive samples, they hit a plateau of intensity and couldn't get past it. Eventually, it was hard to care about the music or lyricsism.

Flosstradamus @ Sneaky Dee's
Flosstradamus, on the other hand, brought the party. The area in front of the Sneaky Dee's stage was packed with dancers 10 minutes into the DJ duo's set, leaving only a handful of "I don't get it" types at the bar. But those people had every right to their confusion. Flosstradamus constantly skirted the edge between corny and fun. As my pal Josh put it, "'Whoop There It Is' into... Journey? What?" Still, you can't argue with a packed dance floor. It turns out you can put together a dance party the same way my dad makes his special spaghetti sauce — just throw in everything you can think of and boil until delicious.

Page France @ Tranzac
How could I write about Page France if I was watching DD/MM/YYYY while they were playing the Whippersnapper Art Gallery? The answer: I was at the secret Saturday afternoon matinee at the Tranzac. Not that it was supposed to be secret. Somehow, the show with The Yah Mos Def, Page France and Matt & Kim didn't make it onto the fest's website. As you can imagine, attendance was sparse. Nonetheless, Page France's warm folk songs were a pleasant 3 p.m. hangover tonic. With a tambourine as their only percussion, they were the polar opposite of openers The YMD. Michael Nau's lyrics were a highlight of the afternoon, evoking classic travel imagery and unusual love poetry.

Jason Trachtenburg @ Whippersnapper
No offense to Trachtenburg, but I was pretty skeptical that his songs could hold up without the visual aids and kitsch value of his Family Slideshow Players. He circumvented my misgivings by not playing any music at all for about 15 minutes. For the first half of his performance, he talked and told corny jokes. He was the goofy dad who embarrasses his kids, but entertains their friends.
"What is the opiate of the masses?"
"Religion!"
"No, it's opium."
Har har. Is it possible that Trachtenburg's parents were Woody Allen and Rick Moranis? After the comedy warm-up, the Slideshow Players songs about American consumer culture and ironic optimism were just as charming without the wife and kid.

Bob Wiseman @ Whippersnapper
Like Trachtenburg, Bob Wiseman's show was as much comedy as music. He projected films about indecision (Scott Thompson was in one) and funny answering machine messages on a big white sheet at the front of the room. While the movies were hilarious, Wiseman seemed a little bored with older songs "Fluke Of World" and "Uranium." He rushed through them and introduced arbitrary tempo changes, which I suppose kept him engaged. He's awesome, though. His self-deprecating humour and Buster Keaton stone-face make you want to run on stage and hug him.

The Phonemes @ Whippersnapper
This indie pop trio sure know how to keep an audience on their toes. On top of the choir wearing '30s banker suits, almost every song had unusual instrumentation. The weirdest included a glockenspiel, an iron played with a paintbrush, three coloured lights and a theremin. (Kids, bring back the theremin. Find out how to make your own on the internet. When you play it, you'll look like you're casting spells.) Poor Magali Meagher must have been really tired, because she had all the personality of Lurch from The Addams Family. Her stage banter was loaded with ums and uhs, and her stories tended to trail off. She should have stuck to the music, which had all the precious beauty and bubbly pop The Phonemes are known for. My girlfriend tried to buy their new album five minutes after the show and it was sold out.

Mayor McCa @ Mod Club
The one-man band who once ran for mayor of Hamilton was a smart choice to open for eccentric Daniel Johnston. Sitting on a bass drum while also playing it, the Mayor rocked some hot guitar tunes, told a funny story about meeting Jimmy Page, broke into a tap dance, and generally entertained the capacity crowd at the Mod Club like a vaudeville pro. I should point out that he also played bass guitar a couple of times with the foot that wasn't on the bass drum.

Daniel Johnston @ Mod Club
Everyone who writes about the manic depressive savant from Texas has to say one of two things. It's pretty much either, "He's a genius" or "He's not a genius." I'm in the former camp. Johnston's voice deteriorated in recent years and his melodies are simple, but it's never really been about either of those two things for the songwriter.

For him, it's all about the lyrics. It's so hard to write original lyrics that you can relate to, let alone in rhyming couplets. Accompanying Johnston on various instruments were a couple of Phonemes, Bob Wiseman, Ernest Agbuya of The One Night Stands, and I Have Eaten The City's Nick Storing.

Bands who cover Johnston's work sometimes overdo the arrangements, but this group got it right on the money, filling out the songs with the same heartwarming/breaking quality as the lyrics. The only problem was that it was way too short. Johnston said he was tired after a few songs and only played about 30 minutes. Brilliant as he is, if I had paid $20 for that show I would have felt a little ripped off.