RBC Bluesfest Day 10: Collective Soul + Goddo + Lord Huron + The Darcys + David Usher + Sam Roberts + USS
By Lital Khaikin
The final day of Bluesfest passed by in a glorious transformation from torrential gloom to glistening light.
As the evening concerts began, the gates were throbbing with crowds eager to catch the last gasp of the festival’s 20th anniversary, scalpers and fence-sitters leeching off the anticipation of the final night.
Hailing from Michigan, Lord Huron took the Claridge Stage with an uplifting and scenic set. A crowd-friendly balance of indie rock and alt-country made it easy to connect with the substance of their uncomplicated legends of land and love. Yearning melodies were often deceptively masked by cheerful tone. Air-drumming Ben Schneider’s melancholy vocals on “She Lit a Fire” — for which the band released a music video earlier this year — reminded of Fleet Foxes and Half Moon Run. In spite of an otherwise lightweight set, Lord Huron offered a single morsel of the macabre pronouncing, “All the dead seem to know where I am.”
Across the festival grounds at the River Stage, Toronto art-rock band The Darcys performed a set, their brooding, romantic tension bathed in unexpected sunlight. Frontman Jason Couse was drenched in his suit, a mess of suave style and aggressive performance. Hitting a sentimental note with the audience, Couse recounted a memory of a night after The Darcys played at Zaphod’s, when rooftop enlightenment revealed a truth about Ottawa: “This is the coolest fucking place… It’s all coming into context now.” The Darcys wrapped up their set as Couse made a passionate descent to his knees in front of a barely responsive audience.
As the long-since irrelevant alt-rock band Moist took over the Bell Stage, David Usher waved his hands and sang at another crowd that preferred to stand still over moving with the rhythms and Usher’s flowing locks. Plaintive vocals added nothing to a forgettable set. A few grizzled old cowboys appeared to share this sentiment, snacking in foldable lawn-chairs.
The pervasiveness of testosterone at Bluesfest increasingly forced itself into focus as the Sam Roberts Band took over Claridge Stage. The gateway between the idlers and the dancers of the audience was guarded by a defiant old man intent on letting nobody past his unmoving frame. Despite the legendary chorus of “Them Kids,” the young members of the audience were most affected by the contagious, funk-tinged anthems.
Occupying the DJ booth, TIMEKODE founder Zattar played an eclectic mix of beats with traditional fusion elements, while crowds lounged on omnipresent corporate plastic.
Back on the River Stage, Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker (USS) brought out the debauchery in a sweaty convergence of bodies, sauna heat, and a humid haze of weed. The most eager crowd of the Bluesfest closing night joyfully received the sonic mess of the Toronto-based dub-pop-acoustic chimera. Incapable of narrative or atmosphere, USS appealed to the frat-party sensibilities of the young crowd with kaleidoscopes of George Michaels-led stretching exercises, jumping, arm-flailing, and crowd-surfing. After the communal singing of a Maritime chant, it became more obvious that the duo had, perhaps unconsciously, concealed hints of Celtic rhythms in the revelry of EDM.
The snacking cowboys had since deserted their posts in the foldable lawn chairs to flock by the River Stage, where a dwindling and 40- or 50-year-old crowd had been waiting for Goddo. The Scarborough band had not released an album since a live compilation in 2008, but offered a more melodic set to the night’s alt-rock trend. Guitarist Gino Scarpelli tempted with a few liquid riffs, but ultimately felt tired as what could have been an incinerating energy sputtered into unsatisfying nostalgia. Sweating, beady faces nevertheless inched ever closer to Goddo, while middle-aged men who considered themselves comedians quickly learned that touching a solitary dancing woman is a corporal offence.
Collective Soul delivered an anti-climactic end to the night, their performance feeling unanimated when compared to Sam Roberts or The Darcys. Nostalgia reigned, atmospheric videos of forests were projected and, the crowd collectively sang refrains of classics like “Shine” and “The World I Know.”
The crowd dispersed in a disturbing crackle of abandoned aluminum and plastic, stinking with warm beer, with the night’s supermoon hovering silently over all.
