REVIEW: Gustaf, The Mall and many more blow the roof off at Purple City

The juggernaut octopus that is Purple City Music Festival is upon us once more, writhing with a sense of choice and adventure far exceeding most video games and dating apps.

Friday night’s shows across eight stages in six downtown venues ranged from the classic dreamy pop of Tamaryn to the powwow punk of 1876, with heaps of indie country, metal and techno sprinkled throughout.

I ended up at the gothy-darkwave shows of Y Afterhours a lot, down in the basement for the expressive hyperpop of local star Pseudo-Antigone, ironic or not “Country Music Made Me” white hat glowing in the black light.

Later on, same space, was Vancouver’s Sektion Tyrants, a beautiful, danceable electropop duo dancing in the same neighbourhood as Bauhaus with singer Steve Ferreira summoning the wails of The Cure’s Robert Smith — punchy, dreamy, yet somehow delightfully tough.

Great energy from both bands; impossible to not move to those insistent beats and twitches.

Speaking of which, the nature of the three-day festival is to constantly scurry through the streets for an utterly different vibe, and so between the two aforementioned acts it was a mosey down to a more slow and sombre setting in the gorgeously organed McDougall United Church.

Here, Lethbridge’s Skinny Dyck had the trucker hats nodding slowly in the pews along to opening song Jackson Hole, the lovely and accurate mid-set Easygoing, Dyck and the boys closing with the chipper and choppy Dreamin. Huggable local everyman Aladean Kheroufi joined on bass, earning the band that bright stamp on the musical bingo card.

“I feel like we may have reached our peak at the county of Ponoka fair,” joked singer Ryan Dyck, musing about life on the hamster wheel.

It was a hop west back to Y for the much-anticipated mad energy of The Mall all the way up from St. Louis, Missouri, Mark Plant packing the upstairs with his fuzzy solo synth punk, cosmic and lost and frantic and screamy: a perfect soundtrack for our imperfect times.

Plant spent a good amount of time running off stage in circles into, under and above the crowd, making doom fun again to the aggressive beats of his onstage disco robot gear as he stared up at the ceiling and distortedly brayed. Good times!

(So weird to be able to drink in the after-hours space — bring cold hard cash here, PS.)

The sweet harmonies of Kacy & Clayton and metal-punk of Iron Tusk were both on offer next, but I’d just seen the latter at Sled Island and was hooked on freaks by now, so it was off to Temple in the back of Starlite Room for Brooklyn five-piece art rock band Gustaf, festival headliners.

This has been a landmark year for music in Edmonton, looking at you Robert Plant/Allison Krauss at the folk fest, the techno-horror antics of Skinny Puppy and Japanese schoolgirl death metal band HANABIE (both at Midway), and especially the Sunday night version of Metallica which I’m still grinning between ringing ears.

Gustaf’s gonzo majesty is on equal footing with these shows — basically lead singer Lydia Gammill a crazed Jodie Foster in a necktie with dangerous teeth and wild eyes swaggering about on stage, contrasted by chipper Tarra Thiessen bringing various happy noise props like a triangle and a squeaky whale out of her toybox, Vram Kherlopian smiling widely on guitar the whole time.

All that clashing emotional tension with Melissa Lucciola’s brilliantly choppy drumming and Tine Hill’s utterly essential bass brought together a sound somewhere between — and I don’t summon my favourite band and most admired living artist lightly — early live Talking Heads and Laurie Anderson (thanks to Thiessen’s voice-deepener), by way of Parquet Courts.

It was so frantic and scary and inviting, just the absolute peak of what a show in an intimate little box can be, Gammill pulling at and sculpting their amazing firework of hair, a highlight being when the fest’s mascot Nurple came up and danced hand in hand with the singer on stage.

Best Behavior, Statue, Weighing Me Down — didn’t matter what they played, as long as there was more.

Basically, if you had a chance to see this wonderfully nuts show but somehow didn’t, I almost want to send you pity roses.

Fret not, though! Two more days of Purple City are still rolling out — and Saturday and Sunday 102 Street in front of Starlite is blocked off with music and, of course, Love Pro Wrestling, which you can witness Taryn from Accounting lay the beats on any who dare oppose her!

Individual tickets and single-day passes are available at purplecityfest.com, with Radioactivity, Urban Heat, ACTORS and dozens more still up — do not miss out, friend!

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@fisheyefoto

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