Day 11 at Bluesfest had me seeing two acts that don’t often pass through Ottawa — Beirut and Mastodon. I started the evening watching Beirut on the Claridge Homes Stage. Having fallen in love with their Lon Gisland EP (quite the listen) back in Grade 11, I was excited to finally witness their interesting Balkan folk music style live onstage. I find the band’s sound is fairly difficult to describe in words, so I highly recommend you do a bit of listening for yourself.
To set the scene a little bit, the group created an exciting style of European folk music through incorporating instruments such as trumpets, keyboards and organs, an accordion, a ukelele, and a tuba. Lead vocalist Zach Condon performed the songs with a swagger, thanking the crowd for sticking it out and watching on the incredibly humid day.
“It’s certainly a lot hotter here than New York,” he joked with the crowd.
After Beirut finished, I headed down to the River Stage to catch Mastodon. Having missed them playing in Montreal this past April with Swedish metal giants Opeth, this was one show I was looking forward to quite a lot. Promoting their latest effort The Hunter (one of my favourites from 2011), the band played every single song from the record, along with a handful of songs from earlier works. The one complaint I had about this show was the terrible job that was done with regards to lead vocal levels.
In the past, Bluesfest has seemingly had a lack of good sound technicians at some shows (see Protest the Hero last year). This year, the festival wasn’t terribly plagued with that problem – until tonight. Vocals from all three singing vocalist members of Mastodon were inaudible from my spot right up front, and the sound crew didn’t seem to get the hint to turn them up at any point during the show. The crowd picked up on this, and helped the band out in a big way by singing along as loud as they could through all 20 songs that were played.
The band was quite technically impressive, with each member performing his parts to perfection. Aside from the notable lack of vocals, everything about this show was incredible.
Upon finishing the show, I received a setlist from the stage, caught a guitar pick from guitarist Bill Kelliher, and received bassist Troy Sanders’ solo cup of gin and tonic. I promptly finished that off, because it just wouldn’t be a heavy metal show if I didn’t.
I was also able to catch the last bit of Skrillex, who returned to Bluesfest for the second year straight. Having been placed on the main stage this time around, his stage show had grown in size from the year before.
Dancing around with his outlandish haircut, he dropped the bass and mixed the tunes while riding atop a giant space ship outfitted with lasers, steam cannons, and oversized video screens. The crowd was going crazy to his loud, obnoxious dubstep stylings. Love him or hate him, he knows how to put on an engaging show.
Tomorrow is the final day of the festival, with The Weeknd, K’Naan, and Metric on deck!
