The second day of the Ottawa Folk Festival began in a decidedly less-than-folksy manner. Upon arriving slightly late at the grounds I was greeted by a wall of crunchy guitar sound being voraciously pounded out by Vancouver’s the Pack A.D.

An all-girl garage rock duo consisting of only a lead guitarist and a drummer, The Pack A.D. have released four fuzzy, guitar-driven albums in the past few years. The group has toured at an exhausting pace, making themselves a semi-permanent fixture at festivals across the country.

Their set started energetically and the first couple bare bones rock songs carried themselves on familiar garage rock tropes, managing to hold my interest as the duo bathed the small crowd gathered around the main stage in a tidal wave of fuzz. But as the the set carried on, the group’s lackadaisical garage rock schtick began to wear thin and my interest, along with the attention of the people around me in the crowd, began to wane.

Song after song was played and they all began to sound very, very similar, most only comprised of an overly simplistic chord progression hammered out over and over again, hidden underneath layers of guitar fuzz, accompanied by a plodding and overbearing drum beat. Their songs were also mostly lacking in any discernible choruses and had no solos to speak of in order to make the songs even a tad more exciting. Repetition was the name of this set’s game.

The group’s vocals, however, are quite strong, with guitarist-vocalist Maya Miller compensating for lacklustre guitar playing with inspired howling vocals that do work well with the band’s garage rock intentions. Their stage banter was unfortunately quite awkward to sit through and seemed akin to making small talk with a vehicle registry employee while they fill out your paperwork.

Near the end of their set, the group finally changed things up with a ballad-like song that slowed things down a little bit and provided a slightly different song structure, while a more bombastic song actually featured something akin to a guitar solo and a breakdown.

While there were moments throughout the set that grasped my attention—and even held it for a few seconds—I largely spent most of my time thinking about the sets that were to come later that evening and avoiding dozing off.

A friend who accompanied me to the show pointed out to me that in order for a group to truly make use of the bare knuckle guitar and drum set up, there needs to be strong songwriting or interesting guitar work to complement the abrasive and thin sound the two-instrument group has a propensity to make. Acts such as the Japandroids and The White Stripes immediately come to mind as examples of groups that make excellent use of this two-member, two-instrument dynamic to fantastic effect, unfortunately unlike tonight’s performers.
A rather odd choice for a folk music festival, the group would more than likely be better heard in a much smaller venue, rather than in a large festival stage setting. There, the sound could truly envelop the listener and the repetition of the songs and chords might become a hypnotic garage rock cacophony that whips spectators in a foaming fervour. In the context of a large festival stage however, their sound was spread thin and their tropes and flaws became all too apparent, despite there being some energetic and fun moments in their set.
With the set ended, my anticipation grew for the night’s other acts: the wryly comedic and endlessly charming Colin Meloy and the majestically cosmopolitan Vampire Weekend, who would be making their first appearance in Ottawa this evening.

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