With a slight hangover from the night before and the growing feeling that this was going to be the last of a fairly fun couple days, we headed back to the Phillips Backyard Weekender.
With any ill feelings from the night before washed away with a hose, much like sticky beer-soaked concrete, we could breathe a sigh of relief once again. A much more relaxed and mellow crowd arrived to enjoy a day with a distinctly diverse roster of music. The third day of the weekender in recent years has been traditionally more indie rock focused, and this year’s festival was no exception.
Things kicked off with the dreamy sounds of local outfit, Peach Pyramid, as a warm yet distracting breeze of buttered popcorn wafted over from the food trucks.
With Jen Severtson’s whimsical vocals and psychedelic pop aesthetics, the band gathered a following at the front of the stage faster than any other opening act of the weekend. Their criminally short set was filled with their music Peach Pyramid has been working on for a forthcoming due out later this year on Oscar St. Records. Those in attendance early on a Sunday afternoon were treated to one of Victoria’s best up-and-coming groups.
From the first note, we were all in with the enigma that is Art d’Ecco. A pageboy wig, kimono, greasepaint and rouge-splashed face, killer red boots, and a dose of glitter, his look was enough to draw us all in. His stage presence encapsulated the spirit Berlin-era Bowie, Iggy Pop with a touch of Mick Jagger, and some punk rock sensibilities.
The look and character of Art d’Ecco take a backseat to his band. With Peter Hook-esque bass lines, deep synth, lush guitar riffs, and d’Ecco himself rounding out the quartet with a vibrant distorted vocal evocative of acts like Wolf Parade, it’s hard to believe something so electrifying as Art d’Ecco was birthed on a a sleepy Gulf Island.
On the drive home that, night we hit up the band’s Spotify (because it’s really hard to play the vinyl we bought in the car) to find they’d released a cover of Joni Mitchell’s song This Flight Tonight earlier that week. The song, notably made famous by a cover from Scottish rockers Nazareth, is covered by Art d’Ecco’s exquisitely. It’s strange and everything we loved about seeing them play live. We found it very reminiscent of John Vanderslice’s reimagining of Bowie’s Diamond Dogs: lovely and weird. Listen for yourself.
Despite having a six song set — the shortest of the festival — Art d’Ecco left us with a lingering impression that we won’t soon forget.
Winnipeg’s The Mariachi Ghost isn’t quite a mariachi band, and lead-singer Jorge Requena will be the first to tell you this. The band feels more like contemporary reimagining of mariachi with a touch of indie rock and wonder.
The inescapable Alexandra Garrido grabs the attention of anyone who is watching the band play. With percussion and spectral interpretive dancing that is seamlessly choreographed to each of the band’s songs. Her battles with invisible wraiths seen through dance certainly made it hard to keep our eyes and camera lenses off her while the band played.
The Mariachi Ghost opened their set with spooky synths that made us think of music from Stranger Things. Quickly, the music swelled into a phantasmic flurry of guitar, vocal and horns. The set us left us haunted and wanting more.
Yamataka // Sonic Titan might have been the most decisive act of the entire festival, with many people raving about what they were seeing, while others were left shaking their heads in confusion and taking the opportunity to grab something to eat. Needless to say, whether you liked them or not, they were a little jarring at 5:45PM on a Sunday.
The experimental band formed as art project exploring and subverting the band’s shared Asian/Canadian heritage, with elements of prog rock, metal, C-pop, and J-pop incorporated into their sound and performance.
While we enjoyed Yamataka // Sonic Titan’s set, playing a music festival feels like an odd sidestep. This is a band that thrives on theatrics, noise, feedback and spectacle. The openness of an outdoor festival — especially the last day of that festival — takes away from the ambience they could create. If Yamataka // Sonic Titan ever comes back to our city, they need smoke machines, lasers, and the captive audience that a theatre or rock club could provide. Paired properly with another psych rock band such as Black Mountain, they’d be the unstoppable force we know they could be.
Toronto-based alternative hip-hop artist Shad took the penultimate slot of our final evening in the concrete lot behind the Phillips Brewery. Almost feeling slightly out of place amongst a plethora of guitar-forward rock bands, Shad took the stage to a sea of cheers.
Shad is no stranger to the Garden City, having played many shows and festivals here over the past few years including a sold out concert at the Capital Ballroom in late February. Despite his recent gig in Victoria, his fans were out in full force and intensity as they sang along with every hook, and soaked in Shad’s glow of positivity. Benefiting from a day of shorter sets, Shad got to relish his entire experience in the Phillips Backyard stage for nearly an hour.
It’s hard to describe Brooklyn’s Dirty Projectors as anything but indie rock royalty. Since their advantageous arrival in the early 2000s, the band has featured heavily on mixed CDs, mixtapes, playlists, and whatever way indie kids give someone the secretly have a crush on now. They just give them a Zune, right?
Despite several technical issues early in their set, The Dirty Projectors soldiered on while celebrating the entirety of their discography during their performance, with Cannibal Resource, About to Die, Swing Lo Magellan, and Gun Has No Trigger being highlights. Surprisingly, the band only played a few songs from their critically acclaimed eighth studio album, Lamp Lit Prose.
As the crowd thinned towards the end of the final headliner of the Phillips Backyard Weekender, we were filled with the bittersweet feeling that this may be the end of an era.
With both Rifflandia and Rock the Shores taking sometime off to regroup while Atomique Productions takes on new chapter with MRG, it’s hard to look too far into the future. We’ve had an amazing decade+ of working with them, their crews, volunteers, vendors, and everyone involved making their shows and festivals possible. Their festivals were crucial in the forming of Rocktographers and many life long friendships.
We hope that this is a step in making things more awesome in our music scene and we can’t wait to get back into the Phillips Backyard next year for another festival.
