Pre-festival tension: Lily Frost played at Metrotown mall as a sort of teaser in the weeks leading up to the New Music West festival. Kind of a funny pre-festival venue, but intriguing none the less. I first saw Lindsey Davis and her band The Colorifics when I ventured to the Malcolm Lowry Room for open-mike night five years ago. That's also where I first saw her cousin Kinnie Starr when she still played with a band called BK Lounge.
The Colorifics broke up and now Lindsey has a new band and a new moniker, Lily Frost. Perhaps she was anxious to escape her Telus ad fame, of which I will say no more. We showed up on a sunny evening, spotted the stage, the band setting up and nothing else. Later a few curious onlookers and some boys with balloon animals staked out the long cavernous mall tunnel.
Lily/Lindsey appeared in movie star glasses holding a ballon wand. Way to knock 'em dead in the suburbs. The band proceeded to play their brand of 60s French romantic pop crossed with late 80s jangly guitar pop. It's spirited but mellow and lovely. Despite the abominable acoustics I thoroughly enjoyed the band. I'm not sure what most of the passing hordes thought but then music promotion is not to be fathomed by you or I.

Thursday: The Bell Jar, who opened proceedings at the Media Club are an all-girl goth/prog band. Their set was much more enjoyable than this description might lead one to expect. Respect is due to anyone prepared to flaunt a Jefferson Airplane influence in this day and age.

Supreme Beings of Leisure's set at Sonar was one of the festival's most hyped events. The Californian outfit's mix of vocal trip hop and progressive house could have come across as horribly generic if it weren't for its oceanic dub flourishes. Still, their set was nothing to get excited about.

A spirited but uninspiring band called Threat From Outer Space opened at the Chameleon. The instrumentalists in this ska-hop collective all wore zoot suits, while the rappers dressed like Jehovah's Witnesses.

They were followed by Hip Hop Mekanix. A mixture of sparse breaks, live scratching, MCing, freestyling and human beatboxing, their set ran the gamut of live hip hop whilst avoiding the usual "throw your hands in the air" cliches and lame posing. Their hyperactive mixture of old school beats and new school rhymes made them come across as the Beasties for purists.

Clover Honey have a cute name and describe themselves as power-pop. Sounded good enough to take a look when they played at the tiny Cordova Café. Their confident girl sound reminded me how much cub did for female bands in Vancouver. The goth/punk girl in front of me kept saying how much Clover Honey rocked, which was true. Their voices aren't that strong but they make up for it with enthusiasm and well put together songs.

Then came Pepper Sands, four guys fronted by a tiny pixie. They're originally from the Yukon where they were apparently huge freaks. I recently read an article which suggested the group was way too 'far out' to ever gain any mainstream acceptance. I looked for something outlandish and original in their set though, and didn't find it. Their musicianship was excellent and the pixie has a strong voice but nothing really grabbed me. The first song though, The Ballad of Joe Someone, had some neat textures running through it which were absent in the rest of the songs.

Friday: The next evening's entertainment took place at the Chameleon Urban Lounge. Deadman was the opener, a friend of a friend, so I got comfortable in the lush seats. I had no idea what to expect and what I got was incredibly rich, sensuous vocals to accompany resonant slide guitar. This is an update of the delta Blues tradition, close enough to be instantly recognizable but with a little something extra. It was utterly enthralling.

Kinnie Starr was up next, the sexy girl with the sensual lyrics and thick guitar beats who captured my attention about five years ago. One of the most exciting things about Kinnie is that she's always changing her style, always incorporating new influences. And she always shows up to play, to really connect with the audience. Her dedication and wonder at really being appreciated always win audiences and Kinnie's audience had more fun than anyone else I saw at Music West.
Kinnie broke a guitar string during the fat intensity of Woven but then launched into a spoken word/rap set which was even better than usual. Pond scum was the best I've heard it, funky, rhythmic and poetic.

Cafe Cordova played host to Flutter's melodramatic and vaguely folky dream pop. Although they flaunted all the right effects pedals and analogue synths, this five-piece failed to display the courage necessary to reach beyond the strict (albeit epic) structures of their songs.

The night ended at the Marine club with Gram Parsons devotees Radiogram. It was getting late and most of the punters had gone home by this point. Still, seeing this country-rock septet produce the gorgeously rye melancholy of "Blues for Vancouver" by the light of the glitter ball was not to be missed.

Saturday: The Plaza of Nations hosted a bizarre rock-festival-in-an-airport-lounge affair styled Rumble at the Plaza. Turntablist extraordinaire Mix Master Mike provided the one point of interest among an uninspiring Much Music-friendly line-up. It would be easy to dwell at length on the myriad tricks/techniques Mike employed but that would unfairly portray his set as gimmick-laden and masturbatory. In actual fact it was the alchemical effects (rather than the material processes) of his performance that were so amazing. He'd scratch a beat, a sound effect or even a tune from a record before leaving it to play unadulterated, revealing the source material to be something quite other than what he had wrought from it. Although the horribly loud, booming PA threatened to swallow the intricacies of his set, Mike managed to move the crowd and leave them scratching their heads. His dexterity and imagination proved to be beyond compare, his simian glare a hilarious challenge to all wannabe DJs.

Meanwhile, in the terrifying downtown eastside, strange things were afoot. The Church of Pointless Hysteria was the site of festival's real left-field action. The fact that the bulk of it was spoken word and performance art created a strange dichotomy in NMW between the mainstream indie rock that made up most of the bill and the stereotypical Art going down at the Church. Acclaimed Van City art rockers like Beans and Radio Berlin were nowhere to be seen nor heard.
Instead we got a man in an orange boiler suit-and-wrestler's mask combo who called himself Fireman and painted a forest fire landscape. We got a guy called SR Duncan who read a poem about his encounters with a prostitute while a down-at-heal B-boy human beatboxed and a goateed beatnik arhythmically beat a large copper pot. We got a masked lady who made the audience cluck like chickens before she indulged in some more pot-bashing. This last part, at least, was intentionally funny and the whole line-up was fun (we have a soft spot for art wank).
Still, the final straw came with a multi-media performance that began intriguingly enough. An impressionistic slide show flickered as a Mardis Gras-masked topless dancer entered the stage to the strains of Deadman Dave's haunting slide guitar. Unfortunately, the music soon came to an abrupt halt and the dancer began reciting a poem about how it was "raining nipples" and so forth.

Later on, the Marine Club was home to a night of bands on Endearing Records. Vancouver Nights were first up, a kind of loungey rock band. I like Naikoon Park, a neat little number with bouncing time signatures and cute harmonies. No harmonies live though, and not quite the girl pop expected either.

Winnipeg’s b’ehl are excellent at what they do, a kind of noisy twee. Their songs are well put together and the vocals good but the band failed to move me. Maybe if I was sitting in a comfy chair with a couple other people, sipping a cool drink I could've got into the vibe more.

Finally I saw Halifax girl group Plumtree. They’re an excellent example of east coast pop, bouncy and fun. The girls have good stage presence and the happiest drummer I've ever seen. I really enjoyed their set but it didn't make a lasting impression. If anything is lacking for me it’s any lyrical content. --Sam and Lara