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Concert reviews Music

ALL CAPS! Festival wraps up for another year

ALL CAPS! 2012 DAY TWO featuring A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS, LIONESS, OG MELODY, ABSOLUTELY FREE, CANADIAN WINTER, YOUNG MOTHER and IVY MAIRI at Artscape Gibralter Point (Toronto Island), Sunday, August 12. Rating: NNN


Those who arrived early Sunday afternoon for day two of All Caps! were treated to a lovely set on the outdoor stage by Toronto Island native Ivy Mairi and her bandmates Matt Bailey and Lucas Gadke (Mairi took a break from working at the Island Café on Wards Island to play the fest). The yearning, sweet, soulful folk-rock songs off her recent sophomore disc, No Talker, were perfect in this context.

Thanks to the better weather, roughly half the Sunday sets were performed outside, setting up a pattern of alternating between mellower music on the “sunset stage” and heavier stuff indoors. Funnily, this meant that the hip-hop acts (Hamilton-based Canadian Winter and Toronto’s OG Melody) played at a low volume outside while Young Mother, Lioness and A Place To Bury Strangers played inside on the floor, with difficult sightlines.

Hamilton’s Canadian Winter (fronted by UK-transplant MC Annobil) had a warm, welcoming groove, and Annobil was grinning through most of the set as he rapped about coming to Toronto and looking for a place to live. Isla Craig’s new project, OG Melody, was similarly brimming with Toronto-love (she shouted out to Doug Tielli’s Oakwood and Rogers hood, where the band created their tracks) but much sillier and looser – probably the most relaxed set of the weekend. Her collaborator Thom Gill was out of town on tour, but she had a few guests, including rapper Kit Knows.

Indoors, Young Mother impressed with jazzy sax explosions, a tight rhythm section, and a good build through their set (despite frontman Jesse James Laderoute’s heavy sarcasm) and former DD/MM/YYYYers Absolutely Free’s math rock got big love from the crowds.

In a very un-Sunday night but Wavelengthesque finale, the festival ended with the dark disco dance vibe and huge soul vocals of Lioness’s Vanessa Fischer, and excruciatingly loud sonic attack of Brooklyn-based headliners A Place To Bury Strangers, who were surrounded by layers of smoke and crazy lights.

Outside, all was quiet until fireworks saw the festival-goers off, wrapping up a successful fifth year for Wavelength’s small but growing, DIY-spirited music and arts fest on the Island.

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