Festival Overview: Messtival 4!! Saturday, August 13th 2011 - Anagance, NB

Overview/Video by Dan Nightingale
Photos/Video by Tiffany Naugler

Finally – the funnest weekend of the summer had arrived.

After a quick road trip we followed the mustaches to the grounds of Messtival 4. We avoided camping in Loserville and shyed away from the stinky yet tranquil Camp Butt and plunked ourselves squarely in the middle of Mustache County, mere feet from the stage (try that at Evolve).

The stage itself was quite the masterpiece, built completely by hand by volunteers and, I'm told, a great improvement over previous years. It was certainly a professional looking affair – complete with rail system for high definition video cameras that were in place around the grounds capturing all the activity on the stage, as well as the live art mural which would slowly evolve from a blank canvass over the course of the evening.

I would be remiss not to mention the simple and effective (and delicious) food offers – big, homemade, organic beef cheeseburgers at night, and perfectly greasy fried egg sandwiches with bacon in the morning. Why waste time and effort serving 20 different meals when those are the only two things any good festival goer could want? (There were allegedly veggie options too, which I would know nothing about, being a rabid cheeseburger fan myself).

Of course,all this elaborate planning was in place for one thing: the bands. The Messtival crew managed to squeeze an amazing 20 bands into one day (and well into the night). The day started off with the crowd baking in the hot sun, but soothed by the chill vibes of Vivianne Roy and Ghosttown Bell. Things quickly kicked into rock and roll mode with Monton's The Nuclear and Fredericton's Hospital Grade.

Though there was technically only one stage, a few performers made good use of festival grounds in full, including Toronto's Garbageface. With just a microphone and looper pedal, Garbageface grabbed the crowd's attention even from a tiny side platform, mixing up beatboxing, vocal melodies, rapping, into an intense performance.

Tiny & The Mountain and Right on Yukon soothed the crowd back into a false sense of security before Something Delicious took to the stage to scare them up again. With their usual wild blend of discongruous genre's and huge range of vocal styles, Something Delicious delighted and entertained and drew the full attention of the crowd even as the heavy sun continued to beat down.

Things stayed on the crazy side as the Rhythm Section piled on more heavy, technical instrumental tunes, and Nerd Army took on heavy nostalgia to bring us the best video game themes of our childhoods. Things took yet another 180 with Phil Flowers and the Backyard Devils once again calming things down with pop rock and bluegrass revival sets.

By now the sun was set and the party was in full swing. A giant mural was sparkling and coming to life as the truly talented Force Fields took the stage for what would be (in my humble opinion) the most mind blowing set of the evening. It would take too many unwieldy adjectives to describe their sound, but suffice to say that (figurative) brains were leaping out of the skulls of audience member' and dancing across the stage while chugging tiny brain-sized beers and shout “Hoooooly shitt!”

After a brief display of their insane and god like powers to invoke the first and only black out of the night, Halifax's own Instruments played a ferocious and heavy set of their atmospheric, snarling songs. Not to be outdone, No Flyers Please brought the dance party back to life and topped it all off with a fireworks display.

At this point the insane amounts of great music start to run together; costume prizes were announced, mustaches were won, sparkling octopuses came to life, and Kuato played a kick ass set of epic summer jams. The Caravan and The Divorcées did their best to bring the house down and kept the hard core partiers dancing well into the morning and into the closing crescendos of Acorn Rangers, just before the sun began to peak over the horizon.

Watch our Messtival YouTube Video Playlist!
12 videos from amazing bands!

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3CF538764C617277

You can also check out Kuato's full set on our LIVE Concert Series Page:

Noisography LIVE Concert Series - E11

Recorded LIVE at Messtival 4 (Anagance, NB) August 07th 2011 by Noisography.com

messtival.ca

Kuato are: Devin Peck - bass Josh Pothier - drums Scott Mallory - guitar, etc. Adam Toth - guitar, etc.

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See all the photos from this show HERE.

See all our videos HERE.