REVIEW: Purple City offers brilliant music and sonic mayhem

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Glowing under the bright afternoon sun and fattening corn moon, the fourth annual Purple City Music Festival was more luminous and electrifying than ever over the weekend, with 100-plus acts on eight stages shaking from dozens of forms of musical expression in the true downtown core.

The opening act of just one venue Friday night, for instance, was local Hobbit-like freakout-rock act Hydracat at the storefront Downtown Edmonton Community League, shaking the stones to gravel on a long path all the way to L.A.’s handsome guitar noodlers Wand headlining the fest Sunday.

Boundless choices in between had people laughing, “You’re going to wrong way!” as they passed friends in the Starlite complex parking lot. Rascalz alumnus Dedos appropriately added another one of his cute-tuff cartoon-animal hip-hop street art walls to our streets as part of Edmonton Mural Fest.

As CKUA’s Grant Stovel noted on the Block Party stage Sunday afternoon, the gate into summer traditionally begun by North Country Fair in June is now firmly bookended by September’s Purple City — named after the optical phenomenon of staring into the lights at the Legislature back in the day when we didn’t have dozens of churning summer festivals to keep us occupied.

Every nomadic wristbander had their own path — my first night starting at 8 p.m. Friday with the scrappy dance moves of Hydracat’s Chris Boyle and a particularly great stoner rock number named Villains.

Shaking the white noise out of my ears, it was over past the Journal building to McDougall United, where Vancouver’s Amy van Keeken and Major Love’s Colleen Brown reunited to sing “songs we wrote a million years ago,” Brown laughed, including Highway to My Heart soaring up into the pews.

Here, the festival’s pink Grimace mascot danced on stage for Brown’s new and scrappy activist song, Good Damage, bouncing up and down.

Just to totally flip that dessert tray, I popped over to Freemason’s Hall for infectiously cheerful Red Deer-Japanese hardcore band Umi Yokai, a good reminder to bring earplugs to these shows to prevent damage.

(Any of the bands mentioned in this flyover, PS, is worth seeking out.)

Downstairs in front of a dazzling wall-sized screensaver was festival favourite Black Thunder of Regina, who put a heavy psychedelic cherry on their performance with a new song magnificently called Embrace the Basilisk.

The trio were enthusiastic to see Golden West Music Fest’s wizard standees and Black Lodge red curtains join Purple City’s growing repertoire of décor — including the giant green monster hands now flanking the outdoor main stage, which one toddler with ear protection kept high-fiving.

Back to the church where Brown and van Keeken brought their angel voices to The Bobby Tenderloin Universe after his Lee Hazelwood-spiced cover of Judas Priest’s Breaking the Law for a sweet cover of Nights in White Satin.

In the purple haze, the first night’s garage headliner, L.A. Witch, cast its spell on Starlite with shades of Hole and La Luz, one festival regular noting you wouldn’t want to run into these performers in an alley for a knife fight — can’t disagree!

Amid day two’s Love wrestling matches, a Women in Music panel and Masonic Market, Rebel Grrrlz kicked off the Block Party, local pop punk act Real Sickies later having the bizarre coincidence of double strap malfunctions for both guitar and bass players, Ben Disaster literally Gorilla-taping things back together as he cheerfully sang in the hot sun — so good!

Saturday started to whip out the talked-about must-see shows with the insanely fun skate punk Mean Bikini downstairs at Freemasons, guitarist Josh Marcellin then Simpsons Otto-vibed singer Milli Lyman crowd surfing in that hot little box — the most bangin’ show so far.

This brought us to Toronto techno-gothy-burlesque act Slash Need — self-proclaimed “nasty filthy perverts” — complete with writhing dancers with pantyhose over their faces as singer Dusty Lee brought the crowd to a strobe-lit frenzy in her sexy kabuki face paint.

Next multi-drummer Edmonton rock block Big Evil shook Starlite Room to bits, then Midnight Peg screamed a bunch of new fans into allegiance.

But the festival’s biggest win was Salinas-California-born The Mystery Lights closing up Saturday at Starlite, just a warm, wonderful wave of psychedelic, Doors-y love fest peppered with punk and the super-interactive charm of Mike Brandon singing swirly songs like Flowers in My Hair and Mighty Fine & All Mine, if that gives you a flavour impression.

After the show, he hopped down into the crowd and just hung out, great vibes all around.

Sunday I chose to move slowly, but landed during one of the most beautiful moments I’ve ever seen at Purple City, Calgary rapper The Blue’s inspiring and positive hip hop, joined at points on the outdoor platform by terrific singer Kue Varo and some tight freestyle with Edmonton’s own legend Arlo Maverick. Heart hands in the air!

With their hilarious blues-rock, “take this job and shove it” attitude, Zephyr Twins ended off with the Lyle Bell-sung No Problems (Except for All My Problems).

Then: an awesome set with the re-formed Field + Stream, Smokey Johnson screaming Heart’s Barricuda between those green monster hands he made for Golden West a decade back as a very cute toddler raced back and forth most of the show.

Inside time again, with goth-masked Fauxcils drama vogue-ing upstairs at Y, then one of my favourites: Victoria duo Soft Pleasures overcoming an amp death with a truly dark and gorgeous show. T-shirt bought.

The loudest amps of the festival had to be the much-anticipated reunion of the James T. Kirks, the Brothers Wright Rob and Ted playing muscular surf-metal instrumentals to everyone’s delight and ear-ringing.

Things really crashed together in a huge pileup of twitchy Montreal electro with musician Marie Davidson, a gorgeous summoning of Edmonton’s Faunts, punk legends D.O.A., and Whitey Houston playing Smokey Johnson’s Ready to Die basically driving me wild with joy (and tired legs).

Finally, handsome Kryptonians Wand had quite a number of patrons swooning, Cory Hanson’s Thom Yorke-soaring vocals wrestling with his urge to make distorted sound walls with the band, just another totally amazing show.

I’m honestly out of breath just thinking about everything I saw. And that, let’s remind ourselves, is maybe a little more than ten percent of what this festival had to offer.

So: see you next year?

fgriwkowsky@postmedia.com

@fisheyefoto.bsky.social

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