It meant braving blazing-hot sun, crosstown dashes and jam-packed venues to take it all in, but the effort was worthwhile. The second annual Sled Island festival, which officially wrapped up Saturday, June 28, managed to string together four straight days of must-see performances.
In the first of many departures from last year’s festival that will hopefully become traditions, Tuesday featured a sneak-a-peek launch party at Broken City. On the patio that night, the sense of excitement was palpable — nearly everyone in attendance was poring over their festival guides in an attempt to chart a course through the week’s events. Toronto’s DD/MM/YYYY reinforced the frenetic pace of the night by informing the crowd that they had finished playing in Lethbridge a mere two hours previously. After they finished a set of their prog-influenced weirdness, headliners No Age took to the stage and delivered a furious barrage of noise.
Wednesday delivered a pair of amazing surprises from artists willing to go to great lengths to ensure audience participation. Eleventh-hour lineup additions the Mae Shi may have played the loudest, hardest and most energized set of the entire festival, thrashing through the crowd with abandon. At one point, the band covered a huge part of the audience with a white tarp and led an a cappella breakdown that drew in even the most cynical observers. At the end of their set, they encouraged everyone to follow them to the Warehouse to see Dan Deacon, and those who did were in for a treat. While the tunes, simply piped from an iPod shuffle into a delay pedal, were a far cry from special, Deacon whipped the crowd into a frenzy by encouraging them to hold hands and run in circles all over the dancefloor. That’s not to mention his five-minute “secular prayer,” and other antics.
By the next evening, Sled Island was in full swing. Fans showed up extra early to the Pumphouse Theatre, which proved to be a beautiful setting for Yo La Tengo's intimate acoustic Q&A session. The trio interspersed tales ranging from favourite movies and famous friends to their reactions to 9/11 with whichever songs felt right at the time. Later on, legendary songwriter Jonathan Richman graced the Martha Cohen with his brand of charmingly subversive pop. After sunset, the No. 1 Legion enjoyed the first of three straight nights of huge crowds. Offbeat country acts like Elliott Brood and Carolyn Mark primed listeners for an appearance from the dead-tired but still enthusiastic Okkervil River.
For Friday and Saturday, the focal point of the festival was the mainstage at Mewata Field, easily the most significant change from last year’s festival format. Cheap(ish) beer, beautiful weather, decent amenities and a cadre of unbelievably capable volunteers all helped make the move to a bigger, centralized site successful. While the sound at Mewata was far from perfect, it was bloody loud, which worked to the distinct advantage of bands like a plugged-in Yo La Tengo, the impressive Gutter Twins and the Dodos. Hands-down, the mainstage highlight was an incredible costumed psychedelic adventure with Of Montreal, featuring a vicious tiger, a wrestling match and more than a few doses of eroticism.
Elsewhere on those two evenings, even more absurd shows were taking place. While a rather priggish Deerhunter overpowered the Martha Cohen with their far-too-loud Marshall amps, RZA wowed the Grand in his Bobby Digital guise, turning in one of the tightest performances of the festival.
Sled Island 2008 was a success. With the expanded scale, moving away from a community-friendly ticketing scheme was a sad necessity, but many of the big sore points expressed by fans in the wake of last year’s festivities were resolved. Most notably, fewer venues were outside comfortable walking distance from the core, and late-night chunks of the Wednesday and Thursday schedules were less insanely packed. The festival’s mandate to showcase world-class local bands side by side with world-class international bands emerged stronger than ever, and the city can start looking forward to next year’s iteration, which will no doubt be bigger and better.
