A long line of devotees spill out of the Leeds Irish Centre doors, small groups of smokers gather around the car park, hoping to casually bump into that guy in the hat that everyone is talking about. The calm atmosphere quickly changes inside when Mac Demarco walks on to the stage, however; “If it’s your first time, then welcome to the club.” A spew of cheers and wolf whistles circle the crowd who have quite literally jammed themselves into a room more suited to a school disco. Equipped with disco ball and sunbeam shape lightening, Mac Demarco and his band look giant on the small stage. He invites the reactive crowd to party along with him as he opens with ‘Salad Days’, ‘Blue Boy’ and ‘Cooking up Something Good’.

The gig seems to stop between each song as the night progresses. The short silences are quickly used for on-stage jokes; crowd chants and at even one point a plea for world peace. 

The crowd who look more like fish in a fishing net jump and grove to the funk-like metallic riffs of ‘I’m a Man’. It is refreshing to see any band that have the confidence to redo a track which doesn’t go to plan first time round. ‘Picking up the Pieces’ starts off wobbly and is calmly started again. Maybe Mac Demarco isn’t the most conventional when performing but no one can deny that he isn’t entertaining, at one point he changes pace and covers Bob Marley’s ‘Jammin’, not the most obvious choice, Demarco fills the instrumentals with lyrics such as “smoke up a fat one” and “this one’s for Jah”. As the gig continues it is obvious that this crowd aren’t here just to hear a few songs, they are here for Demarco’s nonchalant on-stage attitude that makes it feel like you are watching your best mate’s band down the pub.  

Most of the audience feel the same as some climb over the front row and clamber onstage. They stand there awkwardly; take a few photos, laugh with their buddy’s which repeatedly results in them stopping the performance altogether. Harmless fun for them, irritating for everyone else who meet their chaotic behaviour with a dull tone of boos. Demarco and his band do well at lightening the mood with a few jokes and distractions.

Coming to the end of the gig, Demarco politely crows for the audience to crouch on the floor. Swishing his hand like a conductor the crowd take note and begin to harmoniously sing the lyrics “together” like a tone-deaf Catholic school choir. Gloriously this continues for a little longer than necessary before the band kicks in, bringing the crowd to their feet as they dance their way back to the bar to pitch up camp for the rest of the night. 

Let the last day of the four-day Le Guess Who? festival commence, and how better to start a Sunday than with Owen Pallett? The heartbroken Owen, apparently, and a lonesome lad on stage as well, as the lonely sweet thing has been temporarily abandoned by his drummer, as he’s having a little baby (congratulations!). Don’t worry Owen, the audience lets him know that it’s going to be sad along with you, and the violinist acknowledges that by playing what he feels is the saddest song he can possibly play to wrap it all up: ‘The Passions’ from his latest album In Conflict.

The set starts out pretty heavy on older material though, and later we come to understand the reason why, as apparently his latest songs are more reliant on his drummer companion. Who is absent. And thus are these songs. Not all of them though, as he manages to squeeze in ‘Song for Five & Six’ for example. It makes for an admittedly unexpected set, but Owen reassures us by saying that it’s at least in some ways special as his heartache is a good thing for the concert. At least the concert seems to be good for him, as he on occasion seems to smile as he hits the right note at exactly the right time, and some of the violin solos do seem to have a little bit of extra oomph in them.

So no drummer, okay, but there’s plenty of Owen to go around. Owen playing the synth, Owen singing, Owen strumming the violin, Owen tapping the violin, Owen playing the violin: it’s all on loop and it’s all going on at exactly the same time. The man plays something, pushes the right buttons on his pedal, and he starts playing something else whilst what he just did is going on loop underneath the live action. And so he builds intricate webs of Owen, and the man is quality, so that’s not a bad thing at all. All the songs are oh so very clever, though if there’s one criticism, it is that in the early part of the set some of the narratives are hard to follow as his vocals aren’t cutting through all the instrumental looping as clearly as needed for actual understanding. Later on his lovely voice can be heard a bit more cleanly, and so we can also follow the stories next to enjoying his musical craftsmanship, which is a win-win if there ever was one.

Mdou Moctar is from Africa, Niger to be more precise, though the band does not play typical African sounds. Actually, he plays the guitar, and pretty brilliantly at that. The trio have got a nifty blues rock ’n roll thing going in, with the rhythm guitar and the drums putting down a tight and catchy canvas on top of which the lead guitarist is going to play some rock ‘n roll with a whole lotta soul. And let there be no mistaken, the guys can play. It sounds really tight, and the guitar playing is fast and furious and definitely of quality. The singing is still in a language that probably no one in the audience can understand (which always makes me slightly tense, because what if they’re scolding like mothersomethings or whatever? Has anyone checked up on that? Should there be a parental guidance warning here?), but nothing gets lost in translation as far as the playing goes.

Yes, there is a language barrier in the sense that where other musicians happily engage in some chitter-chatter with the audience, these three guys mutter a quick “thank you” or “merci” and then it’s just one slow wait until they’ve got the settings right on the guitar. When they play, though, they’re making up for time. When the last song begins, the audience nearly explodes, as it’s so fast & catchy that people just have a hard time not moving to the drums and guitar combo. Which is no small feat, as anyone who has ever played a “hostile” crowd will tell you, with hostile in the sense that most people will not know any of your songs. Africa is represented with vigour.

Tune-Yards certainly approves of that. Frontwoman Garbus wants to thank the festival for putting on so many sounds of the world. Sounds that no doubt also inspired her, for her sound is deliciously eclectic, and at times sounds more African than that of Mdou Moctar who played the same stage just moments before. There’s a lot going on out there, with the bass, multiple percussion elements, and of course the background singers who are living it up back there like there’s no tomorrow. Add to that the colourful attire of all of them, the face paint, extra decorations, and it all provides just this huge amount of positive energy that cannot be contained.

Not that it’s all cheery-go-lucky, as some of the songs do have one or two things they want to mention. “We come from a land of slaves / Let’s go Red Skins. Let’s go Braves!”, she shouts out during the by FIFA 15 selected song ‘Waterfountain’, which definitely is one of the “easier” ones musically with all the rhythmic percussion that track has going on. In another song she says that someone gave her a “bloodsoaked dollar”, though, she mentions as an aside, “it’s okay, it still works in the store”. Biting her tongue she is not. Truth be told, everyone gathered would be massively disappointed if she would. She has always been a strong presence on stage, but now with the extra band members and all the extra theatre going on the band just feels as a force to be reckoned with. Don’t be fooled by the fact that they’re all playing everything up though, everyone on stage adds something to the songs in terms of different layers and sounds as well, which makes the show not only entertaining to watch, but also giving those craving complex music their money’s worth.

St. Vincent, blimey, she’s really become a DAME, hasn’t she? She just owns it up, having really crafted her character carefully for this tour. She’s like the android from the future, singing and telling stories about the human experience from a relatively alienated point of view. But like Bowie’s alien, this lady stardust can rock and roll like no other. The guitars are piercing, the synths are blowing it all up, and amongst all of that her voice is pitch perfect and asks us how we can be so casually cruel. Next to all of the rock and roll she also adds a dash of pop and a smither of performance art, all culminating in the must-see show doing the rounds this year.

That trifecta of pop songs that she starts with is just about the strongest thing currently going around. In ‘Rattlesnake’ she hilariously mimes running whilst staying in total control of her voice, in ‘Digital Witness’ she’s got some choreographed moves going on with her synth player, and on ‘Casually Cruel’ she says the most heartbreaking things on top of the most upbeat guitar riff she could possibly think of. It is a magnificent start, and one that simply gets stronger and stronger every time I see them live. In between the songs she tells us some weird and wonderful tales about things we have in common with each other, doing this in such a way that it kind of reminds me of the artist Miranda July. She has truly become an all-round entertainer and artiste, and it will almost be a sad day when she retires this tour to go forward to a following album.

I’m actually kind of surprised when Sharon van Etten says that She Keeps Bees are from New York, because I wouldn’t have automatically assumed that. She (singer Jessica Larrabee) just seems to have this nicety about her that makes you think she should be from Minnesota or something. She is so thankful that everyone has come to her show that she sometimes loveably enthusiastically forgets that she needs to be talking into the microphone rather than into the air. She even almost apologizes for throwing some of those do-you-believe-in-life-after-love Cher moves in there to keep “that rope” behind her head, meaning her sizeable ponytail. “It’s physics” she explains, after which she briefly mimicks the singer.

She Keeps Bees came out with a new album this year, and so they’re touring, and if tonight is anything to go by, you might want to take a look at whatever (I imagine relatively small) venue they’ll be playing. The soft-loud interplay throughout the gig is used to great effect, and the way the drums and the two guitars manage to work together and not, say, battle each other shows that they know a thing or two on how to craft a sound. So the synthesizer which she praises  for being so very clever (she’s going to ask it to do her taxes next time around) is not the only thing that has some smarts. And then there’s still her lovely hoarse voice, which again can go up and down, whatever the song requires. On two songs she even basically starts a capella, which is ballsy. One of those bands that play that kind of non-pretentious indie rock you cannot help but love, and even on some songs, feel touched by.

Sharon van Etten is having fun. She’s having fun with She Keeps Bees, saying something like, and I’m paraphrasing, “I miss you guys so much in New York, and now we finally see each other again! In Utrecht, what the...”. She’s having fun with her fellow band members, who she sneaks glances to whilst undoubtedly sharing in jokes. And she’s definitely having some fun with an Irishman up front, who is almost miming her songs back at her and whose laugh has Van Etten in stitches, saying she wants it as her alarm clock sound. “I’m thinking bad thoughts”, the man says, to which Van Etten replies with a don’t want to know, then saying that the next song is dedicated to him, entitled ‘Break Me’, which has both of them laughing loudly. It shows how much she has evolved since she played right in front of The National in Eindhoven years ago. There, a young, insecure kid was on stage, but here is standing a woman who owns the stage and who is being backed by some professional musicians to help her get all these sad songs for star crossed lovers across.

Musically, again, she is a novice no more (except that she apparently broke her amp, but oh well). She moves from soft, acoustic songs to louder songs she herself accompanies with the electric guitar, and she moves from her hits like ‘Our Love’ to a song that apparently didn’t make it onto the last record. Her voice is wonderfully fragile, a quality that she manages to keep in there despite her having to go over the top of raging instruments on some of the songs. This, for example, is evident during closer ‘ Your Love is Killing Me’, where she has to quite loudly ask her lover to “break my legs so I won’t run to you”, but despite the needed volume she does manage to get the desperate, the sadness, and the inescapability of the fall in there. She’s grown up as performer and as an artist, but in her voice and in most songs she doesn’t let you forget that growing up is not without it’s growing pains.

There are quite a few reasons to be jealous of Binkbeats, the young Dutchman. First of all, he’s making his live debut in the big room in Tivoli Vredenburg (where, for example, a few weeks earlier Morrissey was playing). So he’s certainly all smiles about that. Envy all around also for his incredible set-up though. Binkbeats, next to creating new sounds, also deconstructs tunes by other artists, and in order to do this he’s put every instrument imagineable on stage, and then some. In a lovely circle he’s got all kinds of “actual” instruments, devices, electronical hardware, and you name it. It looks absolutely fantastic. With in the center of it all mr. debutant.

And cue technical difficulty number one, two, and four-hundred-thirty-nine. That’s the thing about technology, it might not work exactly how you’d want it to work. And I’ve seen many seasoned musician get annoyed, angry, and apathetic because of that. Not this young kid, who apologizes, recognizes that the first couple of minutes were not up to scratch, but then tries to fix it, and the rest of the set he manages to do what he wants to do. He uses all kinds of samples, loops, sounds, and live instrumentation and singing to, eventually, get the desired effect. Some of the songs sound perhaps a bit too deconstructed, with all the odd bits and pieces not being put together to create an ongoing flow. On some of the tracks this does happen though, and then his wizardry comes to the fore pretty well. Just for the comeback alone this guy deserves a thumbs up (though, admittedly, it’s not like he’s never been on a stage, having performed with Kyteman Orchestra, but that’s less a-boy’s-storybook, don’t ya think?). 

If anyone remembers the concerts given by Perfume Genius a few years back, they were quiet, small affairs. Not in terms of audience per se, but the band was a two member affair, and the main focus was Mike Hadreas sitting behind the piano singing his personal, heartfelt songs. These moments are still there, but what he has added is a breakfast full of variety. Variety in terms of pace, attitude, and performance. It’s like a Jean Genet prophecy, on stage the guy has basically become the sashaying Queen from his most recent album, including lipstick, a women’s suit, and a pinstripe-yet-see-through shirt. The moves he is making are almost dares, and you can almost hear the sweet transvestites in the back whipping their snapping fingers saying You-Go-Girl.

Some of the television performances felt a bit awkward, or at least they were not quite convincing to the point that here’s the second coming of Elvis. In the context of a whole gig, it seems to be a more natural fit. The real gain is that the show-- running a bit under the scheduled hour-- isn’t a one-trick affair. Not only the performance has been upped, the variety in terms of music as well, with the addition of all kinds of instruments and influences. The setlist definitely is doing them (the four man band Perfume Genius has become) some favors, with new and sassy material bookending and mixing with the smaller and personal tracks from the man’s earlier work.

If one is afraid that the older material might sound sparse or archaic in comparison to the more daring newer songs, then they will be pleasantly surprised by the fact that perhaps the two best moments come when he plays songs off of his debut. When Alan takes a seat next to Mike on the piano, and this lovely, shy smile appears on the to that point extravagantly performing singer’s face, one has to acknowledge how sweet the sight is. Musically, the track ‘Look Out, Look Out’ is still a dagger through ones soul as he warns to indeed look out, look out, for there are still some quite menacing things about.

Far less endearing and far more alienating is Dean Blunt, who is doing a sort of Beat poetry & jazz session that has a lot of raging saxophones, spoken word, and which provides little in terms of structure. It is as intriguing as it is hard to really warm up to. Some of the playing is expert, some of the lines read out are quite worthwhile, yet most of the time it is so far out of the realm of what one can call a musical performance that it is hard to know when to clap, admire, laugh, thank, praise, or feel like the butt of an elaborate prank.

On stage there’s a drummer, two horn players, a pianist, and the performer du jour, who has printed out a four page essay to read to us. The spot turns on him as the others are playing some free jazz in the background, and when he stops, the spot disappears and especially the guys on the horns go absolutely crazy. After a loooong while the spot turns back on again, with the next part of a tale about music culture, money, living on the street, and chasing your dreams. As Dream chasers, so he says, feel like a higher class, it’s just that they are in a different tax bracket. Certainly, there’s some art to be found here, and it’s quite sure that something is being performed, though the meagre applause at the end of it all indicates that a large portion of the audience just isn’t quite sure what that exactly is. It comes close to DuChamp’s Fountain, with the audience not confident if this is an essential critique on the state of music/art/life, or if they are at the other end of someone laughing.

Blues is one of those genres that we connote to the years of yore. Luckily, some of those old dogs are still touring around (or have been up until recently), so you can still get to see a fair few who’ve contributed to the heydays of the blues. Some of those I’d consider must-sees, like a Buddy Guy for instance, who still has the music running through his veins and who can still perform the heck out of his guitar. Old doesn’t have to mean ragged or deluded per se (cue comments by people who’ve seen Guy four to five decades ago and how awesome he was back then). Though, admittedly, the crowd at Dr. John’s performance has an urgency to dance that’s only rivalled by their inability to still smoothly do so.

Dr. John and the Nite Trippers are hot, apparently. Yours truly ran into them as they were playing Primavera this year, and here they’re performing in front of a sizeable crowd as well. So there’s the good doctor, with a huge band backing him with the organ, the horn section, the guitarists, and with the man himself behind the piano. What I love about these kinds of set-ups is that, theoretically, a blues band like this can play a song that lasts forever. Because first you can get the intro before they get to the first part of the song, then every band member takes a turn soloing, and then you get a call-and-response between the band leader and either the audience or the other band members. Usually, the band leader isn’t satisfied with the response, and will halt the song to try again, and only then does the last part of the song actually begin. You gotta love that blues kind of theater.

Unfortunately,  Dr. John and his Nite Trippers aren’t really showing off all the loveliness that the ol’ school blues has to offer. Most of it sounds kind of insipid, uninspired, and rather by-the-numbers. Dr. John’s voice surely doesn’t fit into the line of that of other blues power houses anymore, and the hoodoo and the voodoo that is promised by the skull on the piano doesn’t really transpire into something that really transports you to a New Orlean’s woman hanging over a cauldron and putting a spell on you (because you are hers!). And so all kinds of old staples are being played, but none in such a way that you’re happy that you’re hearing them live again, and if this show is anything to go by one has to wonder why Dr. John and his band are suddenly such a hot commodity amongst festival bookers. Today surely isn’t cementing his status as someone who is still at the top of his game.