Royal Mountain Band
Osheaga Festival
Montreal
September 9/07
Fingers&Glover

There’s a little something to be said about programming at this festival. Namely, that too often there are great bands on small stages and small acts on large stages. In other words, despite Martha Wainwright’s commercial success, putting her on the main stage with nothing but an acoustic guitar and slow jams is not good programming. That said, a savvy trade which would involve putting a band like the Royal Mountain Band on a much larger stage than the one on which they appeared would have done more to fire up a large crowd than Ms. Wainwright was able to do. The Royal Mountaineers began their set to a mostly empty crowd, which quickly filled after a song or two. RMB is somewhat reminiscent of The Band, with unpretentious and uncontrived songwriting delivered with vein-busting harmonies and royal organs. They are certainly not reinventing the wheel, nor will they attest to doing so. There are no Radiohead-esque antics and frivolous sound experimentations; the Royal Mountain Band is just out to make a better wheel, and in the process, better rock n’ roll. To their own detriment, they are both ahead of and behind the times. By not playing up to music fans hungry for the cute and clever, it’s true they may be alienating themselves from achieving the popularity of tweedle-beep and bippety-boop-look-how-fucking-cute-i-am-cuz-i’m-playing-a-casio bands, but in avoiding these needle-in-the eye painful trends and recognizing them for what they are (plastic throwbacks to synth-pop 80’s music that everyone who actually remembers the 80’s will tell you it was shit), and by sticking to their rock guns and sledging through the musical vacuum of today’s music, the Royal Mountain Band may in fact be carving out a path they will get to enjoy walking for years to come. This is basically a big band for a big stage, not to be tucked away in the backwoods of the festival grounds, a point one can only hope will not be lost on future festival organizers. No offense to Martha Wainwright, I enjoy your slow jams, just don’t expect us to stand in the middle of a field listening to them.