Supercrawl Inches Its Way to Becoming Hamilton's Best Music Festival

Caribou. Photos by Cam Lindsay

How should every music festival properly kick off its festivities? By throwing one hell of a party a month in advance to build the requisite hype and anticipation for the big event. That’s what Hamilton’s annual Supercrawl did on Friday, just over one month before the city’s downtown core becomes a mecca for three days of free live music. The kick-off featured an evening of electronic music’s cream of the crop at the newly certified concert venue, Pier 4, a perfect-sized park along the Hamilton Harbour. The headliner was Caribou, whose ringleader Dan Snaith, is from the Hammer—okay, so he’s actually from Dundas, Ontario, but that is officially part of the greater Hamilton area, so it counts. For Hamiltonians, this night was a long time coming. In the five years since Snaith last brought his band home to play at the modest-sized Casbah venue, Caribou has become an internationally renowned act that has opened a world tour for Radiohead, won the Polaris Music Prize, sold hundreds of thousands of records, and become one of the most jaw-droppingly innovative musical acts— both live and in the studio—in the world.

As they’ve done every night across the world on tour for their 2014 album, Our Love, Caribou dazzled the three-to-four thousand strong with a heady mix of thumping club energy and Scanners-type head-exploding psychedelia. Snaith was visibly playing with a full heart, ending the night with a rousing version of their epic closer “Sun,” thanking the crowd for their hero’s welcome, adding, “This was super, super special for us.” While the night belonged to Snaith and his bandmates, the organizers of Supercrawl pulled out all the stops to make this event more like a one-day festival. Jamie xx (née Smith), who’s released one of the most talked about albums of the year, In Colour, warmed up the stage for Caribou. The English producer brought a crate of disco, house and various edits of his own album cuts, like the bracing “Gosh” and song of the summer “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times).”

Jamie xx

Before Smith, Hyperdub producer/artist Jessy Lanza demonstrated how deep Hamilton’s local talent was with a set of material both from 2013 full-length, Pull My Hair Back, and her recent You Never Show Your Love EP—as well as joining Caribou later on to sing “Second Chance.” Working the sound for Lanza was her neighbour and collaborator Jeremy Greenspan (Junior Boys), who also performed with opening act, Toronto’s Egyptrixx. Perhaps what was most significant about this concert was that the night before and the night after, Jamie xx and Caribou, respectively, headlined their own gigs at the 1,500-capacity Danforth Music Hall. Supercrawl managed to snag both for one night under the stars in what is destined to become Hamilton’s best outdoor concert venue.

Supercrawl was founded in 2009 by the folks behind Sonic Unyon Records, the influential Hamilton label that helped put their city on the indie music map in the early ’90s. The goal was to expand James Street North’s monthly Art Crawl into an annual downtown festival that offered “a diverse and dynamic line-up of music, art, fashion, performance, talks, crafts, food and fun.” In its six years, Supercrawl has grown exponentially, attracting more than 165,000 spectators in the 2014 edition, and booking some of the world’s most exciting acts: Broken Social Scene, Four Tet, Spoon, Kode9, How To Dress Well, Yo La Tengo, METZ, Fucked Up, Chelsea Light Moving, Owen Pallett, K’naan, Basia Bulat, and Junior Boys, among others.

Jessy Lanza

Supercrawl, is without a doubt, Hamilton’s premier music festival. The fact that it manages to eschew the stiff summer music festival competition is definitely a plus (by a week, it will also avoid competing with the highly popular Riot Fest and TURF less than an hour away in Toronto). But where it has the edge over other Ontario music festivals of its kind, like Wayhome, Hillside, Field Trip, and Ottawa Bluesfest, is its ability to keep the entertainment completely free. Sure, one could argue that Supercrawl hasn’t yet managed to attract the marquee-grabbing headliners; as electric as Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings are, they don’t have the cache that say Sam Smith (Wayhome) or Kanye West (Bluesfest) do. But considering Supercrawl’s goal is for you to not have to pay a cent, you should also argue the Kanyes YeezyBoost just don’t come cheap.

Starting September 11 and 13 in downtown Hamilton, some of the better known artists scheduled to play include Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, Daniel Lanois, Elliott Brood, Viet Cong, HEALTH, Single Mothers, Rich Aucoin, Frog Eyes, and The Killjoys, to name but a handful. All without you reaching into your wallet because sometimes the best things in life are free, and music festivals should be no exception.

Cam Lindsay is a writer based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter