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Sep 19, 2015 By Laura Studarus Photography by Laura Studarus Orienteers

I left my house in Los Angeles at 4:30am and ended up listening to punk at The Unrefined Olive in Ottawa, Ontario at midnight. Welcome to Canada, where reality has gone a bit pear-shaped.

Fun facts about Ottawa. The city is the capital of Canada. The Canadian Parliament hill used to be home to a noted band of feral cats. Noted local cuisine includes “Beavertails” a fried dough pastry. (In respect to my spin instructor I’ve yet to commit to trying one…but let’s face it, we all know it’s coming. The city is also host to Cityfolk/Marvest Festival, ostensibly why I’m paying the area a visit this weekend. First held in 1976, despite the name the festival has come to host a wide array of performers. This year alone the heavy hitters include The Avett Brothers, Of Monsters and Men, Wilco, Built to Spill, and Van Morrison.

Despite my best intentions I missed Patrick Watson. (So instead I’ll sum it up for you thusly: pretty music, y’all!) Blame the area’s taxi drivers, protesting Uber with a series of drum machines that show a high aptitude for polyatomic drum circles and chants. Or a car GPS system that kept us chasing down streets that didn’t run the right direction or have been blocked completely. (According to Lena Dunham, Mercury is retrograde…so there you have it; the mysteries of the universe have been solved. Clearly.)

And so we gave the Cityfolk portion of the night a miss in favor for the late night portion of the program. (Somewhere, I like to picture Van Morrison singing “Brown Eyed Girl” with a single tear running down his face upon realizing our absence at his set—although given the Irish singer’s contemptuous relationship with the tune this seems unlikely.) Scattered in venues across the city, Marvest is curated as a way to give a spotlight to the rising local artists. Which is never a bad thing right?

Which is how, at a late hour, I ended up with a drink in hand, ogling unfathomable olive oil flavors like dark chocolate balsamic, and espresso. (What does the lack of artisan cooking ingredients in my life say about me as a person?)

But hey, there was music too! (That was the point, right?) I found myself quite taken with Orienteers. The Canadian collective have between about a dozen distortion petals. All the better to pair with their whispered, haunted lyrics and watery lightshow, which brought a touch of surreal to the pop up venue. (Plus, it’s important to know that they’ve covered New Order’s “Regret,” which gives them at least a billion bonus points.)

On the other end of the spectrum was Steve Adamyk Band—whose Get Up Kids in the garage sound tested the out limits of the ad hoc soundsystem. It didn’t matter that we couldn’t hear every word—or that they were standing mere feet away. (Sorry, Canada. Meters) the band was going to do all they could to blow out our eardrums and draw the rock through every minute of their half-hour set. And good news—they totally did.

Up tomorrow: Tree hugging, historical building cuddling, and music. Oh the music!

(www.cityfolkfestival.com)

(www.unrefinedolive.com)

(www.facebook.com/Orienteers)

(www.facebook.com/steveadamykband)