i saw every group with "wolf" in their name at osheaga 2026, AMA
Sunday evening at Osheaga I couldn't stop crying! First I caught the end of Clipse's set and they played "The Birds Don't Sing" which is about the deaths of Pusha T and Malice's parents. Their visuals for that song were a montage of photos of their mom and dad, and when I thought about how proud those parents probably were of Clipse before they passed—like, imagine your sons start a rap duo together, I personally would never get over it—I just lost it. I just looked up the lyrics to that song and now I'm crying again:
Then Zara Larsson brought a young girl up to do the "Lush Life" dance—I'm bad at telling ages of youth but she seemed no older than 10?—and I was crying because she was so self-assured dancing in front of a crowd of what might have been 40,000 people. As a daughter of parents and now a parent of daughter, I guess that's all I see when I look at people, all the work it took to grow up, all the work it takes to help other people grow up too. It's so rewarding but so exhausting. How does everyone do it? Anyway, that was my day 3 festival meltdown. It was rainy and humid, Parc Jean-Drapeau felt like a misty jungle, the tears were coming out via osmosis, as salty as the canned Clamato Caesar I'd drank earlier that weekend.
I love being in Montréal because it offers me the opportunity to humiliate myself by trying to speak the terrible French I learned in school. The mere existence of Quebec is astounding. And the province's Euro-esque focus on positive mass public experience meant Osheaga was probably the best-run festival I've now ever been to outside of Coachella. Smooth ins and outs on public transportation, decent amenities, the opportunity to buy a hot dog at a casse-croûte every few meters.
We, aka moi and mon mari Chris, entered the festival de musique on Friday afternoon, just in time to see WHATMORE (a charming hip-hop group of shovin' buddies, a pleasant link in the A$AP MOB --> Odd Future --> Brockhampton lineage) on the Forest Stage. Osheaga has an interesting layout quirk: two pairs of side-by-side stages at either end of the park, which allowed for quick turnovers, but also sometimes gave a slightly lopsided energy to the crowd. An advantage of this was that later, when we got to Geese late after checking out Twenty One Pilots, I got to twirl like a Deadhead to "Getting Killed" with absolutely no one around me because they were all scrunched to the right of the field. Anyway, Wolf Alice back to back with Wet Leg made a lot of sense, with Ellie Rowsell and Rhian Teasdale representing British intensity vs. British nonchalance.
Then it started raining and we hid under a grove before our own legs got too wet. I love when it rains at festivals these days because it destroys what I think is an unnecessary amount of aesthetic prep for what is ultimately an unaesthetic pursuit. At Coachella this year, I overheard our camping neighbor console her friend, who was missing sunset because her contour wasn't coming out quite right. It's fun to look good, fun to take pics, but bad weather equalizes us all, as it should.
Some dude named Max McNown was playing some McNormal country music, and then Bob Moses took the stage. Now, I don't know why, but I had it in my head that Bob Moses was a 55-year-old British man with an Ibiza residency and a couple of BBC Essential Mixes under his belt; this was not true, Bob Moses was instead an electronic-forward band and they sounded basically like Rüfüs Du Sol. Oops. They played some pseudo-industrial music and I made a joke that they were "Nine Centimeter Nails" and then, as if they heard me, they covered "Closer" as we ambled out of there.
Down back to the Mountain Stage for The xx, whose set could have easily been too chill for my liking, but was beefed up nicely with some dance elements that must be the work of Jamie xx. Got to catch up with my old friend Jackson who was in town one nite only, and also availed myself of one of the most fascinating amenities of the fest—people who stand on coolers and sell shots of hard liquor. Sort of a Vegas energy. My latent inner party girl was pleased.
I've been wanting to see Twenty One Pilots ever since I saw a clip of their live show where their drummer crowdsurfed while playing drums, and they delivered. Like, some mildly nerdy/esoteric/dystopian/sci-fi vibes, but you never forget that you're ultimately watching two guys named Josh and Tyler who are from Ohio. I had a moment of Car Commercial Indie Panic when they started playing Milky Chance's "Stolen Dance" in the middle of their song "One Way." "Heathens" is in my top motion picture soundtrack singles of this century. It elevates the existence of Suicide Squad, a movie starring two maniacs with reputations in steep decline, from "yuck" to "I'll allow it."
Saturday we had a proud moment of being Those People Who Are Standing At The Side Of The Stage At A Festival for our bud Dan Boeckner, because Wolf Parade were playing! I've seen Dan play as part of Operators, and in Arcade Fire, and as just Boeckner, but I also saw Wolf Parade ten years ago at McCarren Park and it was so cool to see them on the mainstage, especially with the boost of their Heated Rivalry needle drop. And seeing "Fine Young Cannibals" made my heart happy. In this house...there's no ORDERRRRR. Plus, reclining on a hill afterward, I completed the Wolf Challenge and caught Finn Wolfhard, who was rocking out with I Enjoy Music featurees The Slaps, all in custom pink baseball jerseys. They delivered a ripping cover of "You Don't Know How It Feels" that had me going berserk.
Molly Mary O’Brien
Angine de Poitrine, speckled buzz band of the year, was probably a confusing sight for the hordes of people sweating it out all day for Tate McRae to go on. I would have liked them better if I were on mushrooms at Field of Vision, but you can't always get what you want. It was funny to "know" an Angine de Poitrine song, in that singing along to microtonal guitar riffs makes you seem like an insane person. POUTINE BREAK.
Viagra Boys was reliably fun. Third time seeing the Boys, I think? Great crowd, all fellow Shrimp City Beachgoers. And a perfect back-to-back transition into Franz Ferdinand, who we enjoyed from some bleachers. Alex Kapranos was doing all his bants in French and I was like "I bet he has a French-ass wife at home," and yes, he does. Dynamics of the crowds had become clearer—they were much more locked in and engaged at Forest/Valley than they were at River/Mountain, where headliner squatters emitted little verve. The fashion item of the day was a pair of sequined leopard print hot pants. They were on so many butts on Saturday. I think they were these ones from Revolve. The 2020s are really the decade of the festy fast fashion monolith. Last year at Coachella it was what Biz Sherbert described as the "boho amnesia belt."
Our artist wristbands granted us a close range for Tate McRae, who was kitted out in low-rise black stretch pants and a black going out top, looking like a cross between an Express customer from 2003 and an Express employee from 2003; her set was, incongruously, a structure that evoked ancient times, with elegant white columns; she should have worn a lovely toga. Maybe I'm old, too steeped in the pop iconography of yore, but I don't get what Tate McRae wants. Janet Jackson wanted control, Britney Spears wanted to demonstrate the tension between innocence and experience, Beyoncé wanted to show femininity could be just as strong/powerful as masculinity. What does Tate want? To pursue or perhaps be pursued, to kick one's leg over one's head. Situationship music, neither yes nor no. Her last album was called So Close To What and that's how I feel about her music. It's so close...to...what, exactly?! KETTAMA was a nice oontz oontz palate cleanser, a neighbor fanned me with an Absolut Vodka fan, j'adore le PLUR.
We weren't quite ready to end our night and ended up at a late-night bistro, where the server read us a list of specials and they all had Arctic char in them. It became almost comedic—"We also have...an Arctic char...this one with pulverized leeks and fig wisps....and lastly we have...an Arctic char..." Their house focaccia was amazing, even though it contained no Arctic char.
We took things easy on the last and rainiest day. Got brunch with the great and charming artist Ben Clarkson at a place with a macadamia nut chocolate chip cookie on the menu, touted as one of Oprah's Favorite Things (I ordered it...yummy), then worked on some writing at our hotel before hitting the fest just as Trixie Mattel was starting to DJ. Then experienced a perfect festival reversal, going from hella gay house music to Clipse, where I cried about the Thornton brothers' parents. Everyone, and I mean everyone, was there for Zara Larsson. You could tell from the airbrushed t-shirts and neon tropical looks. She killed it, slayed it, murdered it dead. I admit I was FULLY TRICKED by her Chaotic Good campaign last year...
...but my stance on music marketing is I kind of don't care how it gets to me as long as it slaps. If I'm marketed music and the music sucks, I move it to trash. The proof is in the freakin pudding.
It was now pouring. Emotionally unburdened by my crying jag, a little toasted from tequila shots, and wet as an Arctic char in its natural habitat, I had a hilarious moment of stupidity watching the artist Not For Radio slither around in the rain. "Jesus Christ, this lady is really biting the swag of María from the Marías," I blathered, before realizing I was watching the solo project of María from the Marías.
Happy to blitz whatever neural material hadn't yet leaked out of my skull, I closed my night at Subtronics, a dubstep artist I've listened to a bit but never seen live. It was bass brainrot, down to the sampling of Dracula Flow ("They must have amnesia, they forgot that I'm him") and the Mario Kart sound effects, but I'm comfortable with the fact that occasionally I need to headbang to complete nonsense. There's an alternate timeline where I wear those gigantic Demonia platforms and go to Bass Canyon every year. Maybe when I'm 60.
We closed our night with our friend Josiah (he of the I Enjoy Music-approved band SILLY and the former podcast blink-155 and the current podcast Millennial Excellence) and his lovely wife Sarah at a bar that was playing Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood and served a mean cheeseburger. Josiah talked about how he's done music criticism for so long that he sort of flavor-blasted his music taste into oblivion and now he's into shit like Machine Gun Kelly. (He chose Halsey for his song of the year last year). This is the sign of true music enjoyment, I think, going through the stargate and trying to see things with your They Live glasses off. And it's why I love festivals, because so many genres get pressed into a dense and gooey terrine, mediocre viral hits smooshed among indie stalwarts and khia asylum escapees. Add gravy fries and 300+ butts in sequined hot pants and you have as good of a time as you could ask for. Merci Montréal, au revoir les loups, au revoir tous les enfants de parents.
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