For this week’s Sound Advice, we offer a few reasons to arrive early to this year’s Bunbury Music Festival, which returns to the riverfront’s Sawyer Point this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The big attractions include headliners as diverse as Muse, Wiz Khalifa, The 1975, Death Cab for Cutie and Bassnectar, but the following are just a few reasons not to wait until nightfall to roll into the fest grounds. Tickets and full details are available at bunburyfestival.com.
The Cordial Sins
Friday (3:30) • Southwest Sound Stage
AltPop/Rock quintet The Cordial Sins is one of several Columbus, Ohio acts booked for Bunbury this year, a practice that began when the festival was taken over by PromoWest Productions a couple of fests ago. While theoretically that practice may have taken slots away from Greater Cincinnati artists (Bunbury still features locals on par with how it was pre-takeover), bands like The Cordial Sins make it easy to forgive. The group’s 2015 debut album, Daze, is an endearing mix of alluring dreamscapes, ethereal ear-caressing melodies and progressive guitar work, bringing to mind a captivating collaboration between peak-era Lush and a younger, pre-Pop-abandonment Radiohead. (Mike Breen)
EDEN
Friday (4:30 p.m.) • Sawyer Point Stage
EDEN is the musical pen name of Dublin, Ireland-based musician/singer/songwriter Jonathon Ng, who, at just 21, has been making global waves with his distinct mix of Electronic sounds, interesting production and Pop instincts with some depth. Ng is a bit of a music veteran; he first attracted notice for his more EDM-styled tracks in his teens as “The Eden Project.” Now, with distribution through Astralwerks, EDEN’s more “Indie Pop/Rock” sound (think Hozier remixed by Calvin Harris and you’ll be on the right path) has shown his huge potential; don’t be shocked when you hear EDEN all over thr radio and see him flirting with the upper reaches of the mainstream singles charts. (MB)
Civil Twilight
Friday (4:45 p.m.) • CVG River Stage
Bunbury veterans Civil Twilight began over 20 years ago when Andrew McKellar and Richard Wouters played guitars together as teenagers in South Africa. Wouters switched to drums, McKellar asked younger brother Steven to practice and he became the band’s powerful bassist and chief songwriter. Steered by Oasis, Blur, Nirvana, Jazz and township Jive, Civil Twilight’s regional success inspired a 2005 move to Los Angeles, and its 2007 eponymous debut resulted in tons of television and film placements. Civil Twilight’s second album, Holy Weather, was a big seller and keyboardist/guitarist Kevin Dailey joined in 2012, strengthening the band’s U2/Radiohead/Police vibe. The quartet was still touring on 2015’sStory of an Immigrant when it played here last summer, but within weeks, its Facebook photo reverted back to a trio shot and Dailey is absent in recent live footage. Is Civil Twilight back to a threesome? We shall see. (Brian Baker)
Frenship
Saturday (3:30 p.m.) • Nissan Stage
James Sunderland and Brett Hite of Electronic Pop duo Frenship first met while working retail in L.A., where both had migrated from different parts of the country. Their chemistry became evident when they began working on tracks together, eventually posting songs online that proceeded to go viral. Frenship’s career really took off last year when its breezy, good-vibes track “Capsize” found its way into “song of the summer of 2016” contention, one of the few independent tracks in the conversation, and became a hit on Pop radio. The song’s success (it currently has been streamed more than 360,000 times on Spotify) set the stage for Frenship to take advantage of this summer, which it’s doing on the road with appearances at big fests like Lollapalooza, Outside Lands and Bunbury, as well as tour dates with Bastille. This fall, the duo releases its first EP for Columbia Records. (MB)
San Fermin
Saturday (4:30 p.m.) • Sawyer Point Stage
There isn’t anything conventional about San Fermin, the Brooklyn-based Chamber Pop/Indie Rock octet. The band’s ringmaster, Ellis Ludwig-Leone, studied composition at Yale and had no designs on a Pop/Rock career, but he assembled a senior-year concert that featured his pieces for female vocalists up front and bombastic Pop songs to close the show, and he instantly understood he could marry the two concepts. Since its 2011 formation, San Fermin has released a trio of engaging albums — its infectious self-titled 2013 debut, 2015’s expansive Jackrabbit and the just-released Belong, which all exhibit hints of The National, Aimee Mann and Grizzly Bear, with a somber-yet-joyous Classical/Chamber underpinning. While San Fermin’s studio performances are impressive, the collective’s live shows swell to epic proportions; this could be one of the festival’s don’t-miss moments. (BB)
VHS Collection
Saturday (4:45 p.m.) • CVG River Stage
The new millennium has spawned a fair number of bands that mix Electronic dance beats with driving Rock rhythms — MGMT, LCD Soundsystem and Phoenix among them. Although New York’s VHS Collection has a short history, it has displayed a skillful blend of contemporary Indie Rock vision and ’80s Synth Pop inspiration. The trio bounces and bubbles with the carefree gravity of Howard Jones and Thompson Twins while scorching the air with arena-scaled hooks and vocals that recall Cincinnati’s own Matt Berninger. Since forming in 2014, VHS Collection has self-released a pair of EPs and played to ecstatic audiences at the Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits fests, among others. The band is planning to self-release its first full-length this summer while working in its first major tour and another festival circuit run. (BB)
White Reaper
Sunday (2 p.m.) • Sawyer Point Stage
Say what you will about Louisville’s White Reaper — the quartet doesn’t suffer from a lack of confidence. After all, the band titled its third and most accomplished album The World’s Best American Band and, as it turns out, there’s not a molecule of hyperbole in that description. Lacing its basic Garage Rock sound with Cheap Trick’s anthemic Power Pop, The Who’s fist-pumping Rock, The Ramones’ jackhammer Punk and the vainglorious swagger of Van Halen’s gritty demos, White Reaper channels the spirit of the ’60s, when no basement band knew exactly what it was doing and played as loud as God’s upstairs neighbors to prove it. American Band is a logical progression from the fuzz-stomp howl of the band’s eponymous 2014 debut EP and its aptly titled White Reaper Does It Again album from 2015. (BB)
CAAMP
Sunday (2:30 p.m.) • Nissan Stage
Central Ohio duo CAAMP is a testament to the power of songwriting and delivery. The act is simple — two young dudes (Taylor Meier and Evan Westfall), singing and playing Folk music with an acoustic guitar and a banjo. But even the most sparsely ornamented songs in the band’s repertoire have a distinct lift, an almost spiritual boost that fills in the blank spaces with a soulful fullness, like Bruce Springsteen playing Gospel music in a church with just acoustic sound and that heart-twisting voice (Meier’s own gruff, lived-in vocals come off like a mix between Bruce and Ray LaMontagne). Those songs are showcased on a great 2016 self-titled album (CAAMP’s full-length debut), which helped attract a growing legion of fans thanks to official Spotify playlist exposure and old-fashioned word of mouth. (MB)
Arkells
Sunday (3 p.m.) • CVG River Stage
Canadian quintet Arkells has hit some pretty impressive heights in its 11-year run. Named after the Hamilton, Ontario street where members lived while students at McMaster University, Arkells — think The Alarm and DelAmitri with a dash of U2 — has recorded four albums and two EPs and won several Juno Awards, including New Group of the Year in 2010 and Group of the Year in 2012 and 2015 (the band also won Album of the Year for High Noon that year). Last year saw the release of Arkells’ fourth album, Morning Report, which earned a couple more Juno nods, and in April, the band dropped a new single, the propulsive and horn-driven “Knocking at the Door,” which will be included on the imminent deluxe edition of Morning Report. (BB)
This article appears in May 31 – Jun 7, 2017.
