Analog Bell Service: Little is known about them, other than that they really love their ice cream.

Credit: supplied

MUSIC: A weekend well Wasted

Music Waste began life as an insurgent festival staged in opposition to the much larger New Music West, a gesture of underground insurrection in the spirit of Utah’s Slamdance Film Festival (a rebel rejoinder to Sundance) or the short-lived but wonderfully named Fuck by Fuck Off (a two-fingered salute to Austin, Texas’s South by Southwest).

But now, in its fifteenth year, Music Waste stands alone. New Music West is on indefinite hiatus, leaving the formerly insubordinate fest with the spotlight to itself, nothing to rebel against except its own notion of bad music.

No corporate sellout, however, Music Waste steps up this weekend with arguably the best lineup in its history. Yes, technically, it began June 9, but tonight (June 11) is when, in our opinion, the best of the fest begins taking the stage, and when Vancouver’s indie hipsters — a working-for-the-weekend crowd if ever there was one — comes out in full force.

We’ll be jostling for position down at the front for these sets. See the complete schedule at MusicWaste.ca

GANG VIOLENCE
June 11, Honey Lounge
Whether they arrived at their sound by design or by coincidence, this trio so perfectly approximates the nervous velocity of early ’80s post-punk’s — that brief moment when rock and disco found their common ground on the dancefloor — it beggars belief that none of them were alive at the time.

MAKEOUT VIDEOTAPE
June 11, Honey Lounge
When the Xeroxed fanzine was the primary means of communication among the indie-rock underground, bands would distribute their music via homemade cassettes and fragile flexidiscs. But existing in the pristine digital age hasn’t stopped this mysterious duo from imbuing their music with the sonic imperfections of a more innocent time. Recorded crudely and with a minimum of embellishment, Makeout Videotape are either the heirs apparent of Sebadoh or the Canadian kindred spirits of contemporary New York lo-fi masters Cause Co-Motion and Crystal Stilts. Either way, marvellous stuff.

ROSE MELBERG
June 12, The Secret Loft
A seminal figure in her own quiet way, this former Californian and cofounder of revered indie-pop bands Tiger Trap, the Softies, and Go Sailor, has played only sporadically since setting down roots in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood. But her recent songs — sparse acoustic reveries, sung in Melberg’s eternally youthful voice, and so emotionally forthright the listener almost feels intrusive for listening — are arguably her best work. Take this opportunity to see her; it might be some time before she appears again.

MODE MODERNE
June 12, The Astoria
Slavishly enamoured of Joy Division they may be — particularly with regard to singer Phillip Intile’s chanelling of Ian Curtis — but the subtle sophistication of this five-piece group’s songs chips away at the listener’s cynicism. (The tasteful guitar peal that opens “Ashes” suggests the band might have been listening to Felt, too.) If they persist long enough to establish an individual identity, Mode Moderne could become one of Music Waste’s foremost “I saw them when…” success stories.

ANALOG BELL SERVICE
June 13, The Secret Life
Little is known about this band, other than that there are five of them, two of which are brothers, and that their music grew out of “substance-influenced jams” at a Chinatown rehearsal space that “could only be accessed by ringing a bell on a string.” And what of that music? It bears no obvious influences, other than perhaps the willful eccentricity of Pavement — if their dynamic had been tempered by the effects of amphetamine rather than weed.

SUN WIZARD
June 13, Budgie’s Burritos
The late Gram Parsons’s elusive notion of “Cosmic American Music” would undoubtedly have sounded very different if he had survived to experience the existential confusion of 21st-century life. It might have sounded something like the simultaneously beautiful and lonely music of this very new quartet, which already sounded remarkably accomplished when it played its debut gig at the Railway in March.