Local Ottawa bands shine at day 2 of Hopped and Confused.

The second day of Dine Alone Records and Mill Street Brew Pub’s Hopped and Confused festival saw some entertaining acts as Ottawa’s own New Swears opened the day 2 on the sunny Saturday evening.

Known for their elaborate schemes of soaking the crowd with various food items at their shows, New Swears had prepared a garbage bag full of ramen noodles along with thousand of pieces of confetti that they launched multiple times during their set on Saturday. The band that had clearly enjoyed their share of Mill Street Brewery’s beverages before their show, put on an entertaining set of garage punk, snacks and acrobatics. For the audience’s disappointment (or luck), the garbage bag full of fresh key lime pie was left unserved by the band this time, but I have no doubt they will compensate it at their upcoming shows.

Toronto’s indie punk darlings Dilly Dally provided a slower paced show after the chaotic start to the festival. Singer Katie Monk’s amazing ability to produce powerful growls combined to softer tones surely reminds a lot of people of L.A.’s grunge queens Hole. The crowd swayed along with the tunes and seemed to know the lyrics to most of the songs proving the young band has definitely gained a loyal group of followers.

When Hollerado was supposed to hop on stage around 8pm, it was obvious something was not right. The stage and soundboard were completely dark and there seemed to be some sort of confusion as to what was going on. It turned out that the generator had ran out of diesel and staff was sent to get more. After a half an hour wait, the patient crowd decided to start entertaining themselves by singing Bohemian Rhapsody and various other epic tunes, and Hollerado’s Nixon Boyd and Dean Baxter climbed on the dark stage and to the audience’s amusement, joined the sing along. At the one hour mark of darkness, singer Menno Versteeg headed over to the stage to pass on some free beers to the crowd, and not too much later, the generator had been filled and the power got back on for the band to climb on stage for their actual set.

Ottawa’s golden boys Hollerado have been enjoying quite a success since their Big Money Shot win in 2009. The band has since been nominated for various awards at the Junos and Sirius XM Indie Awards where they also took the Group of the Year award in 2014. The anticipation was high when the band finally went on and made the audience’s wait worth while.

Having seen them a few months ago at the Bronson Centre, this show totally topped up that show a hundred times over. The band seemed stronger than ever and sincerely gave their all on stage to the deserving crowd to compensate on the over an hour wait.

The honor of closing off the evening and the festival was Newmarket’s Tokyo Police Club who were given the permission to play past the curfew because of the power issues earlier in the evening. Some of the audience had already left earlier during the power outage but the ones who stayed behind got to enjoy an hour of the band’s biggest hits singing and dancing the night away with hits such as Bambi, Wait Up ( Boots of Danger), and Your English Is Good. Dropping out of college back in 2005 definitely worked out for these guys as they have over the years become one of the biggest indie rock bands in Canada.

We can’t wait to see which bands Dine Alone Records and Mill Street Brew Pub will be bringing for our hearing and viewing pleasure next year!