The MIDEM festival at Cannes likes to think it’s shaking off it’s fuddy-duddy image and getting ‘down with the kids’ or some such. A big part of that is MIDEM OFF which is an attempt to bring a scuzzy / indie live dimension to the proceedings and so I hauled myself through the rainswept streets of Cannes to see Edmonton’s ‘The Provincial Archive’. I got to the venue to find a girl wringing what sounded like a heavily mutated version of Take Five out of a piano before realising I was in the wrong room. This meant I missed The Provincial Archive’s opener ‘I’m A Believer’ and if that’s their standout track then apologies to all involved.
Battling for space on the tiny stage the basic line-up was guitar, keyboard, drums and upright bass with brief sorties into melodica wrangling and banjo taming (both very successfully) and some electric bass which at least meant they had room to exhale. They’ve also mastered the art of swopping instruments onstage without creating stops in the flow of the music which is no mean feat and quite a testament to their stagecaft.
Although the guitarist takes the bulk of the vocal duties, as far as I could make out everyone else also sings and some of the highpoints came when they hit the harmonies.
Their set was consistently catchy and it would be difficult to pick standout tracks but if I was pushed I’d opt for Trading Thrills, which closes out their second album ‘Maybe We Could Be Holy’ and the song which closed their set ‘Weight & Sea’ in which they throw in a mix of live drums and programmed beats, with the keyboard track running off the laptop and some heavily treated guitar, like a poppier Centro-matic but without the weight and menace that that band can assert.
This was their first gig outside Canada, but their forthcoming third album is getting a European release so hopefully we’ll see more of them.
You can find out more about them (although not a whole lot more, they play their cards pretty close to their chests) at http://www.theprovincialarchive.com
