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Photos by Eirik Lande (unless otherwise indicated); text by Stephen M. Deusner

Øya Saturday

The sun has canceled due to exhaustion.

No seriously, it's pouring this morning in Oslo. The sky is gray, the water is gray, the streets are gray. This doesn't bode well for the festival, which has so far been fortunate enough to avoid any major weather trouble. The hardy fans will be there regardless of the weather, but it'll be a pain nonetheless, and a bummer on the final day.

Walking becomes a little more treacherous today. Due to the morning's rain, large puddles have formed on the main paths, which everyone but the very young and the very inebriated tries to avoid. But with the large crowds, it isn't easy. Soon everyone at Øya seems to have soaked pant cuffs. The smart ones bring galoshes; the stylish ones bring galoshes in bright colors.

Hanne Hukkelberg



Photo 1 by Stephen M. Deusner

Fortunately, Oslo-based singer/songwriter Hanne Hukkelberg's set is perfectly melancholy for such a rainy day. She has brought a large band with her, including two drummers and a variety of multi-instrumentalists who play toy piano, castanets, autoharp, clarinet, flute, tuba, accordion, even pots and pans. Hukkelberg plays the spokes of an overturned bicycle for one song. All these sounds coalesce into a jazzy rattle that highlight her eccentric songwriting and warm, lovely vocals. Songs like "The Northwind" and others from her 2006 album Rykestrasse 68 fluctuate between subdued and blustery, usually starting soft and slow but gradually crescendoing into extended climaxes that show off her band's considerable muscle.

Bjørn Torske






Bjørn Torske is a DJ who hosts an open-mic night in Bergen, during which he invites musicians to share the stage with him. He's invited an army of regulars to play Øya with him (including Mental Overdrive and DJ Rune Linbæk). He calls them to the stage one by one; there are seventeen or eighteen in all, including five singers dressed variously as a flapper, a goth, a biker, and a young girl. It's a full stage. Just as the crowd migrates over following synth-rock act Pleasure's set, the concept behind Torke's show becomes clear: he plays his musicians like instruments, instructing each one what and when to play and when to stop. For one song, he talks at length to the guitar player, who begins to play a short Spanish filigree over and over; following his instructions, others add droning background, the drummer adds a beat, the vocalists sing operatically and wordlessly, and the song takes off.

Throughout the set, Torske wanders the stage, a mad-scientist emcee trying to control his musical Frankenstein's monster. Sometimes his experiments create an arrhythmic cacophony, as on the wobbly second song. In general, however, the show hinges on the unscripted and untested nature of his approach, which endears him and his crew to the crowd, who call for an encore even though his set runs long.

Maribel




Rockettothesky




As the Oslo electropop trio Rockettothesky take the Sjøsiden stage, noise from young drone-rockers Maribel can still be heard from the Vika stage nearby. While it almost seems to overpower this act, it also serves as a reminder that there have been very few instances of sound interference from one area of the festival to another, despite the small grounds. Soon enough, either Maribel's distortion fades or Rockettothesky finally make enough noise of their own to drown it out.

At first, though, they're almost too cute. One of the two keyboard players sports a pink t-shirt, barette, and scruffy beard, and singer Jenny Hval highlights her platinum bob with an outfit that seems a little self-conscious in its mismatched outlandishness. It doesn't help that their first number is a pirate song with the chorus, "Heave ho and a bottle of rum."

But first impressions quickly melt away. As the set progresses, the arrangements grow spacier and stranger, and Hval's crystalline vocals become more confident and commanding. Her voice, which is the act's primary sonic element, shifts from stoic to sensuous, especially on songs like "A Flock of Cheshire Cats" and "A Choir of Crayons". Later in the day, when the band plays an intimate set on Ikea's floating booth, these elements will come through even more strongly.

The Besnard Lakes






Olga Goreas has rockstar moves. Wearing a gray summer dress that doesn't exactly scream "experimental indie rock," the Besnard Lakes bass player, singer, and co-songwriter jams just as hard as her taller, guitar-playing bandmates, even as she must split the difference between the band's guitar attack, strong rhythm section, and dual vocals. Throughout the show, her constant smile nicely punctures the group's gravity. Goreas is obviously enjoying herself tremendously.

The Lakes' show, however, is beset with early problems. The man who introduces them either forgets or can't pronounce their name, and a few songs in, Jace Lasek disappears after breaking a string. While the band pauses for him to restring, Goreas asks if anyone knows any jokes in Norwegian. By the time the Montreal collective get to "On Bedford and Grand", though, they've recovered fully, pounding out track after track from their debut, The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse. The arrangements on that album, saturated with strings and horns, sound a little fussy, but today, the Lakes pare everything down to their essentials: guitars that alternately drone airily and churn earthily, counterbalanced by unapologetically sunny melodies. As a result, songs like "For Agent 13" and "And You Lied to Me" sound heavier and more urgent.

The Go! Team










Starting life as a sample-based act, the Go! Team have evolved into a traditional band, complete with guitar, bass, two drummers, keyboards, and a highly charismatic frontwoman. On the main Enga stage, their music loses little of its fizzy charm or frenetic excitement. Ninja delivers her pop-raps at lightning speed and generally acts like the most determined cheerleader you've ever seen. Meanwhile, the band run through tracks from their new album, Proof of Youth, with an emphasis on loud and fast.

Ninja wears a bandage around one knee, which seems to keep her anchored to the stage. She tells the crowd that because she dislocated her knee the day before, she won't be able to go as crazy today as she would like. Instead, in a lemons-to-lemonade twist, she informs her audience that they'll have to go even wilder on her behalf. They willingly oblige, even though it's difficult to see how Ninja or anyone else in the band could give any more.

Lady Sovereign




Øya booked Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, and Lady Sovereign, all three troubled British female pop divas who have had high profile problems this year. The first two canceled their Øya sets, but Lady Sov actually shows up. That is enough to win over all the fans who've crowded the Sjøsiden stage, even after a pre-show set by her DJ that seems to go on and on. But her performance-- bolstered by a live rhythm section-- is playful but gritty, as if she's trying to make us forget her recent TRL success. It's odd that an artist so young could have "early days", but today she looks and sounds more like the pranksta-rapper of her very first singles, with her signature sideways ponytail, oversized t-shirt, and two pairs of sunglasses that she trades off as purposefully as other acts change instruments. More to the point, she raps frantically, infusing these songs with an aggression that's completely missing from her album.

Yo Majesty

Yo Majesty are the third of three very different female rap acts scheduled for today, each of which has its own direction and sense of realness. A lesbian crew from Tampa, Florida, Shunda K., Jwl B., and Shon B. (Shon B. is missing from the Øya set) have the potential to topple so many masculine hip-hop clichés, turning misogynist terminology toward dramatically new ends. Initially, however, I'm skeptical. Before I head over to the Vika stage, a publicist tells me that the group puts on a crazy show and often even raps topless. Sure enough, a few songs into their set, Shunda K. is in her sports bra and Jwl B. is bare-chested. There's a disappointingly scripted feel to this exhibitionism; it's an act that potentially distracts from the music instead of signaling a natural expression of personal freedom.

On the other hand, who the hell cares? Even without Shon B., Yo Majesty have undeniable chemistry. Over low-key beats that form just the skeletons of songs, Shunda K. takes most of the verses, wielding a phallic scepter and exhorting the crowd with "Norway, where you at!"-- which is my favorite stage banter from the entire festival. Meanwhile, Jwl B. punctuates her partner's performance with gospel grunts and r&b howls. Yes, she takes her shirt off, which sets the audience's mouths agape, and yes, she wields those breasts like weapons, flaunting her fulsome physique proudly. Nevertheless, the crowd's excitement is a response to the music, not the mammaries, and in turn Yo Majesty seem generally touched by their reception. It's only reluctantly that they leave the stage.

Primal Scream




The last bill of the fest is always a thankless one, especially for a post-rock act like Norway's Salvatore. After seeing headliners BigBang and Primal Scream, audiences trudge tiredly toward the exits, most of them catching Salvatore by accident. Many leave for club nights early in the show, when the group still sounds a little rusty. One song in particular sounds like it might even fall apart, and the drum stand wobbles alarmingly. I'm a little worried for them. But soon enough, their grooves click into place and their music becomes purely motional. As squirrelly guitar lines buzz around the military rhythms, the crowd stops dwindling and people even summon the energy to dance.

Salvatore are a reminder that there hasn't been a defining performance at Øya-- that one show that so far exceeded expectations that anyone who missed it might as well have not attended the festival. There were, however, so many great performances-- Ungdomskulen, Ida Maria, Battles, Jens Lekman, the Go! Team, and Yo Majesty-- that it hardly matters. These were mostly smaller acts that didn't draw crowds as big as those for the headliners, but they had a big impact nevertheless.

Likewise, Øya continues to promote its ecological goals in subtly pervasive, but enormously effective ways. The festival never feels like a political or charitable event, and there are no onstage homilies exhorting attendees to save the earth. Instead, that mission is obvious in the collection of booths selling organic and locally grown food, which isn't necessarily unique to Øya but seems all the more significant in this context. Also, to cut down both on garbage and on dehydration, water is surprisingly inexpensive: for 1 krone, you can buy a paper cup that you can refill at any of the water stations throughout the grounds.

Throughout the week I've seen festivalgoers collecting beer cups and cardboard carriers, sometimes carrying stacks taller than they are. Initially I assumed they were volunteers doing clean-up duty, but later I was informed that Øya pays for trash-- 1 krone for each cup, 5 for carriers. So the industrious members of the crowd scooped them up for beer money, which created more trash, which other people collected for beer money. It's a productive and profitable cycle that constantly maintains the grounds and keeps Medieval Park clean and green. It's a small thing, but the result is huge-- which seems to be the Øya ethos.

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