Review: Nowadays Festival

When the line up of the Nowadays Festival was announced, I recognized the headliner, the Weather Station, but was unfamiliar with the other two artists on the bill: Jennah Barry and Charlotte Cornfield. Eager to listen to new artists, I bought a ticket. An opportunity to see a highly regarded artist performing in Halifax cannot be missed. I was also blown away after seeing the U.S. Girls at Nowadays last year, so I trusted the festival to present intimate, acoustic and beautifully moving performances.

The sold-out show was held at the Sanctuary Arts Centre, a renovated 100-year-old church in Dartmouth that now operates as a year-round arts centre. Luckily, my friends had the foresight to arrive early because by 6 p.m., the line stretched down the street. 

Inside, we managed to snag a spot in the front pew. I was slightly intimidated sitting so close to the stage, but when Barry, a singer-songwriter from Mahone Bay, began, the audience became a collective. The space felt like it shrank to the size of a living room. 

I was surprised by Barry’s performance, likely because I knew the least about her. Her rambling introductions to each song, filled with self-deprecating humour, neurotic doubts and stories of her struggles with performing, were unexpectedly funny. After introductions, she took a deep breath and sang beautiful lyrics with a delicate, soft and melodic voice, without a waver of hesitation. 

In between songs, she said that, as an artist, you create with your own intention, but you must be okay with letting other people interpret your work in their own way. Barry’s sentiments felt even more meaningful because each artist performing onstage was accompanied by only an acoustic guitar. It was truly an ode to their voices, words and intentions.  

Though I’m not a lyrics person, I absorbed the narratives in Cornfield’s quirky, yet sweet songs. 

Contrastingly, the Weather Station was complex and grounded. The band’s singer, Tamara Lindeman, also known as Tamara Hope, said she likes to make metaphors from small instances that don’t easily lend themselves to metaphor.

She pointed out the similarities between microphones and humans; how microphones catch sounds and vibrate, they mimic what humans do. Things hit us and we vibrate, and the musicians among us find a way to transmit those vibrations through song. 

Her message rings true in a time when there is so much coming towards us; it’s easy to forget how impressionable we can be.

Leaving, I imagined everyone vibrating at the same frequency from the impact of the show.