♪♫ ♪ ♪♫

Cradle
The Joy Formidable
The Big Roar
2011

♥: A song to (unofficially, unthemed-ly) sum up Osheaga 2011. Impossible.

Do I repost the Midway State, which killed me dead, from Saturday morning when the sun made the gravel smell like last night's Eminem binge? Do I post An Horse, when I was so overwhelmed by a line I had to pull out my agenda and jot it down in public? Do I post Ellie Goulding, in all her centered glee and electropop vigour? Do I post White Lies, who restarted my fucking heart? Do I post a song that made me dance till I didn't even care how much I was sweating; a song that made me close my eyes reverently; a song that I'd never heard but will never forget?

Osheaga was a series of discoveries, rediscoveries; dances, moments. I'm choosing a song that was all of those.

The Joy Formidable was blocked in that awful Beirut/Ellie Goulding stage split -- especially irritating because they're the one band I researched and really got into prior to Osheaga. Ellie Goulding's fabulous set had finished, and V and I -- blissed out, giddy -- headed to the Tree Stage in hopes of catching the Joy Formidable's final few songs. We collapsed in the shade, grinning, took a photo (one of the ones where you hold the camera in front of you and hope both faces are in the frame; they were, as was the slowly setting sun behind us). The Joy Formidable was amazing, pounding out their twisting hooks and riffs -- and then! Last song.

As was standard that weekend -- they played the one song I needed to hear.

'Cradle' is one of those rare songs that could be the opening or closing credits of a movie (or TV show, for that matter). It's got a sense of atemporality to it, because I think the point is to ascribe your own meaning, your own temporality. The lyrics, of course, are quite final: "I wish the cobwebs would cover me" and "All I want to see is the end of this" ------ but it doesn't feel like an ending, really. It's about the beginnings that can come from an ending, and the endings that come from a beginnings, and how interdependently related all that "newfound kinesis" can't help but be. This song got me through the beginning of July -- how perfect that it would reappear at the end of it.

Before the song ended, we were weaving back to the Green Stage to prepare for White Lies. There was a moment, 'Cradle' blaring, that I danced across that dirt pathway between stages while everyone else was shuffling. The unadultered joy I felt with that song exploding into my heart, though a mere indication of what was to come with White Lies just moments later: indescribable.

Osheaga was perfect.