Image Description: West Fest Graphic by AS Productions
By: Tim Donahue
AS Productions is welcoming all students back to campus on September 20th with Westfest at Red Square. There, Western students will be invited to gather in the (hopeful) September sun for a night to cut loose and relax before the bustle of the school year fully kicks into gear. This year’s Westfest will feature drag performances, food trucks, free ice cream, and giveaways—but a party just isn’t a party without music. Here are the featured bands that will be performing at this year’s event.
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CAT VALLEY: One band that will be coming to Westfest is Cat Valley. The name comes from a “sanctioned burn” that was originally meant to prod another local band by creating a polar opposite to the name Dog Mountain. All in good fun, of course, Cat Valley has matured since their 2016 inception to become a band that stands firmly on their own two feet. Delicately mixing and balancing genres as they perform, Cat Valley covers every base that you could want from an indie band. From dream pop to surf punk, heavy riffs to relatable storytelling, Cat Valley tugs at the heart strings before turning that pain into the pure excitement that can only come with rage.
Abby Hegge and Whitney Flinn are the founding members of Cat Valley, and they pride themselves on the eclectic taste they’ve cultivated and incorporated into their ever-changing sound. They banter, they write together, they’ve developed a chemistry both on-stage and off. They cite the impressive lineup as one of the main reasons they’re excited for Westfest and they even dropped the hint that they may be premiering some new music during the show! When asked, they cited Sleater-Kinney, Girlpool, The Pixies, and The Dead Kennedys as their main inspiration when writing new songs, yet they’ve distilled that influence in a way that cultivates a mood that is uniquely their own.
Beyond Westfest, you can also catch Cat Valley at Aslan later that week, at The Shakedown on October 6th, and at The Blueroom on November 18th. They are also recording a new EP “Bingo Queen” which is scheduled for release this winter.
MADAM MONARCH: Madam Monarch is a three-piece pop-rock band that melds fast rhythm with dreamy vocal performances that stand against each other in a way that consistently elevates beyond one’s expectation for a mix like that. It’s a unique experience to listen to Madam Monarch, a half-step subdued when compared to harder bands in the scene, and a half-step too lively to fit in with many of the solo indie acts that remain acoustic. Madam Monarch fulfills a gap that most people don’t even think about when evaluating a college music scene, pure joy in pop sensibilities.
Most bands don’t strive for the kind of accessible sound that Madam Monarch does because, simply put, they can’t do it. Maddy Wyse’s vocal performances shine with consistent power that manages complete control while not only matching, but elevating the powerful instrumental backing that is done by Baylee Harper’s drums and Taylor Mastin’s guitar.
While performing live—especially when you’re a band that is as relatively young as Madam Monarch is—there is no harder job than to ingratiate yourself to an audience that has little to no familiarity with you. Having had a front row seat while this goes one of two ways, I can tell you that it can either bolster or deflate an entire night’s worth of music. Many have tried, many have even succeeded, but I have never seen any band win over an audience as quickly as Madam Monarch did when I first saw them live this June.
After Westfest, Madam Monarch can be found at the parking lot party on September 24th, and at Foxy Fest on October 8th.
LAAMB: Loud, eclectic, fast, and together. Laamb is coming from Seattle back to Bellingham to bring their talent to Westfest. Laamb mixes grunge and metal sensibilities to swallow the audience with their sound and win them over with their chemistry. As a band, Laamb has grown together since meeting at Western and getting their start in the Bellingham house show scene.
Laamb is a four piece band that started out as a solo project by their lead singer and guitarist Liam McNeeley. Since then, they have grown in both number and influence to include: Sebastian Hagman on guitar, Ryan Evans on bass, and Daniel Gronenberg on drums. Since forming in 2020, Laamb has released a debut EP, Seagullville, as well as a 2022 single “Bib”.
Having seen them live and interviewed the band as a whole, it doesn’t take much to identify the reason that Laamb works so well as a band. Beyond anything concrete that one could pick up from reading their lyrics or copying their riffs, Laamb has managed to capture a kind of community spirit that links their music to the audience just as much as it does to each other. There’s something communal about going to a Laamb show, they scream and you scream along, they allow for the kind of freedom that so many concert-goers are searching for in ballads and upbeat music, but they do it in a visceral way. See Laamb live, leave the concert with a buzz in your ears and relief in your mind, go for a walk to wallow in that feeling, then you’ll know what I mean.
KITTY OBSIDIAN: Kitty Obsidian is a band that is sure to change the pace of Westfest. Heavily influenced by modern R&B, Kitty Obsidian abandons heavy riffs and bold emotional outbursts for a kind of interiorism that rejects escapism to reflect a realer, quietly vulnerable sound.
Kitty Obsidian is as serene as they are introspective. Drawing upon artists like The Internet and Blood Orange, they’ve derived a sound that blends a multitude of regional influences to develop a sound that feels like it is specific to the Pacific Northwest. In “the city of subdued excitement”, there’s a melancholic mood that comes as the clouds roll in, the wind kicks up, and nighttime comes at five in the afternoon. We see this mostly reflected in our regional sound through the grunge era, but bedroom pop is a kind of natural progression that falls under the radar when it comes to the sound of the Pacific Northwest.
All that is to say, Kitty Obsidian has filled a musical need that I never knew we needed. They have taken both the peace and the doldrums of life in Bellingham, and pushed it beyond the blind rage that we’ve seen reflected in so much of our region’s musical history. Kitty Obsidian is unique in their influence, and potentially extraordinary in the draw of their reach.