Winterruption helped fight deep freeze

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This article was published 02/02/2026 (247 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

‘Cool town, winter in the city.” Or how about “Here comes the low-altitude sun”?

The last one doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but leave it to a city as cold as Mars to throw one of Canada’s most important alt-pop music festivals during the winter months.

Winterruption, which unfolded in the city’s trendiest neighbourhoods Jan. 20-26, is a gateway between our lonely Prairie town and music industry hubs such as Portland, Ore., Los Angeles and Berlin.

Organized by local concert promoter Real Love, it imports international indie acts and helps to export Winnipeg up-and-comers. Coinciding with Manitoba Music’s annual Sound Waves Music Meeting, it’s both a fest and industry mixer.

With featured acts having names such as Piss, Fear and Death Goals, unsurprisingly Winterruption didn’t feature many (or any) sunny covers of acts such as the Lovin’ Spoonful or the Beatles.

And yet in many ways the festival defies not just climate, but age and history.

Sure, there’s the sly intergenerational politics between the event’s industry elders and the younger kids onstage commanding growing cultural clout: skinny jeans versus baggy jeans.

But much of the fest’s esthetics are pretty retro. We saw millennials playing psych-rock and funk on old Gibson guitars and gen Z channelling ’90s riot grrl, hardcore and neo-soul spirits.

Winterruption was, in so many ways, a competitive celebration of sounds and styles with origins amid gen X and the boomers, as reimagined by their alternatively minded offspring.

Were Winterruption’s bands more about counterculture or conservation? Can a musician still be progressive if they’re fixated on the past? We’re not sure, but let’s revisit a few Real Love moments — highlighting acts worth discovering and debating, no matter their age or yours.

The Shivas

When’s the last time you saw someone sporting a coiffed bowl cut, bobbing their head back and forth like Davy Jones?

Portland-based, 20-year vets the Shivas breeze through their surf-flavoured hits, blissfully unconcerned with modern rock and pop trends. Eric Shanafelt’s bass is slung so high it nearly meets his armpits.

And yet in so many ways the Shivas, who played Sidestage on Sunday, feel forward-thinking. In an era where critics routinely declare the “death of melody,” there’s something just a little radical about constructing a classic pop song. The Shivas feel oddly vital with their James Bond minor/major nine chords and Brill Building allusions.

Who’da thunk yesterday’s bubble gum would be today’s artisanal desert?

Show Pony

Sounding in its early days more like a spaghetti western outfit, Winnipeg’s Show Pony has undergone a rock ‘n’ roll rebirth in anticipation of its debut EP scheduled for the spring. Darker and fiercer, the group erupted onstage with energy matched by few other acts throughout the festival.

At the Handsome Daughter, songwriter and frontwoman Mannon Smalley swapped between low tones, rebel yells and spasmodic displays of physicality, something akin to the offspring of Iggy Pop and Debbie Harry.

Channelling the 1980s Sunset Strip rock scene, hirsute guitar hero Thomas Cram showcased high-wattage solos tinged with more than a little doom and gloom. Alongside bombastic drummer Nick Kula, Show Pony makes a case for a return to glam rock’s heyday.

Discovery Zone

Electronic dance music shows can be a bit like the Wizard of Oz.

They operate on concealment and illusion. There’s an explosion of fog and light, a whooshing techno riser — but strain your eyes and it only half of it looks like it’s being triggered in real time by the push of a button.

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” the DJ seems to say.

Discovery Zone is different. Mostly.

At her Sidestages show, a translucent curtain divides Berlin-based American performer JJ Weihl from the audience. But you’ll notice she’s also playing real instruments, such as theremin and guitar, amid her consoles and gadgetry.

Outré but personable, Discovery Zone balances all-out weirdness with 1980s chillwave stylings familiar to a packed gen Z audience. Only once did the multi-instrumentalist step out from behind the curtain to serenade the audience.

Yet the Technicolor world she conjures is so lush and fun that we’re content with the illusions. She steps back behind the curtain, and it’s alive suddenly with psychedelic constellations and 3D renderings of human anatomy. What in the gesamtkunstwerk? All we know is that unlike Dorothy, we don’t want to go home.

Crabskull & E.GG

Erroll Layco is a tough egg to crack.

One of Manitoba hip hop’s most resonant voices, he all but disappeared to Toronto a few years ago after growing an energetic fanbase here for his solo work as E.GG and collaborative project 3Peat.

Then suddenly he’ll rear his boom bap stylings from time to time on Winnipeg’s stages in a show of musical force that reminds everyone what they’ve been missing.

Opening for American rapper Open Mike Eagle at Sidestage, alongside local hip-hop artist Gully, E.GG’s Sidestage show last week was a reunion for many.

Local techno producer Crabskull fired up his grimy beats — heavy on creatively chopped samples from a baby boomer record collection — as the stage flooded with the old gang. The audience flocked joyously to the front.

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