The cool thing about Kaneko Ayano is that she frequently performs as a solo acoustic artist. This means her songs, in their basest form, are solid enough to not need much embellishment. And the cool thing about this is when she does play with a band she adds some massive, heavy and palpable instrumentation onto something already powerful. It is a truly righteous combination, flaming distortion, pounding drums, twanging reverb, all in service of a fantastic core song.

Her Sunday early evening Red Marquee set was one of these special band occasions, the kind of thick, raucous set the tent was made for. From the first song the set was nothing if not blistering and propulsive, the kind of set where you can almost feel the calories burning off the drummer and percussionist.

The Red Marquee was packed out to the street for this one, and it wasn’t hard to see why. It was a dynamic set, sometimes rocking hard, sometimes going bluesy or even folky, but always pushing forward. It was hard not to get swept up in it.

Now let’s all borrow some of this forward momentum and plow forth into the last night of the festival!