At various venues on Friday, June 7

While in the end everything turned out okay, the Thursday-night opener of this year's Music Waste Festival faced a couple of close calls. The hopefully temporary lockdown of the Zoo Zhop's concert stage by the fire inspector, for instance, left organizers rebooking an entire evening's worth of programming in the basement of Electric Owl at the last minute. While that problem had been solved, over at the Anza Club a neighbourhood power outage threatened to call the show off before it even began; miraculously, the lights went back on about 15 minutes before the scheduled start time. 

Thankfully, the biggest issue with the Friday night installment of the annual DIY event was simply choosing which band to see. Upping the ante from the previous night's two-venue program, Friday offered eight concerts and roughly 30 acts to choose from—this on top of the related comedy and art parties running concurrently across the city. A first-world problem, to be sure, but one that likely left a lot of local music fans scratching their heads over where to go first.

Daylight still poured in through the windows of East Van's Artbank as Jay Arner and his backup band jumped into a pleasant, if timid, preview of his upcoming solo LP. Beneath the watchful gaze of a stoic, stuffed chocolate Lab perched on the PA, a steady trickle of patrons pushed into the tiny gallery space to see the quintet run through hazy new-wave cuts like "Midnight on South Granville" and the feathery, Phoenix-styled lite funk of "Nightclubs". The marquee musician complained of sounding congested, but seasonal allergies or not, his airy falsetto ran heavenly throughout the set.

Despite the New Values hopping on-stage over at Electric Owl nearly a half hour after their scheduled 9 p.m. arrival time, bassist Hayz Fisher displayed good old-fashioned manners by helping reset the mikes surrounding drummer Ryan Betts's kit, which had been knocked loose by the percussionist's punky pummelling. Betts also offered up slices of pizza to the few that had flocked to the front of the stage, in case they hadn't been totally sold by the Hüsker Dü–appreciating arrangements of "Kennedy Shuffle" and "Live or die".

Lanalou's played host to the first ever performance from similarly scrappy hardcore crew Stress Eating, with mixed results. After running through an awkward a capella tribute to P. Diddy's "Bad Boy for Life", the group lunged into a series of primal blasts that more often than not came apart at the seams. At least, it appeared that way—the cavernous echo, slathered onto Matt Watkins's  unsure screams, overpowering the bulk of the outfit's activity.

Mi'ens, meanwhile, delivered a well-defined postrock set down at the Cobalt that had guitarist Kim Glennie gleefully laying down  a complex series of polyrhythmic guitar loops. The performance likewise threatened to unravel when the musician's mike stand accidentally swung away from her during the finale, but a do-gooder hopped on the high-up stage to help Mi'ens get through the song right proper.

Dead Again's Occultus Lake is a terrifying beast of an LP, so it seemed strange to see horror-movie-obsessed frontman Cole Benoit relatively composed as he growled at a sparsely attended gig at the Rickshaw Theatre. Then again, Norman Bates was a mostly polite individual, so maybe it made sense that Benoit chose to primly pace the stage between death rattles rather than go full-on psycho. The band, however, did its best to mangle the crowd with slice-and-dice thrasher "The Lament Configuration" and the doomy and distorted dirge, "Occultus Lake".

Lesser Pissers served up the strangest stage show of the night at an even more abysmally attended Napkin Records showcase at Pat's Pub. That's a damn shame, as the unit's full-throttle performance was a sight to behold. Surging with uncomfortable energy, singer Max Zaitlin cradled either a beer or a Bible throughout the set, the latter leading him to grunt in tongues atop pep-pill-popping garage punk melodies. As if in a trance, Zaitlin wandered away from his bandmates late in the performance, only to be coaxed back to run through the punchy "Watery Eyes". Guitarist Ben Beckett seemed to get increasingly agitated by the vocalist, and when the frontman sidled off-stage again, the six-stringer capped the song by shouting out a cryptic message of his own: "Never again."

Adding to the zaniness seen on-stage were the handful of overzealous fans who sang along with the group while giving each other piggybacks and tummy kisses.  Lest you though Zaitlin was taking the piss with all God talk, the vocalist continued his sermon from Pat's parking lot.

The Courtneys, meanwhile, made disciples out of the crowd at their headlining gig in a near-capacity Astoria. The trio were in good spirits, celebrating not only the same-day release of their new self-titled LP, but the birthday of glitzy tiara-sporting drummer-vocalist Jen Twynn Payne. Depending on which member you ask, the fresh-faced, four-on-the-floor favouring skinshitter is either 16 or 27.

A steady buzz has been building around the act, and with powerfully poppy cuts like "90210" and "Nu Sundae" in its arsenal, it's not hard to see why. Though standout "Manion" threatens to slit the wrists of indie sensations, the band is poised to get a lot of love outside of the Vancouver scene.

With members of Freak Heat Waves spotted wandering through the sardine-packed scene at the Astoria, it was clear that it'd be some time before its late-night set got underway at Rainbow Connection. But, if by chance you couldn't handle another minute of music, there wasn't anything to worry about. As Courtneys bassist Sydney Koke had pointed out on-stage just moments before, there were still two more days to get totally wasted.