It’s been called “one of the world’s 25 best music festivals” by Acoustic Guitar magazine, and yet you’re just as likely to see two turntables and a microphone at the annual Hillside Festival. Devotees book their entire summer around it. The hottest musicians clamour to play it. This ain’t your parents’ folk festival. And it takes place in, er, Guelph.

The university hamlet has succeeded in pulling off a financially and artistically successful festival year after year where other cities (such as Toronto, with its doomed effort to keep the Mariposa Folk Festival going) have failed, relying on sheer people power and community spirit (over 1000 volunteers helped make the event possible this year). When was the last time you attended a festival where there was a dishwashing area for reusable containers, special recycling areas, and a solar-powered stage?

This year marked the 20th anniversary of the three-day celebration of music, spoken word and dance that takes place every year on the last weekend of July on Guelph Lake Island, boasting a lineup heavy on current buzz bands. The Varsity was there, and with tickets priced as low at $65 for the full three days, next year you should be too.

Friday, July 25

Sarah Harmer, mainstage – 9:30 p.m.

If there’s an artist that personifies Hillside, it’s Kingston singer-songwriter Sarah Harmer. While her sound is essentially steeped in folk and country, there’s enough of a nod to pop and rock to keep everyone happy. Having been holed away for the past several months making her forthcoming sophomore record (due in January), Harmer’s return to Hillside after a two-year absence was a triumphant one, with the Guelph Lake Island lawn packed beyond belief for her opening-night performance.

Backed by a four-piece band, Harmer used the hour-and-a-half set to try out a slate of beautiful new songs, including a few politically-tinged numbers, like the gentle acoustic-based “Dandelions and Bulletholes”. Of particular note were “Greeting Card Aisle”, with Harmer’s trademark pointed lyrics and soaring, keening vocals, and the uptempo brush-off “New Enemy” (“When you find yourself a new enemy/Can you take me down off the hook that you’ve been hanging me on?”). By the time she wound up her set with the lakeside nighttime ballad-turned-rocker “Lonestar”, she had everyone from small kids dancing on the grass to elderly couples utterly enthralled. A pastoral, perfect start to Hillside.

Saturday, July 26

Jason Collett, Lake Stage – 2:20 p.m.

The success of sprawling Toronto indie-rock crew Broken Social Scene has meant more attention for its various players, all hugely talented individuals in their own right, including singer-songwriter Jason Collett. Backed by members of BSS, Collett showcased his rootsy slice-of-life tunes to the full Lake Stage tent (joking that no one was going anywhere while it was still raining outside).

Collett’s urban cowboy persona is highly appealing, but it’s his remarkable songs that really stand out, dripping with tiny lyrical gems and scads of melody. With his BSS cohorts fleshing out the live arrangements with a clever bit of keyboards here (“Just Friends”) or a brilliant burst of drumming there (“Out Came the Sun”), it’s an unbeatable combination. While the set wasn’t as focused or well-played as Collett’s CD release in Toronto a few weeks earlier, it didn’t really matter- it was obvious Collett and Co. were having a good time on stage, and that warm vibe carried over into the crowd.

“Close to You” workshop, Island Stage – 4 p.m.

An integral part of Hillside is its unique workshop structure, where either like-minded acts or groups with completely opposing styles are thrown together under a loose theme and urged to simply jam. This can yield some of the most brilliant festival moments, and other times just utter wackiness.

The “Close To You” workshop sounded like an indie-rock lover’s wet dream on paper-Chris Brown leading members of The Dears, Metric, and Broken Social Scene in playing essentially whatever the heck they wanted. Well, no Dears turned up, Metric hung out backstage, Brown’s partner Kate Fenner showed up late, and poor Brown was left to shepherd the few members of BSS that showed up into playing a crazy freestyle version of the Carpenters’ “Close to You”-not once, but twice. Yikes. Sure, it sounded terrific, with BSS siren Leslie Feist trilling away and Brown busting out fat grooves on the Wurlitzer, but oh, what a mess. A beautiful, rambling mess to be sure, but a mess nonetheless.

It took BSS cohort Gentleman Reg and Brown and Fenner to salvage what was left of the set by playing some good songs of their own, but even those took a silly turn when Reg’s number was played twice by the band (“It’s tradition now!” laughed BSS guiatirist Kevin Drew), and Guelph music veteran Nick Craine jumped up on stage to interrupt Brown and Fenner’s tune with a short rant about the existence of God-or the lack thereof.

Those of us who were there still can’t decide if the workshop was a Hillside highlight or low point. Probably a bit of both.

Metric, Island Stage – 8 p.m.

If anyone was under any delusion that Hillside was a ‘folk festival’, those assumptions were nicely blown away by a solid dose of shiny ’80s pop/rock from Metric. Framed by the setting sun outside the Island Stage tent, mini-skirted singer Emily Haines strutted her way through a seriously sexy set of angular synth-based songs taken from their brand-new album, Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?

Now based in L.A., the Canadian duo of Haines and guitarist James Shaw (joined by a drummer and bassist live) have had their share of industry heartbreak (a completed album was never released when their indie label went under), but have obviously emerged stronger for it. Haines is clearly the focal point of the band, a Debbie Harry for the new era, shimmying like a robot girl while throwing her microphone over her shoulder to play keyboards. Her detached, cool vocals contrasted nicely with drummer Joules Scott-Key’s staccato beats and Shaw’s squall of guitar, a nice meld of pure pop and electro.

Nice to see yet another branch of the Broken Social Scene family tree (Haines and Shaw are longtime BSS friends and appear on their album) making killer music that’s innovative and fresh.

The Dears, mainstage – 9 p.m.

Montreal sextet The Dears are often a hit-or-miss proposition live, but faced with the daunting task of playing the penultimate slot on the mainstage before the Broken Social Scene army, they didn’t just live up to the undertaking, they made the most of it. The broody, over-the-top drama of their new No Cities Left disc cries out for the live treatment, and the band threw all of their weight into it, turning into a virtual pop orchestra.

Singer Murray Lightburn may not like to be compared to Morrissey, but it’s an apt reference, with his powerful pipes and penchant for theatrics. His duet with keyboardist Natalia Yanchak, “The Death of All the Romance”, despite its title, was light and spirited, the boy-girl vocals playing nicely off each other. At the opposite end of the spectrum, set-closer “Pinned Together, Falling Apart” is the Dears’ showstopper, with Lightburn howling out the chorus like a wounded animal. It’s seven minutes of sheer musical bravado that threw down the gauntlet for BSS to follow. They may be friends with The Dears, but that night, Lightburn wasn’t going to let his pals steal the show too easily.

Broken Social Scene, mainstage – 10 p.m.

With all the indie kids pressed against the stage and stretched out on the lawn as far as the eye could see, the end to Saturday night at Hillside had all the makings of a Major Event. Seeing as Broken Social Scene is the band equivalent of Hillside-a great big love-in musical community-having them cap off the key night at the 20th anniversary couldn’t have been more perfect. And this was a rare chance to witness the full BSS experience-though BSS has a core of about six or seven players, their ranks can swell to nearly triple that, and since nearly every single player from their You Forgot It In People disc somehow happened to be at Hillside this year, they corralled every last one of them onto the stage (swelling to over a dozen players on stage at the same time at one point) for a delirious indie-rock party.

It’s probably a good thing full-on BSS shows are few and far between, because by the time they had finished setting up, they were already 15 minutes late in starting, problematic because they had to wrap up by the strict 11 p.m. island curfew. They quickly made up for lost time, however, with players coming and going like a game of musical chairs until the set seemed more like a loose Hillside workshop than mainstage concert.

Guitarist Kevin Drew played ringleader, bantering with the crowd between songs and introducing guests as they appeared. Chris Brown enlisted in the large horn section, which blared gloriously on “Jimmy and the Photo Call”, Leslie Feist proved yet again why she is one of the best singers on the planet (look for a solo album to drop in the new year), taking a rockstar turn on “Almost Crimes” and the sublime new “Shoreline”, and crowd-pleaser “Anthems for a 17-year-old Girl” saw Emily Haines work her silvery vocals just as beautifully as she does on the album.

A place for everyone, and everything in its place. Music played with joy and wonder. Tremendous.

Sunday, July 27

Autorickshaw, mainstage – 1 p.m.

Hillside has always been about an open-minded approach to music, and artistic director Sam Baijal says he would like to see more acts in the festival in years to come that blend genres and sounds, much like Toronto band Autorickshaw, a quartet that splices traditional Indian music with Western jazz.

Under a grey sky that threatened to pour over at any moment, a game mid-sized crowd gathered on the mainstage lawn to listen to Suba Sankaran sing English and Hindi compositions set to jazzy keyboard melodies and bass-and-tabla rhythms. Tabla player Ed Hanley’s skilled playing was complemented by drummer Debashis Sinha’s almost breakbeat-like patterns and bassist Rich Brown’s rich low tones. Sankaran is the real star here, however, ever-smiling and gracious while playing pretty piano lines (some of her melodies recalled local songbird Sarah Slean’s early work) and working the entire scale like the trained jazz singer she is.

Emm Gryner, Lake Stage – 2 p.m.

Local indie gal Gryner may be living in Montreal now, but she’s still beloved by her Ontario fans, who turned out strong for her Hillside appearance, one of her few local shows this summer. Playing a strong set of lyrical pop culled mostly from her current Asianblue album, Gryner also threw in a few old gems from her other records, including radio hit “Summerlong” and “Good Riddance”.

But the real revelation here was her backing band of Toronto musicians who have finally gelled into a tight unit after an initially shaky start last year. Drummer Dean Stone is an intense force to be reckoned with, punching up the poppy tunes with a driving beat, while guitarist Jonny James and bassist Jordan Kern play well off each other and provide the occasional backing vocals.

After nearly a decade in the business, Gryner just gets better all the time. She’s not just a great singer, player and songwriter, she’s charming and at ease on stage, something far too many other singer-songwriters could do well to emulate. When a punter in the crowd complained about the sound near the back of the tent, Gryner didn’t miss a beat: “Maybe it’s just my songs. Maybe they sound a little crunchy today, a little crispy?” Poppy and punchy-it’s an unbeatable combo.

Chris Brown and Kate Fenner, Island Stage – 3 p.m.

CBC Radio host Bill Stunt introduced the Toronto ex-pat duo (now living in Brooklyn) by saying that their music was amongst his favourite of anything in the world, and they followed up such high praise by showing us why. Their dense, highly literate, politically-minded groove-pop was perfectly at home at Hillside, with a rapt crowd packed into the tent like sardines hanging on every note.

“Are they married?” asked a friend. Well, no, they’re not, but it’s easy to make that mistake when watching them on stage, because they’re so perfectly simpatico. Singer Kate Fenner’s sensuous growl melds beautifully with Chris Brown’s soulful organ riffs to create a unique sound wholly their own.

Brown and Fenner have spent a lifetime pursuing activism through their art, and it comes across in their music without seeming forced, sometimes a tricky balance to accomplish. Their response to the Iraq conflict, “Resist War”, has spread across the Internet since they released it online several months ago, and their stirring, heartfelt rendition at Hillside brought a huge cheer from the crowd mere notes into the song.

Though backed by some of Toronto’s most talented musicians, the best moments were between Brown and Fenner themselves, whether they were singing warm harmonies or needling each other between songs. At one point, Brown introduced a song by joking, “Since this is a folk festival and all,” only to be shot down by an audience member who yelled, “No, it isn’t – it’s a music festival!” To which Fenner replied, “Correction, thank you-music festival. Or a ‘folks’ festival.” Exactly.