NXNE 2012: Les Breastfeeders @ The El Mocambo

SATURDAY - It was really late: two in the morning on the festival's Saturday night. Which means that we were pretty much as tired as we ever get. In fact, we lost two editors before Les Breastfeeders even went on. One made it all the way to the street outside the El Mo before reluctantly calling it a night. The other started nodding off inside the club before he headed home.

But when the francophone mod rockers finally hit the stage, it was all worth the wait. Theirs was quite possibly the most energetic set we saw all week: a boiling sea of garage hooks, '60s throwback and rock 'n' roll theatricality. The audience jumped and danced and bounced around at the front of the stage, one last sweaty mess before the festival was finished. An hour earlier, all we could think about was sleep. But when the show was finally over, it was all over too soon. And with it, the entire festival. There was nothing to do but head home to bed and wake up in the morning, sore, tired, and hungover.

So the audience just kept on cheering. We cheered and cheered until Les Breastfeeders came back out for that rarest of North By Northeast beasts: an encore. And for a few glorious, euphoric minutes, we could all pretend the festival was never going to end.

Text by Adam Bunch. Photos by Carmen Cheung.

You'll find all of our NXNE coverage here.

Adam Bunch is the Editor-in-Chief of the Little Red Umbrella and the creator of the Toronto Dreams Project. You can read his posts here, follow him on Twitter here, or email him at adam@littleredumbrella.com.