The other Osheaga Headliners - Hank Pine and Lily Fawn

Osheaga, 10 pm: The bulk of the festival-goers were making a beeline from the instrumental music-box-meets-jack-in-the-box set of Explosions in the Sky, to the rock-is-dead wailings of Billy Corgan and the Smashing Pumpkins.

But a few of us were drawn off the beaten track towards the Tree Stage, where we sat cross-legged like children at story-time, facing a welcoming red-velvet curtain and a sign that read “The Hank and Lily Show“

“Don’t be afraid” Lily sang as she took the stage. “Don’t be afraid…until I tell you that you ought to be afraid.”

Let me enumerate the reasons that we may have be tempted to feel afraid: Hank is a leather-clad, post-apocalyptic raptor and Lily, despite her cuteness and child-like voice is sporting horns, wearing Tim-Burton tights, tap-dancing shoes, and playing the saw. The drummer is a wolf, and frankly, she looked possessed.

Darkness, rustling breeze and swaying trees were the perfect setting for this act. After all, they go by the names Hank Pine and Lily Fawn, and their backup musicians are a wolf, a bear and a zebra. But Pine and Fawn aren’t only creatures of the woods, they are also the terms of twisted love affairs.

Hank and Lily’s music is murderous and carnivalistic and dances a a razor-fine line between gloom and glitter. It’s music that makes a marionette of you.

Also intriguing, Hank and Lily have a comic-book series - one of the songs they performed last night was a tribute to their co-comic-book character, Alligator Boy, who couldn’t make the flight from Victoria BC to join them in Montreal. I feel like I could spend days just immersing myself in the strange world of Hank and Lily.

I definitely plan to catch them again at Grumpy’s on Monday. Come see them. Don’t miss this show. And somebody, please, take these guys to the top.