Last winter, Sam Coll felt the cold start to get to him. Between days working as a web developer, a position he called “a job of convenience, not so much of passion,” he was playing in the local post-punk band Aversions. Music was what gave Coll “energy and meaning,” but with the annual dip in programming that accompanies winter in the independent scene, gigs were getting scarce.
“There are a couple of options [for getting booked in the winter],” Coll said, “but for a smaller band, especially one that makes music that can be challenging, we felt that there was a hole that needed to be filled.”
Coll’s fiancée, Zoë Gallagher, was on board when he pitched her his idea to start up a winter festival. A graduate of UBC’s master’s in zoology program teaching biology at Vancouver College, Gallagher had been involved in the independent scene since her college days, but only ever from the audience. Now, Coll and Gallagher, along with a crew of other musicians and scene regulars, set themselves the daunting task of organizing two full days of music festival programming in just a couple months. They called it Unreal City.
After a frantic but narrowly successful first season and a full year of planning for the next, Unreal City Festival is now in its second year with three nights of live music at the Rickshaw and Russian Hall on Jan. 15, 16 and 17. Though they’ve added a third day, expanded the festival to feature local vendors and upped the number of artists from 14 to 27, Coll said the core organizing team hasn’t expanded much. Outside the addition of “a couple of key volunteers who joined,” he said, “the project is still driven by such a small handful of people.”
Despite the small size of the Unreal City Society — the non-profit Coll set up for the festival after its first year — the scale of the festival’s offerings are impressive. While not on the level of some of Vancouver’s larger summer festivals or the Alberta winter festivals that Coll said inspired Unreal City, putting together three days worth of bands, food, vendors and tattoo artists in a season when the days are short and the grants are scarce is no easy feat. On top of that, Coll and Sol Koffman, another Unreal City organizer, took it on themselves to write short, Sled Island-inspired descriptions of every artist playing the festival. These blurbs, available on the festival’s website, are evocative and accurate, as good a who’s-who as any you’ll find in a music magazine.
Unreal City 2026’s opening night at the Rickshaw on Jan. 15 was a five-act show featuring a lineup of punk and shoegaze bands. It was a change of scene for the festival, which was previously held exclusively in the Strathcona Russian Hall. The new venue was a mixed bag. Extensive sound and lights systems lent the performers some gravitas, but the Rickshaw’s size, combined with a subdued Thursday crowd, made the first night of Unreal City feel, for the most part, like just another show. Coll agreed that though the Rickshaw team was “great to work with … it [wasn’t] a hand-in-glove fit.”
“In trapping everyone in the Russian Hall for a couple of hours, you almost force this summer camp-esque vibe,” said Gallagher. That was mostly absent at the Rickshaw, but the venue felt right for hosting some of the festival’s heavier acts. Disruptions opened the night with a noise rock set — drums, bass and guitar supplemented with vocals and a soundboard. Dusknote followed up with funky, rhythmic indie pop which was at its best during impressive, fast-paced instrumentals. Frontperson Adam Parant’s vocals were less dexterous than his guitar, maintaining a mid-range chest voice throughout that got the job done but never surprised.
The latest EP from The Hausplants, Into Equilibrium, might have brought listeners to Unreal City expecting precise indie rock in the vein of Alvvays or The Strokes. It’s true, guitarist Amir Alav has the chops for that genre’s quick lead/rhythm switchups, but The Hausplants truly shine when the looser feel of the live setting forces them into more ambient, sustained territory. With drummer Sondor Mendbayar keeping up the momentum and Alav laying down slow beds of distorted guitar between riffs, frontperson Anna Zeleny was free to put their all into long, languishing vocals overtop of impressive baselines.
Hillsboro frontperson Nima Walker was as comfortable with a guitar in hand as they were choked up on the mic wailing screamo vocals. They were backed by bass, drums, guitar and an electric violin, which alternately added to the band’s walls of noise or soared above them. Four-piece alt-rock punk band By A Thread closed out Unreal City’s first night at the Rickshaw.
Unreal City felt at home back in the Russian Hall on the final night. Tattoo artists worked in an annex while vendors sold food and crafts in the basement. Quieter acoustic acts performed alongside the vendors among standing tables and couches, creating an open-mic café atmosphere.
Bronze Medals were a highlight of the night. Backed up by heavy, crashing loops from bass, guitar and drums, the band’s saxophonist alternated between screeching wails and meandering runs that gave an otherwise repetitive sound some texture. At a festival like Unreal City with other attractions competing for attention, an instrumental set runs the risk of losing the audience, but Bronze Medals pulled it off. After a catchy, melodic set from grunge-pop band Buddies and a wave of dense psych-rock from Wack, Devours’s Jeff Cancade brought Unreal City home with the electronic dance-punk that he’s made a staple of the local independent scene.
Unreal City managed to just about break even for the second time — a relief for Coll, since the festival is funded mostly out of pocket — but the team isn't resting on success. Looking towards 2027, they hope to make changes and refinements without compromising the community-oriented character of Unreal City. “We’ll be very protective of that,” said Coll.
