At the Vogue Theatre on Saturday, November 9

It’s been a hell of a year for the Belle Game and Bear Mountain. The former released Ritual Tradition Habit, earning rave reviews (including a buzzworthy hat-tip from Pitchfork), while the latter signed with the respected Last Gang Records to reissue last year’s independent mini-LP XO. To cap it all off, the two bands sold out the Vogue Theatre for this co-headlining show. Not bad for a couple of local acts supporting their debut albums.

The venue released a few last-minute tickets on the day of the gig, but these were already gone by the time opener Dralms hit the stage. Fronted by seasoned solo songwriter Christopher Smith and featuring a couple of members of Siskiyou, the four-piece’s songs ranged from slow-burning pop-rock to heavy, synth-fried psychedelia. The tightly executed 20-minute set suggested that the band is one to watch out for in 2014.

The art-rock atmospherics continued with the night’s second opener, the Darcys. The Toronto outfit conjured up dense soundscapes, anchoring hazy guitars and keys with tightly wound, angular rhythms. Onlookers were politely attentive, but the combo’s Radiohead-esque textures didn’t seem to make much of an impression on the room. Frontman Jason Couse made a valiant attempt to win over the crowd with between-song pleasantries, but he admitted that the Darcys don’t have much of a following here in Vancouver, confessing, “We’ve been here a number of times, but I still don’t feel like we’re really friends.”

The front rows of seats had been removed prior to the show, leaving an open floor in front of the stage. This area filled up the moment the lights dimmed for Bear Mountain, as a mass of revellers descended in anticipation of the band’s danceable party anthems. The four-piece combined live instrumentation with electronic textures and chopped-up vocals culled from laptops and samplers. Singing was handled by lanky bassist Ian Bevis, who dominated the stage, hyping up the audience while showing off some endearingly awkward moves.

The true charmer, however, was Kenji Rodriguez, who bobbed around exuberantly while clutching a red keytar and handling on-the-fly visuals. These awesomely abstract animations were projected onto a large geometric pattern hanging at the back of the stage, while bright colours flashed on four small triangular screens.

The party picked up stream as it went along, and the group punctuated a string of cuts from XO with repeated blasts of confetti. During “Two Step”, Bevis encouraged fans to jump on their friends’ shoulders, and well over a dozen folks obliged. One song later, they brought out the Belle Game’s Marcus Abramzik to handle bass during a juiced-up, techno-spiked cover of Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”.

Even though Bear Mountain wasn’t the final act of the night, the faithful demanded an encore, and the musicians returned to the stage with yet another explosion of confetti. They were clearly touched by the adoring response, and following the joyous “Sing”, they asked that the house lights be turned on in order to take a photo of the cheering crowd.

After this stunning display, it would have been impossible for the Belle Game to top Bear Mountain’s celebratory spirit, so it wisely didn’t attempt to keep the party going. Instead, the six-piece set an entirely different mood, arriving with the spooky ambient tones of “Tradition”. The players were clad almost entirely in black, and they reinforced the shadowy atmosphere with eerily flickering black and white projections on the large screen at the back of the stage. This complemented darkly dramatic Ritual Tradition Habit tracks like “Blame Fiction”, which was beefed up with jagged shards of guitar distortion, and the climactically waltzing “Little Wars (Causing Your Trouble).”

The Belle Game didn’t say much between songs; at one point, guitarist Adam Nanji seemed ready to launch into a thank-you speech, but instead offered, “I don’t have anything good to say.” Instead, the ensemble let the tunes do the talking, with frontwoman Andrea Lo’s voice sounding particularly angelic during a cinematically swooning new number.

To round out the main part of the set, the members of Bear Mountain came out on-stage to join in during a percussive rendition of the bouncy soul-pop single “Wait Up for You”, which culminated in an uncharacteristically uplifting jam with fiery six-string interplay and spaced-out synth swirls.

By this point it was a little after midnight and the throng had thinned out a bit, but there were still plenty of folks on hand to enthusiastically cheer for an encore. This turned out to be a rousing cover of Nirvana’s “All Apologies”, which inspired arm waving and an exultant sing-along. So maybe the Belle Game has the potential to become a party band after all—all it needs to do from here is borrow Bear Mountain’s confetti cannon.