Recording: Postcards

Artist: Postcards

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at Rancho Relaxo, November 6, 2009.

My notes from this set can be found here.

^* Does anyone know the title of this one? Please leave a comment!

Recording: The Hoa Hoa's

Artist: The Hoa Hoa's

Song: "New Song"^*

Recorded at Rancho Relaxo, November 6, 2009.

My notes from this set can be found here.

^* According to my source, this was so listed on the band's setlist. Anyone got any more info, or possibly a title?

Recording: Volcano

Artist: Volcano

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at Rancho Relaxo, November 6, 2009.

My notes from this set can be found here.

^* Does anyone know the title of this one? Please leave a comment!

Gig: Postcards

Postcards (The Hoa Hoa's / Volcano)

Rancho Relaxo. Friday, November 6, 2009.

Went down to Cinematheque to see Chris Marker's masterful Sans Soleil, a film that I had no means to categorize until it was included in this series on "The Essay Film". Consisting of documentary-style footage accompanying a voice reading a series of letters, the film is, in fact, a meticulous fiction — the mysterious author of the letters read on the screen is a creation of the director, and the vortex of images and text are carefully constructed to decenter any attempts to pin down what the film is actually about. Arguably, it's a deconstruction of how we make and use memory, although I've always thought it also had something to do with examining the boundaries between magic and associative logic.

Having seen the film before¹ I was mostly going in to soak in the heady rush of the whole thing. I brought along some Thinking Juice² to help me maintain my relaxed state of mind. Jean-Paul Gorin, film-maker, scholar, and the originator of the programme was in attendance to introduce the film and talk about it afterwards. Gorin wore a dashing scarf and had a propensity to speak in scaffold-like paragraphs of mounting ideas, only to perpetually undercut himself — shrugging and asking, 'can we really know this is the point?'.

As the closing credits rolled, Gorin stood up in his seat and roared, "I don't want to talk!", mounting the stage and proceeding to discuss the film anyways. Bursting into his monologue, one young gentleman seemed eager to show off his learnin' and match wits with Gorin, asking, "so, the film is a deconstruction of how we make and use memory, right?" And Gorin immediately cut him down, replying, "no, no! If that's all it were, we could have all fucked off five minutes ago." And batting down each subsequent riposte from the guy. After that, when any questioner made some sort of statement as to what the film was about, Gorin would reply with a yes-but-no sort of response, as if the only epistemological geometry appropriate for the film was a spaghetti tangle of Möbius strips being eaten by an Ouroboros. Which isn't to say he was terse or merely contradictory — various enquiries would lead to stories and amusing tangents and, ultimately, his verbal legerdemain probably was the most appropriate way to consider this work. But when one woman near the back prefaced her question by praising Gorin to the skies, he looked over to where his testy interlocutor had been sitting — he and his companion had fled a couple questions after his smackdown — and muttered, sotto voce, "motherfucker left already." It was vaguely weird, mildly awkward and immensely entertaining.

After this rhizomatic mindbender, I hit the street, unsure of what I was going to do with myself. All things considered, I hadn't particularly planned on heading to a gig — I'd been mildly sleepy and there was nothing fully demanding my attendance. But I was filled with a sort of undemanding mindfulness, everything under the streetlights vibrating and seeming-to-be a bit more than usual. I walked over to Spadina and up, wondering if I should hop on streetcar and just go home when I spotted a Lucky Cat inside a restaurant window wink at me. What the hell, I figured, why not some rock'n'roll?³

So, I made over to Rancho and up the stairs with just a few minutes to spare before things got underway. Enough time to grab a drink and introduce myself to Bobby B., consistently astute observer of things musical, who also happened to have slipped The Hoa Hoa's on his Hottest Canadian Bands ballot.

Soon enough openers Volcano took the stage. This relatively-new local foursome played a short set of swelling, somewhat psychedelic slowburners. The band possessed the assuredness to let the songs unspool at an unhurried pace — two of their five songs stretching over six minutes⁴ — and to let the tension build without resorting to over-the-top freak-outs. Given that sonic attitude, some might say that the band's name has been misgiven, as one thing they don't do is erupt. But volcanoes (and Volcano) do rumble a lot, and you'd best keep one one on 'em, just in case they do explode.

Listen to a track from this set here.

It's possible that at some point familiarity will begin to breed discontent, but for the moment I have experienced no diminishing returns with frequent exposure to The Hoa Hoa's. Perhaps helped by the fact that they just seem to cause a happening whenever they play — as they took the stage a fairly quiet room was suddenly brought to life with friends and fellow members of the Optical Sounds family suddenly filling the floor. The set opened with "Hey Joe" — not that one, an original⁵ — followed by "Thinking About Today", a cover by Nederbeat cult heroes The Outsiders, and a rocking run through new album opener "Postcards". The band was playing so powerfully that it seemed for a moment like they might overwhelm the room's sound system, the song ending with a cloud of static-y crackling emerging from the speakers. The set even ended with a new one playing a bit against type with a crafty death disco keyb part from Richard Gibson — and ended with a flat-out rocking version of frequent set-closer "Blue Acid Gumball" in the vein of what fans of The Clean might recognize as "the speedfreak sound". Speaking of rhizomatic mindbenders, The Hoa Hoa's are fully capable of altering your perception on any given night. The band are celebrating the release of their new album on Friday, December 4 at The Silver Dollar, and it is most assuredly not to be missed.⁶

Listen to a track from this set here.

Though that was pretty much everything I'd come out for, decided to stick around to check out Montréal's Postcards. The four-piece played a lean sort of reverb-heavy rock bringing to mind a sort of northern British '80's feel. After the fullness of the previous set's sound, it took a bit of a perceptual shift to adjust to the spare thinness that the Postcards were working within — like going from lush Technicolor to overexposed black-and-white. After a few songs I started to think there was something here that I just wasn't getting, although I appeared to be in the minority — Lee from The Hoa Hoa's, for example, was joyfully shuffling around the room, grooving to the sounds. Eventually I managed to get into them a bit and dig a few of their songs. I think it helped that the band managed to gain a bit of strength as they went along, moving forward from the plodding plunk-plunk-plunk with which they begun their set. Plus there was some undeniable tunefulness at play. Not a slam-dunk of a set, but I'd say it ended up on the positive side of the ledger.

Listen to a track from this set here.

There was one more band on the night's line-up — local crew Easy Targets — but I was feeling about done and decided to head out before I started getting too sleepy. But all told, a very fine lineup.

---

¹ The Toronto Public Library has the Criterion DVD. I highly recommend it.

² Let's just say — purely theoretically, just for the sake of argument — that the main ingredients were Orangina and Southern Comfort. Just to give a f'rinstance.

³ Oh, hey — speaking of crazy rock'n'roll times down at the Cinematheque, I note that there's a free screening of Guy Debord's In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni on Thursday, December 5. If you're like me, you might've heard of this flick from Greil Marcus' essential rock tome Lipstick Traces. Otherwise, might be worth it for anyone with an interest in Situationism, contemporary French social theory, palindromes, or crazy experimental movies. I'll see you there, I'm sure — B.Y.O.T.J. (bring yr own Thinking Juice).

⁴ And it's no slight against Chris Hobson's vox and lyrics to say that the highlight of the set was an instrumental where he exchanged guit for keybs and just let things roll along for a good few minutes.

⁵ Conceptually at least, this would go well on a mixtape next to Girls' recent "Lust For Life".

⁶ I got my mitts on a copy of Pop/Drone/Pedals and it's pretty fabulous stuff, so all the more reason to head down and grab a copy.

Recording: Dog Day

Artist: Dog Day

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at The Horseshoe Tavern, November 5, 2009.

My notes for this set can be found here.

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!

Recording: Immaculate Machine

Artist: Immaculate Machine

Song: Only Love You For Your Car

Recorded at The Horseshoe Tavern, November 5, 2009.

My notes for this set can be found here.

Recording: The Balconies

Artist: The Balconies

Song: 300 Pages

Recorded at The Horseshoe Tavern, November 5, 2009.

My notes for this set can be found here.

Gig: Dog Day

Dog Day / Immaculate Machine / The Balconies

The Horseshoe Tavern. Thursday, November 5, 2009.

Sometimes, you're interested in seeing a band live, but not quite interested enough to go see them. But when you throw a couple bands like together at once, it might be enough to tip the balance. As far as I could tell, Dog Day and Immaculate Machine weren't actually on tour together so much as they both happened to hit T.O. on the same night, and while I've been casually interested in both for awhile, I'd never investigated either too closely. So, a good opportunity.

Plus, truth be told, I was also here as much as anything to check out openers The Balconies (via Ottawa, now local) who have been accumulating some statospheric word-of-mouth over the past few months. Fairly warranted, as it would turn out — this new-wave trio gives the impression of being quite good now and of being on the cusp of more. With two lead vocalists in Jacquie Neville (guit) and Stephen Neville (bass), they sometimes sounded a bit like two separate bands, although perpendicularly complementary ones. Each vocalist approached a distinctly '80's vibe from a different direction: Jacquie a bit more pop, Stephen more college rock — kinda a "you put chocolate in my peanut butter!" admixture of Laura Branigan and The dB's.¹ Both are capable singers, although Jacquie has the more immediately compelling vox.² But when they put their voices together, such as on "Lulu", interesting things started to happen.

The set started with an almost-unaccompanied vocal from Jacquie before the twitchy, new-wave beat kicked in. She turned out be a rather crafty guit player, sometimes sounding like a more user-friendly Keith Levine, while Stephen played a fluid bass, sometimes verging on the too-funky. But their various combinations of smoothness and grit plus their dedication to catchy bite-sized tunes serves them well, and they managed a quickly-moving, dud-free forty minute set. A band to keep your eye out for.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Even without the Kathryn Calder connection, it's pretty tempting to compare Immaculate Machine to The New Pornographers. Both could be described as left-coast bands under the leadership of a singer with penchant for complicating 70's AM pop and a belief in female backing vocals as an all-powerful curative. And while it might be unfair at some level to compare Brooke Gallupe to Carl Newman, given that each is pursuing a different sort of vision, a casual listener trying to decide what is worth listening to might simply shrug his shoulders and conclude that Gallupe is no Carl Newman.

This is admittedly, more or less where I had stood with this band, having sampled '07's Fables album and not having found it especially memorable. But I was certainly willing to see what they could being live.³ They opened with a trio from this year's High on Jackson Hill, which formed the core of the setlist — "Only Love You for Your Car" being particularly appealing. "C'mon Sea Legs" hit that sweet point of perfect backing vox, suggesting that maybe I should give Fables another spin. The quiet "And it Was" was followed up by the disco-beat of "Sound the Alarms", showing the range of sounds that can comfortably exist under their umbrella. Gallupe was also a fine banterer, recounting stories about living in Victoria and visiting an apartment in Hamburg that The Beatles lived in. Not every song did it for me, but I found some more respect for the band than I had coming in.

Listen to a track from this set here.

I must confess: I have an ongoing problem where I'll often intractably confuse and conflate pairs of bands that I first hear about at roughly at the same time, even if they have roughly nothing to do with each other.⁴ So, for a couple years, I kept getting Dog Day mixed up with Two Hours Traffic, despite the fact that, east-coat origins aside, they have nothing to do with each other. And the fact that I've found Two Hours Traffic to be vaguely pleasant but not worth thinking about meant that I'd also dismissed his Halifax combo without particularly meaning to. Anyways, once I managed to recognize that the aggressive post-punk band that people were praising was, in fact, Dog Day, I made a mental note I wanted to check 'em out.

The four-piece offers a strong visual counterpoint as its focus, with the lanky guitarist/vocalist Seth Smith bouncing lines off pint-sized bassist Nancy Urich, who was a compelling musical foil throughout. Their musical styles mirrored their appearance, with her plucky, tenacious basslines nudging along Smith's guitar work. Underneath it all was Crystal Thili's keybs, never drawing attention to themselves, but keeping everything grounded. The band also had a new drummer in tow, propelling the songs forward with an unfussy, hard-hitting rhythmical sense.

One song brought to mind Eric's Trip, or, perhaps, even more, Rick White's Elevator work before it got all psychedelic — which made sense when at the end of the track Smith commented that it was from a new EP that had, in fact, been produced by White. But that sort of animated/sluggish post-punk is where the band was pitching itself. The band was apparently largely doing material from their new album Concentration, which seems to be less well-loved by some of the more longstanding fans in attendance — "Love Makes It Mad" from their first EP drew the loudest cheers of the night, and afterwards, I heard some guys on their way out lamenting beloved older tunes left unplayed. Myself, I have no basis of comparison, but I like what I heard. The main set ended with Smith and Urich grinding guit and bass together in a string-on-string shoving match before the band came out for one last one, explaining that they couldn't fill most of the requests for old stuff, as the new line-up only had so many songs down. Forty-five minutes that didn't blow my mind but certainly left me with the impression that this was the sort of thing I like.

Listen to a track from this set here.

---

¹ It's hard to know if the kids today — who have had access to monumental amounts of music that I never could have imagined coming into contact with at that age — actually did come into contact with the things I'm hearing, or if it's something else, or if they just came into it independently.

² Drummer Liam Jaeger also offered some credible vox, offering plenty opportunities for some inneresting vocal layering.

³ In a revealing sign of the times that we live in, the members of the band were spotted passing around a bottle of hand sanitizer between setting up their gear and starting their set. Which actually makes enormous sense — pandemic worries aside, can you think of many working environments that are filthier and more pawed by gawd-knows-who than a bar's concert stage?

⁴ Privately, I think of this as the Shout Out Out Out/You Say party! We Say Die! dilemma, as no matter what I do, I keep getting those two bands mixed up. At any given time, I'm often unable to even remember the name of one or the other, so I can't even clearly express who I'm mixing them up with.

Recording: Give Us The Daggers

Artist: Give Us The Daggers

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at The Horseshoe Tavern, November 3, 2009.

My notes for this set can be found here.

^* The straightforward guess here would be that this one is called "False Hope". Can anybody confirm that?

Recording: Ume

Artist: Ume

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at The Horseshoe Tavern, November 3, 2009.

My notes for this set can be found here.

^* I picked up both the album and the new EP at the show but haven't tackled 'em yet. Can anyone help out with the title to this one?

Gig: Ume

Ume (Patrick Lee / Give Us the Daggers)

The Horseshoe. Tuesday, November 3, 2009.

I'm not a regular denizen at the free Tuesday night shows at The 'Shoe — really, I only tend to end up there on "special" nights where a bigger-than-usual special guest shows up. The billing is usually sort of a mixed bag of diverse up-and-comers, thrown together without undue consideration for thematic unity, so you can either plan just to show up for the band you're interested in and not worry so much about missing out on something, or you can show up early and see if something randomly takes you by surprise.

I didn't have anything particularly interesting going on, so I figured I'd take the latter course, getting to a quiet venue an hour before I needed to. Patrick Lee, a NY songwriter and, apparently, frontman of The Scaters (pronounced "scatters") came on stage a bit after I'd arrived on the scene. No clue who he was, but I was willing to listen up. Playing solo acoustic with his stripped-down lyrical sentiments, I thought maybe at first Lee was going in a Johnathon Richman sort of direction. But there was a weird tang to his music. "This is sort of an alternative dance, but with a bluesy feel to it," he said, introducing his second song. "It's called 'Rhythm of Life'". Uh oh. When he sang, "Get up to your feet / let's dance to the beat", I started to become convinced that this was some sort of conceptual put-on, that he was making some sort of meta-commentary about trite lyrics and the pop process. So I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And waiting. After the song about dancing and some awkward attempts at ingratiating banter, we got one about partying ("party, party / let's party") and it clicked in my head: maybe this guy isn't sending up trite music — he's trying to break into the trite mersh market. Which he later confirmed, saying, "the next song is a hit in my hometown, and I just brought it to CHUM-FM. It's called 'Love Will Lead the Way'" which was about as substantive as the title indicated ("Love will lead the way / back home to you"). Really not my cup of tea, and even at the end I was sorta looking over my shoulder if we were all somehow being punk'd.

When I saw Ume at NXNE, I noted that I'd love to see them in a room with a more powerful sound system than at Neutral Lounge. So it was most pleasing to see them listed for this gig at the 'Shoe, and for free when I'd've been willing to shell out. Although it had been pretty dead in there from when I arrived, like clockwork it suddenly filled in pretty well at 10:45 with the band due to hit the stage. Out promoting the domestic release of their major-label distributed Sunshower EP, the Austin-based trio brought their store of Sonic Youth-y shredders to an enthusiastic crowd. Vocalist/guitarist Lauren Langer Larson is the focal point here, with her phenomenal fretwork imparted with flying-hair physicality. The rhythm section of Eric Larson and Jeff Barrera do a fabulous job of creating the solid ground for the guitar heroics, though they tend to keep a bit too much out of the limelight, remaining quiet between songs while guitars are being exchanged and so on. But while the music is playing, this is totally engaging stuff, with the right balance of hooks and abrasive energy. Patiently building up their profile, there should be a tidy crowd out when Ume get back for a gig where the locals'll have to actually have to buy a ticket just to see 'em.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Tipped to the possibility of some high-quality freeness, K.'d dropped by to see Ume and was now settled in to hang out as local combo Give Us The Daggers got set up. Having some company, I decided to stick around. The beer bottle holder on the bassist's microphone stand was the first indication of where the band was coming from, and when they took the stage with leather and snarls, there was no doubt that they were trying to impart the idea that they're streetwalking cheetahs with hearts full of napalm. The band appears to have crawled, spitting and snarling like rangy tomcats, from the evolutionary sludge that has given us the distinguished rock'n'roll lineage stretching from Brian Jones to Johnny Thunders. So — arguably not concerned with pushing the envelope so much as facilitating a scuzzy good time. True to their forefathers, the band started off loose but under control and managed to unwind like a drunk with a yoyo, ending their set in semi-shambolic fashion. As all of this might indicate, the band was rather entertaining — some of the tunes were decent, too, though they didn't stick with me as much as the attitude.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Recording: Noah and the Whale

Artist: Noah and the Whale

Song: Love of an Orchestra

Recorded at Criminal Records, October 31, 2009.

My notes for this show can be found here.

In-store: Noah and the Whale

Noah and the Whale

Criminal Records. Saturday, October 31, 2009.

Turned onto Queen Street just a few minutes before the noon start time for this one to find a small queue outside Criminal Records, the doors still closed and the tour bus looming parallel along the curb. So wait for a few minutes, listening to the young women behind me in the line arguing back and forth whether or not the one of them had said last summer that the first Noah and the Whale album was one of her favourites, of, like, ever. Not a dilemma for myself — truth be told, I'd not heard any of their music, and was here on spec. Well, that, plus it was more or less a side-stop on the way to an early matinée, otherwise I'd probably not have bothered.

A bit past the top of the hour, the door opened and the crowd filed in — a good sized showing, filling the space up pretty well. Once the five players had filed in from their bus, we were all urged to sit down to allow everyone a view — which was quite fine by me and ultimately fit the vibe. The band looked a little groggy, but that seemed to fit, too, with leader Charlie Fink singing, "this is a song for anyone who can't get out of bed," on their opener "Blue Skies"¹ — and making it feel immediately autobiographical. Gentle, goes-down-easy folk-pop with a heaping side order of mope seemed to be their m.o., and it was all pleasant enough. Don't know how much louder and rougher they bring it when rocking out, but for this appearance they came across like a band that the girls could take home to mother.

Four songs in twenty minutes, and they did manage to build up a bit of a head of steam by "Love of an Orchestra", the final selection. "Are any of you guys coming to the show tonight?" Fink asked, and a few clapped, though certainly a goodly proportion of this crowd wouldn't be of age for it. Myself, I didn't depart feeling like I'd be missing something be being elsewhere on the evening, but it was a pleasant-enough early afternoon diversion.

Listen to a track from this performance here.

---

¹ Um, an original — not related to the Irving Berlin number.

Recording: Cro-Mags

Artist: Cro-Mags

Song: We Gotta Know

Recorded at Kathedral, October 30, 2009.

My notes for this gig can be found here.

Recording: Fucked Up

Artist: Fucked Up

Song: Crusades

Recorded at Kathedral, October 30, 2009.

My notes for this gig can be found here.