Gig: Heaven / Mean Red Spiders

Heaven / Mean Red Spiders

The Silver Dollar. Saturday, August 1, 2009.

At the end of a long day out that had started out down by the lakeshore watching the Caribana parade, headed to The Silver Dollar to catch one of Dan Burke's late-night specials. Definitely value for money, as I thought I was getting there with time to kill, but instead found that Woodward Company, a late addition to the bottom of the bill, were already near the end of their set. It seemed decent stuff, but I didn't really hear enough to form a strong opinion. Meanwhile, I cast my eyes around the nearly-empty Dollar, wondering where everybody was as I settled onto a stool in front of the bar.

Quarter after eleven, Mean Red Spiders took the stage. This is a band that got a raw deal, arguably. If you were making a map of Toronto Indie History, you might slot them in as the missing link between Trans Love Airways and Broken Social Scene. And whereas the latter became famous, exporting a certain kind of hazy, shoegaze-informed guitar rock to the world, MRS (and TLA, for that matter) were left relegated to "cult status". Write it off to bad timing, and missing the right world-historical moment because they were creating the underpinnings of that moment — and not any kind of lack of talent.¹

The band — moving from year-to-year with an ever-shifting lineup — certainly isn't looking backwards. With a paucity of banter (or even mentioning who they were) they launched into a powerful half-hour of swirling three-guitar rock, melodic at the centre, but full of interestingly jagged edges.² It took them a few minutes to get into their groove, but once they were there, it was powerful stuff, with a couple songs toward the end of the set stretching out with some nice instrumental action. Whether by design or a house sound that tends to bury vocals, Lisa Nighswander was rather buried in the mix, but with this style of music that's usually bearable. I can't say I know enough of their back catalog to say if they essayed anything from the past or were just working from what appears to be a forthcoming album, but this was really exciting stuff. At a time when we like to fall over ourselves praising the next and the next and the next band, it's incumbent on us not to forget to praise the artists who built the groundwork of our scene — and all the moreso when they're still putting on exciting and vital shows like this.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Also taking the stage without much in the way of banter or audience interaction was Heaven³, who I'd been hearing good things about for a few months and had on my list of bands to see at NXNE but managed to miss 'em. This young four-piece (drums, two guitars, vox and no bass) is working the more astringent/less dreamy end of the shoegaze spectrum, which implies that live'n'loud is probably the optimal way to hear 'em. Within the nearly empty bar, they were indeed cranked up and sending out harsh waves of sawtooth guitar noise that implied that they prefer to listen to the noisy middle of MBV tracks more than the poppy beginnings. Co-ed vox provided a structure to the songs, but not a lot to give you something to hum on the way home. A rigourous half-dozen songs in just over twenty minutes was a reasonably-sized portion to appreciate this band's merits. Good stuff.

Listen to a track from this set here.

K., who'd been out with friends for a swank dinner and drinks, had decided she rather needed more dank in her evening instead, and had joined me during the break before Heaven went on. After their set, I was considering my options for the rest of the night. I had largely come to see these two opening bands, and had no opinion either way on Religious Knives, the night's headliners. I was feeling a bit sleepy and considering whether I should bail and get started homeward while the subway was still running. Once Heaven was done and had broken down their gear, there was no-one else busying around to start setting up. In fact, the house lights went up part way, and, with the smokers out at the curb, the place was alarmingly empty. I asked K. if she'd be interested in ending the night with nachos at Sneaky Dee's, and before I was finished the sentence, she was already walking down College. So my night at the show ended there.⁴ Dunno where the long-weekend crowds were, but they were probably overpaying for their entertainment elsewhere.

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¹ This is undoubtedly a rather inadequate history lesson, going back to the local scene before I was really paying that much attention to it. If anyone knows of any resources that do a better job of situating MRS and their work, do let me know. Those innerested in this kind of thing might enjoy this Sarah Liss piece from 2002, which serves to remind us how much the ground has shifted from one end of the decade to the other:

Still, the Spiders insist that they remain fully committed to their shoe-gazer roots. I wonder if that’s what’s keeping them off most people’s radar. The sun has sorta set on the dream pop landscape. Sure, Toronto used to be shoe-gaze central — Italy’s Losing Today zine highlighted the T-dot as a North American hub and sponsored an eponymous Losing Today ethereal-rock fest.

But bands like My Bloody Valentine and Dinosaur Jr. — names that usually get tossed around in a discussion of Mean Red Spiders’ influences — have long since put away their effects pedals and called it a quits. Right now cool is neo-garage, revamped retro-rock like the Strokes and the Hives. So are the Spiders really making music that’s relevant today?

² To my delight, the instrumentation included a small keyboard — something not unlike the Realistic Concertmate that I own — left on its own on top of an amp, bits of masking tape holding down keys that one could hear quietly burbling away between songs.

³ I had a bear of a time finding my way to their Myspace, so I'll pass along that you can find it here. Perhaps not totally surprisingly, a brief sampling indicates that their live sound is a lot harsher/noisier than their studio tracks.

⁴ In fact, it turns out that the headliners were a no-show, which I didn't find out until after the fact, so it's good that we didn't bother sticking around any longer.