Gig: The Flowers Of Hell

The Flowers Of Hell (The Hoa Hoa's / Ostrich Tuning)

The Garrison. Saturday, April 10, 2010.

It's funny how trips to venues sometimes just come in clumps. After a bunch of shows at The Garrison, I hadn't been in awhile, so it was a surprise to see the pool table cleared away and the bathrooms under construction, leading to a succession of confused patrons heading back from that direction. The occasion was a night put on by Optical Sounds, and once again General Chaos was employing the swirling visual backdrops.

Leading things off was Ostrich Tuning, for whom I'd definitely fallen when I'd first caught them back during CMW. Once again the music came almost entirely without breaks, generally segueing from one song into the next. In fact, for the length of the half-hour set, the band played to a steady droning keyboard loop, which unified their sound (and probably gave ammunition to anyone that'd want to say that all the band's songs sound the same). That steady undertow might also have had something to do with the fact that on this night the band was down to a four piece, without a dedicated keyboard player.¹ That didn't change their sound too much, however — it was still an atmosphere-heavy trip.

Most of the descriptive phrases that I could think up ("druggy slog" amongst them) have a negative sort of connotation, but on seeing them for a second time, my opinion that this was an excellent group was strengthened. Were it not for my previous introduction, I'd have been utterly floored. Semi-somnambulant drone rock isn't everyone's cup of tea, and this would probably drive some people batty, but I think Ostrich Tuning are on to something really good. Hopefully there'll be some more chances to see 'em again.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Things had been a bit thin at the outset, but the place filled up rapidly as the Hoa Hoa's were getting set up. Moving outside of the Dan Burke/Silver Dollar circuit, where they're most often found when not putting on "happenings" in more unique venues, the band had no problem getting a lot of friends and enthusiasts out to rip it up.

"Since mashups are all the rage these days, we're going to try something," Richard Gibson said, as the band led off with a combination of The Troggs' "I Want You" and "Wild Thing" — amusing, given how un-radically different the two songs are.² The band was in top rave-up form on their own "Hey Joe" before switching around instruments for "Looking For Sun". I note that one of their new songs is now listed with the title "Modern Men". And just as one of their unrecorded songs gained a title, a brand new one was played, full of Nugget-y goodness, indicating that the band has internalized the lessons learned from covering "Thinking About Today", combining its jangle with that evergreen D to A "radio on!" two-chord chug.³

One of the things making the Hoa's of the best live bands in the city is their relentless forward movement, with new, good songs being added to their setlist all the time. Not that the older stuff is being pushed aside — there was an especially fine version of "Postcards", slowed down just a bit, the band really burying themselves in it. Kristina Koski from Planet Creature joined in on flute for "Grew Up on the Seeds" before the band closed out with the customary rave-up on "Blue Acid Gumball". Tearing it up as usual, this felt like the night's headlining set.

Listen to a track from this set here.

That was a tough act to follow for The Flowers Of Hell, a sophisto sort of instrumental rock orchestra, under the leadership one of the band's guitarists, founder Greg Jarvis. The band apparently has live branches in both Toronto and England, giving Jarvis access to a deep pool of talent to explore his compositional ideas. Live on this night, the band was nine members deep, with two guitars, keyb, trumpet, violin and cello.

There was definitely a Spiritualized vibe to the band's sound, with a retinue of slow builds and carefully-arranged crescendos. Sounded pretty good, but some of it was merely pleasant, sounding like the interstitial bits of more interesting works. But at some of the points when the music wasn't really going over, one could blame the venue more than the musicians, as during the quieter build-up passages, the band suffered the fate of most anything in The Garrison that doesn't grab the crowd by the throat, which is to say audible competition from semi-engaged chatterers throughout the room.

In addition to their originals, the band mixed in a thematically-linked pair of covers, starting with a version of Laurie Anderson's "O Superman" which didn't do much for me — though that probably says more about my feelings for the original then where the band took it on stage. It would later be followed-up with Lou Reed's "Street Hassle", which worked better, sounding like exactly the sort of fusion that the band was built for. It's laudable for this crew to take their rock theorems to the people, but I dunno that this was the right venue to really appreciate 'em. And in the flow of the night, it felt mildly like a letdown after the Hoa's energy. I bet Flowers of Hell would make for some good headphone music, or live in a place where you could feel out the subtleties a little more. They did get some good applause at the end of their set, though, so they certainly got through to some of the crowd.

---

¹ I note that the blurb on the band's myspace page is now reading "+ five percent - ten percent", which might be a comment on personnel turnover, but they're still cagey on more specific information than that.

² This was edited after a commenter pointed out to me that "I Want You" is also a Troggs song — I must confess that I hadn't heard it before. Check it out here.

³ I can't quite make out what it is that Lee Brochu says as the band starts it up, but I think he describes it as "a summer of love song", which fits the bill, too.