Gig: Tomboyfriend

Tomboyfriend

The Tranzac Club (Southern Cross Lounge). Wednesday, May 4, 2010.

Gearing up for increased visibility and summertime shows, this gig was billed by Tomboyfriend as an "open rehearsal" — a chance for the band to play some songs live in a semi-informal setting for a supportive audience with a lot of friends at hand. In the prolonged process of completing their debut long-player Don't Go To School¹ the band was showing off some of the songs from that, as well as some even newer ones, plus old faves and a couple covers tossed in to boot.

The band revolves around singer/lyricist Ryan Kamstra² but achieves liftoff with the work of a supporting cast whose numbers increased after each song. Following the mini-epic "Goldfinch Gluespoo"³ Kamstra commented, "We add more band through the evening," warning that anyone could be called upon — and the fact that members of the choir were seated throughout the room and straggled up to the front to join in on songs made it seem for a moment that anyone in the room could be impressed into service.

But at the start, it was just two voices plus Sholem Krishtalka — who would perhaps prove to be the essential force holding everything together musically — on piano. Kamstra, wearing a muscle shirt and tie, gave the impression of an accountant doing some karaoke to blow off some steam⁴, holding the microphone two-handed, elbows out, like he was about to impale himself or commit some manner of rock'n'roll harikiri. The sound was thickened a bit on "Almost/Always", now with a driving bassline and little guitar nibbles pushing the song forward. And then with the choir gathering around a microphone to dance and sing, the full expansiveness of the band's sound was more evident. The first, longer set focused on newer material, including stuff from the album and even a couple songs that are even newer — including "The Commons", which featured the "yay!"-shouting choir.

After getting through all the new material, and a quick break, there was a more relaxed attitude for the second set, starting cabaret lounge style with a couple covers, including the George Gershwin standard "The Man I Love". That was followed with Krishtalka crooning Ani DiFranco's "Not a Pretty Girl", stating, "there is nothing ironic about this cover". After a couple more numbers, the whole thing ended with a clap-along, folky version of the band's signature song "The End of Poverty".

With their theory-into-practice correctness and friends-having-fun stage attitude, there's a sense of the right boxes being checked off with this band — but there's still moments where it feels as if the whole thing hasn't quite jelled. The band is riding the fine line between ecstatic spontaneity and under-rehearsed shakiness — although that sort of thing tends to work itself out over time.⁵ The most critical thing, though, that decides if the band stands or falls is Ryan Kamstra's songwriting.

Kamstra is blessed and cursed with having knocked one out of the park on the first pitch, so to speak, with "The End of Poverty" and the immediate impression was that nothing else has quite poked at the essence in the way that song did. Besides setting the template with its singalong giddiness, the song is also word-drunk, and swollen with a certain metaness, as if crafted by a magpie snatching shiny bits from half-remembered songs and other sources.⁶ But "End of Poverty" also calls attention to itself by sticking around a bit too long — it's a brilliant three-and-a-half minute pop smash lodged into a five minute song, containing the seeds of its own hangover. That, and some of the other logocentric songs, leave the impression that what Kamstra needs more than anything else is an editor.

On the whole, it's probably not entirely fair to be too judgmental of a band playing a show billed as a "rehearsal", so let's take all of this as a sketch suggestive of the picture that's going to emerge with more performances. I'd certainly like to check them out with a drummer and everything else going on, and wait for a chance to give that album a spin.⁷

Listen to a couple songs from this set, including something older here and something newer here.

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¹ I was excited at first to think that this might have been inspired by one of the songs on one of my all-time most-beloved albums, but I am told that's merely a coincidence.

² In fact the membership has shifted considerably since their initial 3" CD two-song demo, which has been the band's only previous official release so far.

³ "They become shorter from hereon in," Kamstra assured the crowd at the song's conclusion.

⁴ This proved to be all the more apt when it turned out there was a song called "Karaoke Singer" in the band's setlist.

⁵ And in that regard I'm also looking forward to hearing this lineup play with a drummer, which'd likely be one more ingredient binding it all together.

⁶ This cut-and-paste method, also evident in some of the newer material, does manage the interesting feat of somehow coming around full circle to 70's storyteller-styled songwriting. And it should also be noted that if leaves the lyrics occasionally coming off as too abstracted/constructed, there are counter-examples where the songs are still rooted in a more immediate here-ness, such as the ballad to a friend "Margaux".

⁷ In that spirit, I note that Tomboyfriend is, in fact, playing a gig this Friday (July 9th) at Buddies in Bad Times, as part of the "Keith Cole Experience". Eight bucks gets you three bands plus the always-entertaining Keith Cole.