Gig: Library Voices

Library Voices

Harbourfront Centre. Sunday, July 25, 2010.

Ducked out from Bana Y'Afrique to walk down to Harbourfront for Love, Saskatchewan — a different sort of cultural celebration. Found K. looking at some of the art displays and then we took in, of all things, a cooking demonstration. The prospect of a tasting at the end was enough that we stuck around, which meant that we missed the first couple songs from Library Voices, the musical attraction we'd come down for. As we ducked outside and headed over to the big stage, there was already music drifting across the cement pond.

The band had previously been more famous as a hard luck case than for their music, losing gear in a couple of minorly tragic incidents. They've actually been getting more attention for their music recently, though, especially after the release of this year's debut full-length Denim on Denim. I hadn't heard much of their stuff, but figured this would be a good spot to see what they had to offer.

On a hot Sunday afternoon, there was a decent crowd out, but the seats were hardly packed. Kinda ideal, actually, to be able to stretch out, lean back and soak it in. AA waved and came over to join us, out on his own investigatory trip, but otherwise, towards the back of the seating area, there mostly seemed to be the usual Harbourfront mix of passers-by and curiosity-seekers.

We were settling in as the band started "Hello, Cruel World". They were leaning heavily on their album, but also threw in some songs from their preceding EP Hunting Ghosts & Other Collected Shorts, including "The Lonely Projectionist".

Library Voices are a large band — eight told in all. I had the impression that they probably could have gotten the same sound with a couple less people on stage, but the friends-hanging-out vibe seemed to be just as important. And all the better, I suppose, to have more bodies on stage for frequent handclap outbursts. Sometimes, like on "Model City", which was expansive and more thoughtful than some of the more party-minded material, the arrangements warranted the numbers. And, as their name suggests, sometimes they just liked to have lots of voices supporting lead vocalist Carl Johnson.

The band was clearly having a hoot on the big stage, spread out and using the room for, say, tossing a saxophone in the air and catching it, or for frontman wanderings and so forth. Like a lot of visiting bands, they were totally impressed by the view out over the water, shouting greetings to passing boats from time to time. Although Johnson naturally was the centre of attention, he wasn't the only focus on stage — keyb player Michael Dawson did a lot of the bantering between songs, for example, discussing the stories behind some of their frequent topics like the apocalypse and places to drink. In line with the latter, the band got the audience involved on "Drinking Games" and had a small knot of enthusiasts up front dancing along throughout.

The band played what must be their full-length set — even with having missed some at the start, we heard over an hour's worth of stuff. They closed out with a cover of Neil Young's "Unknown Legend"¹ which was a nice sendoff.

I found it all enjoyable enough, and it fit into the warm summer Sunday afternoon quite nicely. If pressed, I guess I'd place their sound somewhere between the group-shot glower of Los Campesinos! and the powerpop harmonizations of The New Pornographers. I can't say that the songs stuck too much, or that I felt impelled grab their album, but they were good entertainers.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Thanks to K. for the pictures.

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¹ Admittedly, I still have a bit of a hard time accepting Saskatchewan as a hotbed of culture of and prosperity — growing up in Manitoba, the one punchline we always had was the province to the West of us, though I guess they're getting the last laugh now. But there's still the lag time of the past cultural gap, so for their prairie-lovin' closer they had to reach one province over, noting their other option was to try and learn a Northern Pikes song.