Gabe Levine (Mantler)
Music Gallery. Friday, October 1, 2010.
A Friday night album release party at the Music Gallery, and an upbeat crowd of friends and family on hand for Gabe Levine, the night's headliner. In the night's spirit of bonhomie, he was on hand to introduce Mantler, who opened things up.
Having Chris Cummings' pop project to start was definitely a selling point for this show, as Cummings always guarantees the crowd a good time, both in deed and in literal song form. Sitting at the electric piano, he was joined throughout the set by Jay Anderson and Matt McLaren on drums and bass, effortlessly giving the material an unassumingly funky boost. Despite the relative freshness of his last album — Monody had been released back in the spring — Cummings was playing a bunch of new material, including "Flower of Laughter", this new father's song to his recently-arrived daughter. "Husbands", another new one, was a discourse on watching the Cassavetes flick of the same name1, a subject that foregrounded Mantler's longstanding cinematic interests.2
After "Uphill Battle", another yet-unrecorded song that's been in the repertoire for awhile, the set closed out with a couple tracks from Monody, including the smooth anthem "Childman". As always, this was a top-notch set, and, yes, a guaranteed good time.
Listen to a track from this set here.
The last time I saw Gabe Levine was in the same venue, but otherwise, this was a considerably different show. Whereas that set back in June had been performed with a stripped-down trio, there was a big band this time around, reproducing the lush arrangements found on his new Long Spun Thread. Although this is Levine's first "solo" album, he has been active on the Montreal experimental scene with several bands in the past, including Black Ox Orkestar. As with that previous show, I was interested in how that past, more "avant" work might be informing the songs and arrangements here, which hew closer to the singer-songwriter path.
After starting off solo with album closer "Friends In Bed", a half-dozen musicians emerged to strike up the album's title track. The band included — deep breath here — Jay Anderson and Dan Gaucher (trading off on drums and percussion), Mike Smith (bass), Sandro Perri (keys and percussion), Jesse Levine (piano and keybs), Jessica Moore (backing vox) and Jeremy Strachan (sax/flute/guitar). If you keep your eyes on local stages, you might note that's a bit of a who's who right there, excellent musicians all, most of whom had also played on the album.
After a couple songs with that configuration, the band was joined by a three-piece string section (Julia Collins, Jane Levitt, Erika Nelson) to fill things out even more, including a tasty run through "Cruel Youth". In terms of lushness and orchestration, Lambchop comes to mind a bit here, if you filter out that band's more countrypolitan leanings. Levine did reach back to his old "experimental-country" band Sackville to play "This Machine".
It looks to be a fertile time for Levine, with a couple newer-than-the-album songs included in the set, both of which were highlights of the night — "Holy Relics" had a bouncy rhythm and tasty vocals from Moore, while the knockout sprawling gallop of the excellent "Where the Crown Don't Reign" was a rush of internal rhymes and instrumental swagger. The set ran just over an hour, finishing off with "Believe Me" — the first track on the album in a nice parallel to close things out.
The big band definitely brought these songs to life in a more vivid way than when I'd seen them before, so Levine's encounter with these local musicians — many of whom also skirt back and forth between "experimental" and "pop" in their other projects — can definitely be counted as a success. Long Spun Thread stands on its own as an album, and is worth checking out3, but seeing these songs played like this made them even more exciting. Levine is still playing around town with most of these musicians, so do keep your eyes out for a chance to catch him.
A couple selections from this set — check out one that's on the album here, and one that should be on the next one here.
1 "Songs about Cassavetes" must count as its own sub-sub genre by now.
2 This will also be on display at "Mantler's Visual Music", a free event at the TIFF Lightbox billed as "an exploration of the common ground between avant-garde film and music" including a screening of a series of shorts followed by a musical performance.
3 The album is digitally available on a "name your price" basis at Levine's bandcamp page.
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