Gig: Flowers Of Hell

Flowers Of Hell (The Hoa Hoas / Pete Carmichael)

St. Stephen-In-The-Fields Church. Saturday, November 13, 2010.

The best parties put together by local label Optical Sounds always take place in more interesting places than bars, and this would be no exception. I'd walked past St. Stephen-In-The-Fields at College and Bellevue hundreds of times but had never been inside. The Gothic Revival church, built when it was surrounded by the fields it is named for, was nicely striking inside. Renovations had halved the length of the nave, making the tall space feel both open and compact. On this night, the walls and ceiling were painted with the swirling lights of General Chaos' visuals, and the kitchen was staffed by various members of the Optical Sounds family serving a keg of beer. The space was perfect for a gig of this nature — the floor was open for anyone who wanted to stand and watch, while there was a large balcony offering steeply-stacked rows of seats who anyone looking to sit.

That's where I headed, grabbing myself a perch on the front row, feeling like I was floating over the action below. I sat back for a few minutes, relaxing to the light show floating across the walls and the strikingly tall pipes of the old organ.¹ I was in a pretty relaxed mood as the night began, certainly moreso than Pete Carmichael, who appeared both a little nervous and fortified against that fact. A recent ex-Diablero, Carmichael was playing his first solo gig in quite a few years, now armed only with a new 12-string acoustic.

"Tonight is gonna break your heart," he sang, starting things off in familiar territory with "Broken Barns". There were a couple new ones after that, including "Thundercracker" (which had featured in some of the last Diablerlos shows) and the brand-new "Fairweather Fighter", a song with potential that was still sounding a little spare and suffering from a few tentative stabs at the guitar.

"I'm really grateful to get to play in this place," Carmichael said, and I was thinking the same thing as I put up my feet and stretched out on my balcony pew. The arched roof above me was lovely — even on looking more closely and seeing the cracks — and as I looked around and soaked in old bricks, the tall narrow windows, and even the bursts of dry ice shooting out behind Carmichael on stage, I was feeling rather serene.

There was another dip back into the past with "Left from the Movies", and the set closed out on one more new one. It appears that Carmichael is assembling some friends to flesh out these new songs, and hopefully once the weather is warmer we'll have a chance to hear how things are coming along.²

Listen to a song from this set here.

Between sets, I was studying the walls again, looking beside the organ pipes to the cross hanging under the arch. The congregation was probably at its peak when this was a working-class neighbourhood, and the words of Matthew 11:28 emblazoned there ("Come Unto Me All Ye That Labour and are Heavily Laden and I Will Give You Rest") were surely succour (or captivating propaganda) for weary workers on a Sunday morning. The rafters above the chancel, looking like the skeleton of some elaborate clockwork machine, glowed with soft light as "Love is the Drug" played on the PA. I wandered around, nodding at some familiar faces. Except for a suboptimal bathroom allocation that is incompatible with draft beer (one stall apiece for women and men) this place is ideal, especially for the night's headliners.

Pretty much everything here was different compared to the last time I saw Flowers Of Hell. Then, enclosed in a dank bar, the band was playing something quite recognizable as "rock", even if it took it in a much more ornate direction. Not so much this time 'round. "Tonight we've got one number and one number only, but it's rather long," said founder/visionary Greg Jarvis, introducing "O", also the sole piece on his newly-released album. On this night, Jarvis wasn't playing anything in his mutable combo, but instead conducting a dozen musicians in an ensemble that included guitar, flute, harp, grand piano, drum kit, kettle drum, double bass, cello, violin, sax and trumpet.

As if to ease the audience into the notion of a symphonic experience, the first note was like the orchestra's tuning A, the instruments all joining in. But instead of falling silent after that, they kept drifting — and such was the way of the piece. Some of the reviews I've seen of "O"'s album incarnation seemed confused, and quick to condemn it for not falling into the post-rock build-and-release template, But I think that fundamentally misunderstands what Jarvis is aiming for — with "O" he isn't interested in the narrative resolution we expect from a "song". Rather that describing an event, it maps a terrain.

Ten minutes in, the music is langourous and floaty. Previously, the strings had vibrated with the warmth of a Nick Drake arrangement; now, with the trumpet picking up a bit of melody it momentarily felt... if not precisely like "In a Silent Way", then something akin to it, linearity and throughline subsumed to a sort of bestilled coming-to-be. Twenty minutes along, a piano-led movement leads to a general ramping up — but not so much like a wave as a tide mounting and abating.

Letting my eyes close, I leaned back to just absorb this. And later, instead of watching the band, I watched General Chaos' projections on the roof above me, the drifting colours shifting and melting into each other just like the the individual components of the music.³ The tempo did build again at the end, but instead of any sort of climactic finality, the music simply seemed to find a resolution that followed from its inner logic.

The performance lasted forty minutes — though when I was inside it, it felt stripped from temporality. Neither too long nor too short, to put it less prosaically. Fittingly, there was no encore afterward — to follow that with something like a mere "song" would have felt wrong. All told, this was pretty excellent stuff — an inspired mix of vibe, space, and performance.⁴

Listen to an excerpt from this performance here.

Of course, I shouldn't castigate "mere songs" too much, as after that, the stage was turned over to The Hoa Hoa's, who had some pretty fabulous ones. And all the acoustic elements that had been in place for the Flowers of Hell set were in play here, but now in the service of the band's psych-garage nuggets. In fact, as the set started with "Looking For the Sun" and "Modern Men", this was perhaps as good I'd ever heard the band — the music filling the space without anything sounding forced in the mix. The vocals were a little more up front than usual, and the big space of the room added some natural reverb. Plus, the band had a full setup, including keyboards and the becaped Cameron Jingles joining in on vox and tambourine. Behind it all, drummer Calvin Brown was looking fashionable as ever in shades and snakeskin boots.

This was a no time for sitting in the balcony, and I took advantage of that floor space to groove a little to the band's newest stuff, which sounded pretty brilliant. Not only the radio on! trip of "Falling in Love" but also would-be chartbuster "All the Time", which had fairly knocked me out when I'd first heard it.

"Postcards" led straight into a superb run through the building wall of noise that is "Blue Acid Gumball". Normally the closer, the band stayed on stage to finish off with the quick burst of "Intensity", here even more of a description than a title than usual. Having seen my share of sets by the Hoa Hoa's, I'd have to place this right near the top of the heap, one of those happy occasions where performance and venue and vibe all are clicking just right.⁵

Listen to a song from this set here.

Looking back, this may have been my favourite show of the year. I don't know a lot about the situation, but St. Stephen's is a gem of a space in a sweetly central location. It would be a shame if it wasn't preserved and maintained.

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¹ There's a history, thrillingly detailed-unto-incomprehensibility, of the organ here, which also contains some general background on the church.

² You should keep an eye out here so you'll know when Carmichael's new thing is ready for the world.

³ And here, I suppose, comes the occasion to make the obligatory reference to Jarvis' synesthesia. The notion that the bandleader perceives sounds as shapes and colours seems intimately and intuitively connected to this music.

⁴ Some of the credit for making this sound so good is also due to Steve Shoe, who was running the soundboard at this show, doing an excellent job on a more-complicated-than-usual setup.

⁵ The Hoa Hoa's have been busy recording over the winter, but are emerging from a gap in live performance for a show on Friday, April 29, 2011 at The Boat. With The Asteroid #4 and Ostrich Tuning (well-loved in these parts) on the bill, it stands to be a helluva night.