The Wooden Sky (Yukon Blonde / These United States
Lee's Palace. Saturday, November 6, 2010.
A homecoming show, the last night of the tour, and a Saturday night — one could guess going in that these were the ingredients for a rambunctious time. There was an upbeat, energetic vibe in the room, even in the early going. The stage was backdropped with bedsheets that looked like they came from someone's parents' place, covered with boy's-own scenes of cowboy adventures and big honking cars sweeping through uncitified vistas. Treat that as symbolism.
I'd never heard of These United States ("We're from Kentucky, and Washington D.C. and from a few other places," explained vocalist Jesse Elliott) but right from the start this felt like a good fit for the bill and most definitely like Saturday night music — amped-up rock'n'roll with rootsy touches. The band mostly had that end-of-tour scruffy look down pat, especially Elliott, who had a multitude of backstage-access wristbands running up his left arm, like a prisoner's scratches on a cell wall to remind him how long he's been in stir.1
The band managed to get more interesting from song to song, and I was forced to keep nudging up my estimation of 'em — at the outset I was feeling a sort of sub-Georgia Satellites vibe, soon upgraded to a respectable Stones-y country-honk swagger. And when Tom Hnatow's pedal steel kicked in for "Honor Amongst Thieves" I was nodding along to their sloppy, unshaven charms. So too with the lyrics — at first I was just catching signifiers like "drunk", "new Cadillac", "just a momma's boy aching for affection" which I thought triangulated the band's simple sort of concerns, but closer listening revealed more of a literary sensibility hiding behind it all.
"Life & Death, She & I" was a highlight as was closer "I Want You To Keep Everything" , which juxtaposed pedal steel licks with new wave-y guitar stabs. But the populist highlight might have been a version "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" played with Who-esque power chords, where Gavin Gardiner (of the night's headliners) and members of Yukon Blonde came out to add their voices. As would happen again throughout the night, there was the impression that these bands had had a good time on tour together, and Elliott was full of effusive praise for his new-found friends. Having just released their fourth album What Lasts, the band had a lot of material to draw from and had no problem filling a forty-minute set. Not an audacious band, but it left as pleasant an aftertaste as the 50's the band were quaffing.
Listen to a song from this set here.
So, I have a history with Yukon Blonde, and I must admit I came in mildly biased against 'em. I'd seen them, back in '08 when they were still known as Alphababy, opening for Jon-Rae Fletcher and turning in a really unmemorable bar-band-worthy set.2 Still, with a new name and a generally-praised album under their belts, I figured to try and give them the benefit of the doubt. It seemed like I was the only one who was unconvinced, though, as the mostly-younger crowd around me was very appreciative of the band's meat-and-potatoes rock, mixing some guitar crunch with CSNY-esque harmonies and poppy song constructions.
The band stepped out and plowed right in, running through "Rather Be With You" and "Brides Song" before greeting the crowd, inviting them to sing along to "Blood Cops" — an offer that a lot of people around me took them up on. But not nearly as many as for "Wind Blows", when the band simply dropped out altogether in the last chorus and let the crowd carry the song. After that early highlight, they changed direction a bit by performing a new song ("this water is coming 'round") before some members of The Wooden Sky came out for another non-album track ("they're setting fire to the ocean").
"Babies Don't Like Blue Anymore", which probably impressed me more than anything else in the set, was a bit more muscular than on the album, but still gave an opportunity for big woah-oh's from the crowd. The band closed it out giving special praise to Jason Haberman (of local smooth rockers The Paint Movement) who was filling in on bass for the tour. By the set's end, I certainly had some more respect for the band, though I'll probably never be a fan. But from the headliner-sized reaction they received, I'm sure they'll do fine without me.3
Listen to a song from this set here.
As the floor got more tightly-packed between sets, I again got the notion that I might have been the only one who had come out undecided to what extent The Wooden Sky did it for them. Although I had been impressed on seeing them perform in a quieter, stripped-down format, their album had also left me with a "merely pleasant" sort of vibe. As things got ready to go, though, there was a palpable sense of excitement around me. Those sheets at the back of the stage were pulled down to reveal three large paintings with the band's name (THE/WOODEN/SKY) cut out and illuminated from behind.
"This is quite all right!" grinned vocalist/guitarist Gavin Gardiner, looking over the packed house after leading off with the title track from 2007's When Lost At Sea. Showing the confidence of a band doing more that just pushing their breakthrough album, they led off with two of the set's first three songs from the older one before turning to '09's If I Don't Come Home You'll Know I'm Gone. Gardiner's vox were a little more quavery than usual, perhaps a bit worn from two months on the road. But even if they might have been a little weary and ragged, the band played like they knew they didn't need to hold anything in reserve for the next night.
After "Call If You Need Me", there were even a couple brand new songs — "Angelina" and "Lay Your Body Down" (as the internet has 'em), the latter of which was quite interesting, with atmospheric keys and a melody edging up to The Beatles' "Long Long Long". Pity that the new ones were almost drowned out — the downside with this kind of crowd was that if it wasn't something they could sing along to, most of the people around me were content to blather away to each other. "The Late King Henry" flipped things back into audience singalong mode, and the young crowd also went unaccountably apeshit for a run through Tom Petty's "American Girl", with guitarist Simon Walker getting to rip out a big rock solo.
Just as we'd seen in the other sets, some friends from the other bands came out to finish things off with a big version of "Something Hiding For Us in the Night", though there was still ample time for a few more. That turned out to be not quite as expected, however. On returning for the encore, Gardiner announced: "what we're gonna do here, we're going to play one song up here on stage... we're going to take a break, and then we're gonna go out on the sidewalk out in the alleyway and play some more songs if you guys are into that." The band played "North Dakota", then, as promised, departed the stage with a "see ya outside in fifteen minutes".
Listen to a song from this set here.
Well, then. Nothing to do but head outside and duck down the alley towards the back door. The crowd back there was growing quickly and milling around a bit uncertainly on a cool early November night. I spotted trumpeter/bartender Michael Louis Johnson — no stranger to performing in reclaimed public space — in the crowd and wasn't surprised when he took his place alongside the band when they emerged.
I managed to end up pretty much right behind the stripped-down band (here rocking acoustic guitar, banjo and harmonica) but even being fairly close, they were hardly audible compared to the people around me singing along to "Oh My God". But that's kind of the point, right? Regardless, people managed to generally shush each other down enough so that Gardiner could be heard singing "Oslo", before asking, "you guys wanna get arrested?"
To a massive cheer, the band struck up "You Ain't Going Nowhere", and rather unlike a tree with roots, the band started marching out of the alley and right into the middle of Bloor Street. Within seconds the group vocals — and good on the kids, a lot of 'em knew the words to this one — were joined by a chorus of taxis honking in the background. Cue that elevating feeling of slight transgression, a lift from positing that the street was a worthy spot for an impromptu singalong. And as the song ended and the crowd cleared off the road, I ended up on the north sidewalk. I could see people across the street still clapping and the trumpet still playing the chorus as the night ended in a most unexpected festival. An exciting ending that most definitely closed out the night on a high.
1 Elliott was also sporting a blue hanky dangling from his back right pocket, which might mean something different where he's from.
2 The flipside of that was that the band did a more-than-capable job backing Fletcher during a set that would be highly memorable for the singer shrugging off his own material to do a whole series of Annie Lennox covers.
3 Yukon Blonde will be back in town to play the Horseshoe on April 8, 2011.
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