NXNE 2011 (Thursday, June 16, 2011)
While these shows are fresh in my mind I want to get some quick notes down. I'm a nerd for not wanting to throw my full reviews out of sequence, so there'll be a fuller accounting of the night by and by that'll include all the details on the lack of sleep and just who was hanging around smoking in front of Comfort Zone.
7 p.m.: Snowblink @ Music Gallery
A good crowd down at St. George The Martyr for this early mini-showcase put together by local label Out of This Spark. Because of other commitments in this busy city, I'd missed out on all the celebrations surrounding the re-release of the band's Long Live album, though I had last seen 'em back in this same room in January. As Daniela Gesundheit and Dan Goldman took the stage the pews were filled up — and by set's end there'd be a healthy crowd of standees behind. After playing a song in their usual duo fashion, they were joined by drummer Dan Gaucher1 in an unusual three Dan, three DG alignment. Gaucher and Goldman were wearing matching red ball caps — and Goldman had red socks on, too, as if the band were trying to maximize their fashion score on Exclaim!'s festival report card.
New to the setlist was "Listen and Profit", a song composed by Gesundheit in the Cape Breton Highlands as a part of the National Parks Project, as well as a cover of MGMT's "Hot Love Drama".2 And, as always, the band sounded great, especially in this space, voices and ringing bells filling the church-y environment. The set closed with "Ambergris", the trio building up to a big finish.
I do adore the other bands (Evening Hymns, Forest City Lovers) that were playing on this bill, but in a festival setting I figured I'd better move on to find something unfamiliar.
Listen to a song from this set here.
8 p.m.: The Lying Cheats @ Comfort Zone
This local band's bio blurb suggests that they "take the Jesus and Mary Chain's debut as their bible", and that was enough to get me down into the murky blacklight depths of the Comfort Zone. Truth be told, live I didn't totally hear that coming through, but no worries, as I totally enjoyed this five-piece regardless. With three guitars on stage, the band didn't just pour on more noise on top of noise — the roles were well-arranged and the lines fit on top of each other nicely. A closing cover of The Kinks' "Milk Cow Blues" hinted a bit more at where they were getting their sensibility from — controlled rave-ups and, yeah, an underlying hint of bluesiness. Though not groundbreaking, this was rockin' in a way that suits me fine, and I'd gladly see this band again, especially if they can come up with more originals like "Cowboys and Indians".
9 p.m.: Different Skeletons @ Rancho Relaxo
What do you do if you're playing a big rock festival and your gear betrays you? You can roll with the punches and gut it out stoically or freak out and try to control your temper tantrum. Different Skeletons sort of went through all of that when a pedalboard conked out during the band's second song. Looking to be a new-ish band, this trio don't share a lot of information about themselves beyond their rock'n'roll aliases (Danger Dean, Thunder Dan, Jimbo Jones). But when a wah pedal cut out the bassist/guitarist/singer — let's call him WRONG after the classic Nomeansno t-shirt he was wearing — decided to take out his frustrations on it, picking it up and spiking it to the stage floor several times, and then kicking it around.
The band also led off in a slightly unrepresentative direction, with WRONG handling guit and vocals for the first couple songs, before four- and six-strings were swapped and his bespectacled bandmate took over most of the singing. WRONG had a bit more of a hoarse-voiced shouty thing going on, and for those first couple songs, I was wondering if I was going to stick it out for the whole set. But after the vocal switchover — and taking that problematic pedalboard out of the loop — things improved considerably. After that, WRONG seemed to just want to have a mildly disruptive good time — jumping down to the floor to play, slumping against his guitarist etc.
Musically, the band delivered competent smash-and-clatter rock'n'roll. There was one song with a driving surf-y beat that brought Elk to mind, and an Eric's Trip cover. Ultimately, this was enjoyable enough, and there's signs that this band could cohere into something interesting. And while I'm guessing that not every set ends with a wah-wah pedal being tossed down a flight of stairs, there's signs that they're going to be fun to watch.
10 p.m.: Child Bite @ Sneaky Dee's
A good-sized crowd on hand over at Sneaks, where the drinks are cheap and a night of scrappy guitar noise seemed to be at hand. Later on METZ — fresh from playing Yonge-Dundas Square — would be holding court, but I dropped in to check out this Detroit crew. Promising a mix of "The Jesus Lizard, Devo, and Dead Kennedys", I was more picking up a very particular amalgamation of Pere Ubu and hardcore. Which, all told, I rather liked quite a bit. Behind a keyboard decorated with inlaid xmas lights, the vocalist leaned forward to leer at the audience, singing as if he were making conversation laced with strange and vaguely salacious insinuations. Meanwhile the bass/guit/drums behind him split the difference between dance-y chug and spazzy lurch. Really top notch.
Listen to a track from this set here.
11 p.m.: Chains of Love @ The Silver Dollar
The appeal here is pretty self-evident and conceptually brilliant — a wall of sound (here fabricated with rock'n'roll clamour) delivered by a pair of female vocalists with, um, gams. In a crammed Silver Dollar that was so hot and damp it felt like it was generating its own fog, this Vancouver combo, a half-dozen members deep, plays with the elements of early 60's rock and roll. The Pipettes, in their original incarnation, come to mind a little here, but Chains of Love bring far more raunch and scuzz to their musical attack, as if the JD's have taken over the sock hop. Really good stuff — I reckon we'll be hearing more from this band.
12 a.m.: Crocodiles @ The Silver Dollar
A jam-packed house for the local debut of this San Diego five-piece, whose nightly headlining slots are the jewel in the crown of Dan Burke's festival-within-a-festival. A core duo of Brandon Welchez and Charles Rowell rounded out with a touring rhythm section, I didn't know too much about the group going in — just enough to be able to situate them in the current wave of murky, reverb-loving semi-revivalists. Vocalist Welchez is married to Dum Dum Girls' frontwoman Dee Dee Penny, and while there's a bit of musical overlap there as well, it's more instructive to consider how Crocodiles take some of the same influences and pare away the pop sheen, leaving a flattened and repetitive smear of sound. And there's an additional layer of postpunk influences at play as well — if you imagine an early Echo and the Bunnymen single slowed down to about two-thirds the speed, you have an idea of what's going on here. Plus, even when there's a catchy chorus, if you listen more closely, you realize the band is singing, "I wanna kill tonight". O, darkness!
At the start of the set the sound was entirely mushy and impenetrable, though that was more about the kinks in the sound mix being worked out, as the band gained clarity as the set moved along. And by the last three songs or so, this was pretty compelling stuff. With that worked out, I'd guess that by Saturday night the band will be worked up into pretty dominant form.
Listen to a track from this set here.
1 A drummer in a lot of awesome Tranzac-y improvising bands, Gaucher has also been keeping things busy with some local folk/roots/songwriters lately, including Doug Paisley.
2 This is far less random than it might appear on the surface, as MGMT were friends and choirmembers in an early California-based incarnation of Snowblink.
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