ELEVEN! Festival (Wavelength 515 – night 4) (feat. Grimes / Eric Chenaux Electric Trio / Little Girls / Maylee Todd / Hooded Fang)
The Great Hall. Saturday, February 19, 2011.
The Friday-night action for the Wavelength Festival moved to the expansive semi-grandeur of The Great Hall, with its high ceiling and the unoccupied horseshoe-shaped balcony above the floor, as well as the large stage made all the more theatrical by the large arch above it. It's a decent room when the vibe is right, but it's also a space that can feel extra-desolate with a small crowd and extra-packed with a full house. It also has perhaps the worst bathrooms for a venue of its size in the city.
As the early crowd for a five-band bill filtered in, host Doc Pickles took the stage to greet them. Someone must have mentioned to him beforehand to push the merch, as his monologues were peppered with the slightly awkward pitches of a self-hating consumerist. He was more in his natural habitat in relating a fable about a lazy bear and an industrious beaver.
Once all the gear was ready to go, the stage was given over to Grimes, bandonym of Montréal-based Claire Boucher. Although she started with a slightly ominous warning ("I'm very sick, so I can't sing. And I'm going to try some new stuff that's maybe risky right now.") she actually sounded to be in good voice, but was looking a little rough. Creating slightly-unorthodox one-woman dancescapes, Boucher has moved quickly from the more found-sound bricolage of her debut full-length (the Dune-Referencing Geidi Primes1) and follow-up Halfaxa to Darkbloom (a split album with d'Eon), which has more of a beat-driven vibe. That was palpable on opener "Crystal Ball" with dancey beats underneath a synth set on harp-like sounds and gauzey layers of vocals.
Boucher sometimes used her vocals as a textural tool, though in some songs they were unsmooshed enough to regain comprehensibility. All of which is to say that though she had built her musical style from the ground up, it does sound like she's heading for a sort of convergence with the tradition she's working in on stuff like the dancefloor-ready "Vanessa". The songs had a propensity to stretch out, so there were only five in her half-hour set, which ended with a new one — Boucher didn't express a lot of confidence in her ability to play it, and indeed it did falter a bit.
Keeping her hands busy with keyboard and electronics, Boucher didn't have much of a stage presentation. And perhaps it had something to do with her feeling unwell, but some of the songs felt a bit de-energized. There were encouraging signs throughout the set, but I didn't find it completely compelling. But given the speed of her musical development, Boucher is well worth watching, and as what was originally a prototypical bedroom recording project spends more time on the road I'm sure she'll project herself more forcefully on stage.
Listen to a track from this set here.
A deliciously Wavelength-esque left turn after that with the Eric Chenaux Electric Trio taking the stage next. It was, in fact, a quartet on this night with Chenaux's amazingly nimble guitar work backed by Nick Fraser (drums) and Rob Clutton (bass), as well as percussionist Blake Howard. Although these might not be household names to those with a strict rock'n'roll mindset, this is very much an all-star combo of artists working at the intersection of folk-inspired singer-songwriter composition and free-ranging improvisation — the sort of fusion fostered in places like The Tranzac.
Putting all those elements into play right from the start, the set led off with "Put In Music This Ballad For Me", a re-assembly of fourteenth century ballad "Notes pour moi". If I had to describe Chenaux's style I might label it "avant wah", given his propensity for creating complicated guitar lines sent down a snaky path by his pedals, but generally staying in sight of a clear melodic line. That mindful waywardness made Clutton a good musical counterpoint — he was high and clear in the mix, but playing clean, uncluttered basslines. That was followed by "Amazing Backgrounds", another song which had originally appeared on Love Don't Change, his collaborative album with Michelle McAdorey. Eschewing any selections from the recent Warm Weather album, the set hewed closer to Dull Lights, his album from '06, with the inclusion of the title track and "Worm and Gear".
It was interesting to watch the division of labour between Fraser and Howard — they actually had about one drumkit between them. Howard was doing more of the accents and "percussion" work, with shakers and congas, but he also had the bass drum. Both of them played a lot with eyes closed, feeling out the groove — and it's the groove here that really got the songs over. When the band eased off for "Dull Lights", which was more quiet and abstract, the audience was less into it — and me as well, a little. But while it was cooking, it was great stuff.
Even when it was really cookin', there was still a mellow undercurrent to the music — appropriate, perhaps, to an all-seated ensemble. The songs were played in a manner allowing them to gently unfurl, giving the musicians time explore the ways they could weave their lines together. That peaked in the nine minutes given over to closer "Love Don't Change".2 Quite fabulous stuff.
Listen to a track from this set here.
Then another extended intro from Doc Pickles, this time singing a jaunty improvised tune while Little Girls dealt with a recalcitrant laptop. Once it was up and running, it provided ever-melding visual effects on the screen behind them. The background images turned out to be geometric vector-y graphics interspersed with stock footage. The images flowed into each other just like the band's songs, which ebbed and segued with looped guitar noise and occasional muttered greetings from guitarist/vocalist Josh McIntyre.
Given that the previous couple times I had seen Little Girls had been in the lo-fi confines of The Shop, I was curious to see what a bigger sound system would do for what I had found to be a muddled sound. As it would turn out, though this was the most-nuanced I'd ever heard the band, they're still pretty murky by design, with McIntyre's vocals usually reverbed to incomprehensibility. But the sound was also beefed up, with the band now sporting a synth-ier edge, mostly as simmering texture, another ingredient in their simmering Joy Division-y brew. Many of the songs came and went in two-minute-ish bursts, and though there's been some evolution, there's a lot of continuity between older stuff like "Youth Tunes" and newer songs like "White Night" and "Ex". Those would subsequently make their way onto the new Cults EP (on Hand Drawn Dracula), which similarly continues and torques their earlier sound.
Maylee Todd can perform in explosive funk mode as well as being a harp-weiding balladeer, but she always beings a sense of adventure to the stage. That dramatic flair was in evidence as she took the stage wearing something that resembled kimono pajamas, leading a five-piece backing band sporting plenty facepaint all around. The set started off in quieter mode, playing a slow song that still managed to swing, Todd's harp complemented by Andrew Scott's gurgling analog keyb sounds. That gave the first part of the set a cast that, while undoubtedly beautiful, had less Saturday night oomph than one might have expected. Mixing songs from the fine Choose Your Own Adventure with some newer stuff, things started to ramp up with "Hooked", featuring Hooded Fang's Lane Halley and Julia Barnes stepping on stage to dance along as well as add a burst of horns.
Todd's greatest strength (besides a powerful voice) is her fearless gregariousness on stage, never afraid to get a little goofy. Or, in the case of an extended percussion groove preceding "Summer Sounds", to get a little physical, throwing down like she used to in her aerobic sock-hop events. A mini-segment at the centre of the set substituted soulful intensity for pure groove, with excellent results, including a new slowburner called "I Tried", plus another with a chorus of "everybody needs a mouth to mouth".3
Any worries of a groove shortage were put to bed in the final part of the set, with a cooking "Aerobics in Space" (including an appearance by band's namesake Pegwee, a creature of indeterminate origin that looks somewhat like a giant oven mitt) and "Haven't You Heard", a Patrice Rushen cover where Todd jumped down to the floor to sing, creating a giant circle in the middle of the dancefloor around her as she invited people to step out for a Soul Train-style dancing breakout.
Listen to a track from this set here.
Closing out the night, Hooded Fang stretched out seven wide across the stage. Starting off, there were nimble versions of "Highway Steam" and "Green River", staples from their debut Album. There was also a slightly haphazard run through "Promise Land", but perhaps the band was just gearing up for the sonic approach of the new songs.
Although it wasn't entirely clear at the time, this was essentially the pivot point closing the Album era and inaugurating Tosta Mista, as the band gave the crowd a first shot at hearing some of the new songs, starting with the new wave frenzy of "Jubb". That sound would come as a shocker for many in the audience, but for anyone who had witnessed singer/guitarist Daniel Lee's other work in Hut, this would seem of a piece. For me, the most surprising element would be how much of that he brought to Hooded Fang. "Brahma" cut the difference between old and new a bit more, with room for the horns before the slow-dance awesomeness of "Den of Love".
Tom McCammon boosted the horn section for "Laughing" and the band closed out the main set with "Love Song". They returned for a couple more, closing the night out back at the beginning of their oeuvre with "Land of Giants" from their initial EP.
There are other options than, say, Wavelength. But I admit I'm partial to an event where you can see someone like Maylee Todd rock an incredible set up on stage, and then look over beside you when the next band is playing and see her dancing and snapping pictures like everyone else in the crowd. "Probably the best thing ever to happen to Toronto," said Daniel Lee.
Listen to a track from this set here.
1 This one is still available as a free download from Arbutus Records, which is doing some fine work out in Montréal.
2 Like several songs in his discography, this is one that Chenaux has recorded twice, revisiting it on 2008's Sloppy Ground after first essaying it on the album that bears its name.
3 Update: We now know that this song is Maylee's new single "Hieroglyphics", which you can grab as a free download here.
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