CMW 2011* (Saturday afternoon) (feat. Zoobombs / Dinosaur Bones / Paper Lions)
Friday, March 11, 2011.
This is an expansion of my initial notes from the festival, which can be found here.
4:00 P.M.: Zoobombs @ The Baitshop
Headed out to catch an official daytime show, the somewhat distastefully-titled "Daylight Riot" at The Baitshop. The spot was totally unknown to me — possibly because it's actually a skateboarding shop. Although the store has a Dufferin Street address, it's actually located down Milky Way, a whimsically-named alley that runs parallel to Queen St. Inside, the space gave the vibe that Industry once happened here, but now had a exposed-beam loft vibe, with the shop's wares up on a mezzanine level.1 Obviously equipped for a bit more than just shopping, that area overlooked a six foot high halfpipe. The "stage" was at the top of that, with the crowd both looking down from the shopping area and up from the floor of the halfpipe.
I was on hand for the middle two acts of a four-band bill, but most especially to see Tokyo's Zoobombs. Well-known as an intense live unit, it was a sombre quartet that took the stage. No surprise there, given the tsunami and nuclear calamity back in the band's homeland. On that topic, there were a few quiet words from vocalist/guitarist Don Matsuo before starting: "Japan is facing a really, really tough time... it's really hard to rock and roll." He dedicated opener "My Big Friend" to everyone in Canada who had given them support over the previous couple days.
That one, with a mellow pop vibe and lyrics in English stood on its own from the set, and as it ended Matsuo said "c'mon, let's rock", setting off the band's patented nonstop mo'funky rock'n'roll attack. All at once there were bursts of rapid-fire Japanese lyrics followed by wild solos, and a chance for Matsuo to be a kinetic frontman par excellence, never afraid to jump around, climb the walls, or fall to his knees, playing to the crowd on the balcony above him.
Like the music, the songs' internal logic are sorta nonstop as well — to just listen to them without seeing the performance would be a little perplexing, as it often seemed like they strip away everything except the over-the-top freakout parts of the songs, pausing only for crowd-pleasing fake endings before cranking it back up. A fine bit of spectacle in the universal language of Rock.
Listen to a track from this set here.
5:00 P.M.: Dinosaur Bones @ The Baitshop
Vocalist/guitarist Ben Fox of Dinosaur Bones knew that his crew would be challenged to engage the crowd with the intensity of the previous band: "fuck you for making us play after the Zoobombs," was his joke as the set began. Leading with "Hunters", the five-piece certainly had a more deliberate musical approach, coming more from the simmering/anthemic school of active brooding.
It had been awhile since I'd seen the band a few times back in early-mid 2009, when they were making their initial splash and collecting "watch for these guys to get big" plaudits. In that way of life stretching things out, it had taken them a while to get their ducks in a row, but now with debut album My Divider getting its release, they were back in the public eye. And there's definitely something here that sounds like this is a band that could find a larger audience. It's a bit too mannered to be precisely my sort of thing, but at least on seeing 'em in the flesh, bassist Branko Scekic's propensity to climb up any structure at hand does keep things lively.
It might have just been a function of the non-venue's sound system, but the guits weren't quite punching through the way they should have been, so some of the set kinda slid by without making much impact. Some of the songs did register, like "Royalty", which has perhaps the band's catchiest chorus, even if it is a little indebted to Nirvana. So we'll see where things go from here — if they can come up with some more material on the level of the admittedly-fabulous "N.Y.E.", they'll be a band to be reckoned with.
Listen to a track from this set here.
7:00 P.M.: Paper Lions @ Sonic Boom
After a good walk and a dinner break, I still had enough time to stop in for a set at Sonic Boom before beginning the main night-time sets. The band in the basement turned out to be P.E.I.'s Paper Lions, a young four-piece playing to an equally young crowd. After opener "Don't Touch That Dial" and a couple more songs, I was close to writing them off as a mellow version of a generic, spiky sort of "indie rock" sound. And though the band were engaging on stage, I thought they were getting a little too eager to impress when vocalist/guitarist John MacPhee started a story with, "we played for Gene Simmons of Kiss fame right here in Toronto." But what I thought was going to be marketability-related braggadocio was tempered when the story ended with the report that he didn't particularly like their set, save for the song "Trouble".
That piano-driven number also appealed to me more than their first couple songs, pushing the band more towards the pop classicism of, say, Field Music. Maybe because of the connection to that more sophisticated strain of pop, I found the material with MacPhee on keybs to have the most character. That stuff also meshed with Colin Buchanan's trebly guitar lines better.
Not everything struck me, but there were signs that the band knows how to put a song together fairly decently. Also some good harmonies, like on the newer "Sophomore Slump". If, overall, my take was this was decent poppy fare, but nothing too special, it at least left a positive impression that there's room to expand on the hooky complexity they're showing flashes of here.
Listen to a track from this set here.
* A note on nomenclature: for years both the industry showcase and music festival components were known as Canadian Music Week. But as of 2009, this was deemed to be too simple and straightforward, and the music portion was "rebranded" as Canadian Music Fest, under the aegis of the larger Canadian Music Week. I see no reason to put up with this and will simply refer to everything as CMW — although there was a part of me that also considered using the slightly cumbersome "Canadian Music Fest presented by Canadian Music Week" throughout.
1 Cultural discovery: it turns out that "Vans" is some sort of apparel company, and not just the name of a music tour populated largely with bands that I've never heard of.
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