Recording: Les Mouches

Artist: Les Mouches

Songs: Love Song to an Empty Room + (They Long to Be) Close to You [The Carpenters cover]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Main Hall ("Blocks Final Concert"), May 9, 2015.

Les Mouches - Love Song to an Empty Room

Les Mouches - (They Long to Be) Close to You

The secret identity of the show's "unnamable special guests" was spoiled well before when Owen Pallett confirmed that Les Mouches would be playing. Although Rob Gordon and Matt Smith have been Pallett's touring band for a good while, it'd been more than a decade since they'd performed under the old name, playing the music from their Blocks albums. This older material shows off Pallett's nascent songwriting gifts, even if it situates them in a different sonic environment than in his Final Fantasy/solo incarnation. The set started off with a bang — quite literally — as Gordon punctuated a line early on "Love Song to an Empty Room" by tossing a cymbal onto the floor of the open area of the stage in front of his drumkit. And from there, things proceeded well enough that "Close To You" was inserted before the closer.