Mechanical Forest Sound

Recording: Yamantaka//Sonic Titan

2012-01-29T02:50:00.000-05:00

Artist: Yamantaka//Sonic Titan

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at The Garrison, January 28, 2012.

Full review to follow. A little theatricality goes a long way, as YT//ST demonstrated, their show offering more than just their "noh wave" musical stylings. They played pretty much everything from their album, and encored with this one, which isn't. "If you have a heart / it'll tear you apart".

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!

Recording: Thieves

2012-01-28T05:11:00.000-05:00

Artist: Thieves

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at Placebo Space (Wavelength 533), January 27, 2012.

Thieves - unknown

Review to follow. A pleasantly laid-back, folky evening at the comfy Placebo Space was given a jolt from Wayne Petti & co.'s Thieves.

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!

Recording/LMA: The Mountain Goats

2012-01-27T11:01:00.002-05:00

In my normal style, here's an irregularly large number of songs from this show:

Artist: The Mountain Goats

Songs: You Were Cool / Prowl Great Cain / Going to Georgia

Recorded at The Opera House, April 3, 2011.

The Mountain Goats - You Were Cool

The Mountain Goats - Prowl Great Cain

The Mountain Goats - Going to Georgia

But if that's not enough, I've uploaded the concert to the Live Music Archive, where you can stream the whole thing or download it in the format of your choice, including lossless FLAC files:

The Mountain Goats, Live at The Opera House 2011-04-03

My notes for this set can be found here.

Gig: The Mountain Goats

2012-01-27T11:00:00.007-05:00

The Mountain Goats (Megafaun)

The Opera House. Sunday, April 3, 2011.

I've never been a big fan of The Opera House, and this trip down to Queen Street East did nothing to change that opinion. Getting into the venue is something like passing through customs to North Korea, a series of lineups and random, redundant security checks — I was asked if I had any "cigarettes" more than once. That was more than enough to drain away my enthusiasm, especially as the slowness of it all meant that I missed the bulk of the set by openers Megafaun.

I probably wasn't in the best frame of mind by this point, so the fact that what I did hear didn't do anything for me is probably inconclusive at best. What came off as hey y'all twang-ish pleasantness might have had something more substantial behind it.

As I moved up between sets, I was faced with another one of the venue's least-pleasant features — in a full house, the lower floor near the stage gets uncomfortably packed. At least, looking around, it appeared that this was a bit of an older, fannish, non-rowdy kind of crowd. That's about be what one'd expect for The Mountain Goats, a band that has a lot of highly-passionate fans who feel a strong connection to bandleader John Darnielle, whose lyrics transcend most singer/songwriter pitfalls by remaining grounded to the mundane while cutting deeply and incisively into the dark reams of pain and soul-damage.

In this crowd with plenty hardcore enthusiasts¹, I was actually here as something of a curiosity-seeker. For a band that does inspire such strong devotion, I'm actually a rather casual Mountain Goats fan, getting into them only around the time of 2008's Heretic Pride. As such, this was my first chance to see them, as they hadn't passed through town since '07 — in the band's duo days before drummer John Wurster was in the fold. They're now a relatively-expansive four-piece, with longtime bassist Peter Hughes complemented by touring keyboard player Yuval Semo.

Given the preciseness and detail that Darnielle musters, it was a disappointment that the set began with a pre-recorded skit/entry music that led off with a cheery, "hi, America!", which is never endearing to a Canadian crowd. I was feeling too rankled by that to grasp the thrust of the heavy metal overture, though I believe it was something by Morbid Angel, whose Erik Rutan produced some of the tracks on the new All Eternals Deck.

But, as the band took their places, I put all that behind me, seeing as Darnielle's music is about overcoming adversity (or, less optimistically, being crushed by it). Darnielle cheerfully apologized for the long absence from Toronto — in fact, after leading off with something new ("Liza Forever Minnelli"), he was a joyful presence on stage, countering the darkness in the songs with witty banter and a willingness to pause to tell the stories behind some of the songs. It's pleasing to observe that his clipped, nasal cadences while singing are balanced by a chipper demeanour between songs. He also must have figured his most intent fans would be up close, given a bit of a propensity to chat off mic with the front row between songs.

Although the new album got its due, there were also plenty dips into the band's back catalogue², including "Jeff Davis County Blues" and "Southwood Plantation Road" early on. Musically, The Mountain Goats is a pretty straightforward band, with quick songs and uncluttered arrangements that serve as a delivery system for Darnielle's lyrics. The live band applies a sonic consistency to material from different eras and managed to inject some energy into the songs from the new album (like like "Estate Sale Sign") that flirted with blandness in their recorded versions.

Darnielle chatted about his unusually-large microphone (a repurposed drum mic), and told the story of how Amy Grant inspired him to play without shoes. A quieter solo portion began with "Outer Scorpion Squadron" accompanied only by Semo's keys before Darnielle was left by himself on stage, strumming recent non-album track "You Were Cool" and back-to-back Sunset Tree singalongs "You or Your Memory" and "Up the Wolves".³

There were a few things that I would assume would count as rarities, like "Seeing Daylight" from the 1996 Beautiful Rat Sunset EP — you'd think that most people here wouldn't be familiar with something like that, but the audience was amazingly quiet and attentive. That and "Age of Kings" was part of an quiet-with-band burst, before tearing things up again, starting with "Palmcorder Yajna" and the jaunty "Prowl Great Cain".⁴ There were a couple more deep cuts⁵ before the main set ended with Darnielle relenting to play "No Children", which I think was the most shouted-for song throughout the night. Sometimes the darkest things can be the most cathartic, especially when Darnielle simply held the mic out over the crowd to collectively sing out the refrain for him: "I am drowning / There is no sign of land / You are coming down with me / Hand in unlovable hand / And I hope you die / I hope we both die."

At eighty minutes, that would have been a decent concert. But Darnielle raised the bar when he returned and announced, "I have the day off tomorrow, so I'm going to be straight with you. We're gonna do what the Grateful Dead used to do and just do a second set. [beat] This will be five or six songs instead of the whole set. The reason it's not a whole second set is that those guys were really outstanding musicians and I am just a caveman hitting my guitar with a fist... I think a six-song second set is the best I can do." With that, the band launched into a kick-ass rendition of "Going to Georgia"⁶ from 1995's first full-length Zopilote Machine. It seemed obvious that the band was reaching beyond their standard tour repertoire, as before "Song for Dennis Brown", Darnielle commented, "Wish Yuval luck, he's never heard this song." And similarly, during "Dance Music", Darnielle was twisted with his guitar toward Semo so the keyboard player could see the changes.

There was still time left for stories, including a self-lacerating tale about an ill-considered youthful decision to break up with a girlfriend via letter to introduce "Broom People". And then with a fond good night came the affirming strains of "This Year" ("I am going to make it through this year / if it kills me").

Somewhat to my surprise, the mega-encore was not the end, with the older trio returning for a cover of Nothing Painted Blue's "Houseguest", the band rocking it out as Darnielle's microphone became intermittently unplugged as he fell to his knees, blasting the lyrics to the front row. The whole show wrapped up after twenty-five songs and just shy of two hours, almost enough to make up for the venue.

I'd originally posted a song from this set here, but now I've added a few more here — along with a link to the Live Music Archive, where you can stream or download the entire concert.

¹ At one point later in the show, a woman behind me shouted up to the stage, "I hate men, but I love you, John!"

² All Eternals Deck is the band's thirteenth album, although those were preceded by a number of early cassette-only releases, to say nothing of singles and EP's. The prolific Darnielle also has a number of side-projects as well, making for a pretty vast body of work.

³ This night would prove a treat for fans of the 2005 album, which was dipped into quite frequently throughout the night, with "Dinu Lipatti's Bones" being surveyed, plus "Song for Dennis Brown" and "Dance Music" in the encore, asfter Darnielle admitted, "we have two songs left and they are also from The Sunset Tree, because that is how I'm feeling."

⁴ "This is a song about a guy who betrayed a guy! Later he felt bad because the guy got held in prison and tortured. That pretty much is what this song is about."

⁵ Including the spare "Snow Crush Killing Song" (from Sweden) and the particularly lovely "Elijah" from The Coroner's Gambit, one of the albums that, to be honest, I never even knew existed before searching for the song's origin.

⁶ Previously an ongoing concern for Darnielle, he has penned nearly two dozen "Going to..." songs.

Recording: Hussy

2012-01-27T02:55:00.001-05:00

Artist: Hussy

Song: Tarter Mouth^*

Recorded at The Silver Dollar Room, January 26, 2012.

Hussy - Tarter Mouth

Review to follow. A roar, a chug, a shout — this ain't your grandaddy's cosmic slop.

^* Thanks to a commenter for passing along the title to this one.

Recording: Daniel Nebiat

2012-01-25T09:31:00.001-05:00

Artist: Daniel Nebiat

Song: two unknown songs^*

Recorded at Gladstone Hotel (Melody Bar), April 1, 2011.

Daniel Nebiat - unknown

My notes for this set can be found here.

^* Does anyone know the title to these? Please leave a comment!

Gig: Daniel Nebiat

2012-01-25T09:30:00.006-05:00

Daniel Nebiat

Gladstone Hotel (Melody Bar). Friday, April 1, 2011.

Launching its third year in the Gladstone Hotel's Melody Bar, Batuki Music's annual World Concert Series faced a bad news/good news scenario, with scheduled headliner Mel M'rabet forced to cancel due to illness. Luckily, with such an abundance of talent at hand, programmer Nadine McNulty had no problem finding a last-minute fill-in, who turned out to be Daniel Nebiat.

Maybe these things shouldn't matter when we evaluate the music, but it counts for a lot that besides his musical gifts, Danny Nebiat is a truly warm and openhearted guy. While the band were soundchecking, a youngster, whose family was having dinner at one of the nearby tables, walked over to take a picture. Spotting him, Nebiat immediately hammed it up for the kid, even moving aside the microphone stand he was setting up to allow for a better picture of the whole band. Similarly, Nebiat is an excellent ambassador for his music, patiently introducing crowds to the krar (an Eritrean lyre) and otherwise always willing to talk about his music, whether engaging in bar-room musicology or acting as a dialect coach.¹

He was also bringing a slightly different sound from when I saw him before, with Samuel, a guitarist, sitting in for the duration of the set. Although he was new to the band, he showed great technique and knew his stuff. Mostly playing as one more rhythmic element, he largely doubled Nebiat's krar with quick, staccato picks. At a few points, I saw him intently peering at the other musicians to see where he fit in before catching the song and throwing in little double-time nibbles. Tasty, tasty licks. Meanwhile, the backbone of the band is Naz Tana's Bass and Yared's keyboards — these guys play with unflashy professionalism, leaving plenty room for Nebiat to be a showman.

Eritrean music (which overlaps with the styles of neighbouring northern Ethiopia) has two dominant modes, tigrigna and the kicking guayla beat — the latter, with its repeating ba-doom one-two rhythmic lurch, is an tasty gift from Eritrea to the world. The band gave a taste of both in the first of the forty-five minute sets, which included five lengthy jams.

In an effort to bring together different kinds of African arts, during the break there was a special presentation from the Jaivah Dance troupe, showing off their intensely physical moves. After the intermission, once the band was up to full speed again, Nebiat brought back Saba Sabina and the dance troupe back out. After impressing the crowd a bit in front of the stage, they quickly started pulling up members of the audience to dance with them, and were soon leading a dance parade around the room, a snake that kept getting longer with each circuit, until it was like a continuous Ouroboros loop. And from there, the rest of the set was more of a dance party, the songs expanding to match that, with four long tunes stretching out past forty-five minutes. And much to the crowd's delight, without missing a lick on the krar, Nebiat stepped down from the stage to dance along.

Listen to a couple songs from this set here.

As I've said many times before, I'm a big fan of these early Friday shows at the Gladstone — the folks there should be commended for continuing to program them.² This was really good night, and I feel lucky to live in a city like this where we can see such talent. Remember folks: this isn't "world" music — it's local music. It's here in our city, and it doesn't take much to feel more a part of it.

¹ Nebiat is also a busy working musician — when he's in town, most weekends he can be found playing somewhere on the Bloor/Ossington Ethiopian strip — worth seeking out!

² The "other" African music series at the Gladstone (programmed by Afrofest's Music Africa) takes over the Melody Bar on Friday nights during February to celebrate Black History Month. First up (on February 3, 2012) is Fojeba, bringing some funky zouk. Recommended! Daniel Nebiat will return to the Gladstone as well during this series, appearing with the Kush Ensemble on February 17.

Recording: John K. Samson

2012-01-24T21:05:00.000-05:00

Artist: John K. Samson

Song: The Last And

Recorded at Soundscapes, January 24, 2012.

John K. Samson - The Last And

Full review to follow. A solo acoustic set from Weakerthans mainman John K. Samson brought out a packed crowd to celebrate the release of his new Provincial album.

Recording: Weekend

2012-01-23T09:31:00.001-05:00

Artist: Weekend

Song: Age Class

Recorded at Sonic Boom Records, April 1, 2011.

Weekend - Age Class

My notes for this set can be found here.

In-store: Weekend

2012-01-23T09:30:00.004-05:00

Weekend

Sonic Boom Records. Friday, April 1, 2011.

San Francisco haze-rockers Weekend¹ were dropping into Sonic Boom's basement before they'd be heading across the street to open for postpunk O.G.'s Wire. I was glad to have a chance to see the band, who'd not made it to town yet for their own show, though I knew them from their Sports² album. It might be somewhat revealing to mention that that album came out on Slumberland, but it should be noted that Weekend hew far closer to the murky haze of, say, Crystal Stilts than the clean tweeness of Pains of Being Pure at Heart.

Or to put it another way, it was rather telling during the quick soundcheck when bassist/vocalist Shaun Durkan commented, "I don't need a ton of vocals." The extra-quick set-up came after some unspecified border delays, and although the band was a bit late rolling into the store, they were generous with their time once things got going.

The set lead off with "Untitled", the album's forceful closer. Like the album version, the song started with an instrumental overture, but once it got going, while the vox were indeed buried, they weren't swathed in layers of murk and reverb, giving the live sound a more direct feeling. The vocals got hazier after that — at first I thought Durkan had a pretty large effects rack for his bass, but it was actually for his microphone. But even with all that, the trio's sound was relatively cleaner in this setting.

There were some interesting effects of this de-hazing: "Veil" was especially cleaned up, rendering the plaintive lyric much more comprehensible and letting the words carry the song's sadness. "End Times", meanwhile, had a more overt new wave/new order kind of feel.

There were also a couple looks ahead to songs that would show up on the Red EP. In fact, at the start of "Hazel", Durkan mentioned that the band were playing this for the first time ever. "This might end in flames," he added, but it actually came off without undue problems, though it wasn't yet entirely honed to fine popsong it would become in its recorded incarnation. Closer "Coma Summer" — also with a catchy heart buried under many garbled layers — brought some more murky sonic complications along with guitarist Kevin Johnson's brisk strumming to cap things off.

The band played a seven-song set, going more more than thirty-five minutes — probably almost as much as they'd be allotted later on in the night opening for Wire. After they finished, I spotted Josh McIntyre (from local rockers Little Girls) in conversation with the band. Which makes sense, as there's definitely some close points of comparison with his own music. Weekend haven't made it back yet for their own headlining show, but there would certainly be some like-minded locals for them to play with.

Listen to a track from this set here.

¹ Not to be confused with Weekend, Alison Statton's post-Young Marble Giants project or Toronto's Drake-affiliated crypto-R&B group The Weeknd.

² Not to be confused with Sports, the 1983 chart-topper from Huey Lewis and The News. In case you're getting it mixed up with the album at hand, do note that the Weekend's most assuredly isn't the one where "the whole album has a clear, crisp sound, and a new sheen of consummate professionalism that really gives the songs a big boost."

LMA: This Mess @ Wavelength 531

2012-01-21T13:25:00.002-05:00

In collaboration with This Mess, I have uploaded their entire set (and first show!) from Wavelength 531 to the Live Music Archive. You can stream the whole thing, or download it in the format of your choice, including lossless FLAC files.

This Mess, Live at The Garrison (Wavelength 531) 2011-12-29

The band's next show is gonna be this Thursday (January 26, 2012) at the Silver Dollar, alongside Hussy, Ostrich Tuning and Mazola. Come check 'em out!

P.S. Any artists with whom I've shared recordings previously — if this looks like a cool idea to you, please get in touch with me and we can get something of yours up on the Archive!

Recording: Pissed Jeans

2012-01-21T02:18:00.001-05:00

Artist: Pissed Jeans

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at Sneaky Dee's, January 20, 2011.

Pissed Jeans - new song

Review to follow.

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? It was called out from the stage as a "new one" — please leave a comment if you have any info!

Recording: Destroyer

2012-01-20T11:03:00.001-05:00

Artist: Destroyer

Song: Song for America

Recorded at Lee's Palace, March 31, 2011.

Destroyer - Song for America

My notes for this set can be found here.

Recording: The War on Drugs

2012-01-20T11:02:00.001-05:00

Artist: The War on Drugs

Song: Coming Through

Recorded at Lee's Palace, March 31, 2011.

The War on Drugs - Coming Through

My notes for this set can be found here.

Recording: Mantler

2012-01-20T11:01:00.001-05:00

Artist: Mantler

Song: Playin' Along

Recorded at Lee's Palace, March 31, 2011.

Mantler - Playin' Along

My notes for this set can be found here.

Gig: Destroyer

2012-01-20T11:00:00.006-05:00

Destroyer (The War on Drugs / Mantler)

Lee's Palace. Thursday, March 31, 2011.

Mantler was a savvy choice for an early opener at this show, dovetailing nicely with the headliner's smooth and mellow new direction. Chris Cummings has been doing that for awhile, and here the trio was playing to a relatively thin crowd, but probably one with a lot of people who hadn't been exposed to Mantler's superbly-composed lounge-pop before.

On a stage crammed with gear, Cummings' Wurlizer and Jay Anderson's drums were squeezed right up near the front of the stage. Along with Matt McLaren's bass, the band produced a snappy funk from the low-key leadoff of "Playin' Along". "I Guarantee You a Good Time" won over some of the crowd and as the place filled in, the band held their own in terms of amount of attention being paid to them — which is always a victory for the first band up playing to people here for someone else. And Cummings elicited some cheers as he stood up to rap out a verse on closer "I've Been Destroyed". After the set, I overheard one guy approvingly describing the set to a late-arriving friend as "kinda like Bacharach", so it seems that the tuxedo-clad singer managed to make something of an impact.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Playing songs from their then-pending Slave Ambient album, Philadelphia's The War on Drugs were, at the time of this show, still mostly talked about as being the band Kurt Vile used to be in. That album would go on to make something of a splash, and put the band on an upward trajectory to a point where they're now generally being considered on their own merits. But still, I guess the seeds had been planted, as there was a fairly-full house for the quartet.

A balky microphone rendered Adam Granduciel's vox in opener "Best Night" staticky and incomprehensible, but his guitar work was pretty tasty. I dunno if it was that bad mic or something else, but he seemed to be in a testy mood at the outset: "Can you put some fuckin' sauce on it?" he desperately sneered at song's end — which, as "Baby Missiles" started, apparently meant some massive reverb. He'd repeat the call a couple more times in the set, to the extent that a few guys in the crowd were soon also calling for more sauce on it.

Underneath the sauce, his vocal delivery registered as sub Dylan-y, a flavour which was imparted even more strongly in "Buenos Aires Beach", with a folk-rock 12-string-style guitar part. So there were some tensions here between the band's retro-y fundamentals and the more contemporary tweaks. For the latter, besides that fashionable reverb, there was a tidy regularity to the rhythm section — drummer Steven Urgo was holding things together with a laptop and click-track. That imparted a sleekness, that when set against the Americana-ish vibe of the vocals, seemed to be the band's most distinguishing feature — as if they were trying to find a synthesis between a stack of Tom Petty albums and another of Thrill Jockey discs.

The mellow "Brothers" did bring their old bandmate to mind, sounding like it could nestle quite nicely on a mixtape next to Kurt Vile's "Jesus Fever". But even better was "Coming Through", where the guitar tone channelled Lindsay Buckingham and the steady rhythm channelled nothing so much as Fleetwood Mac in a concise three minutes, a more intriguing package than closer (and older track) "Arms Like Boulders" which stretched out more and leaned a bit more on the Dylanisms.

It was a forty-minute, eight-song set from the band, a lot of them in the five-minute range, in that zone between popsong concision and jammy looseness. And as the set progressed, Granduciel's mood improved — a few songs in he was fixated on the notion that the hometown crowd might, at any time, start a chant for Destroyer's saxophone player Joseph Shabason.

Listen to a track for this set here.

Shabason's "You Belong to the City"-esque sax licks would indeed be central to Destroyer's new sound on Kaputt. On stage, that was reproduced alongside trumpet player J.P. Carter (Fond Of Tigers, Inhabitants). The 80's-inspired smoothness was the album's big talking point, but somewhat unsurprisingly, in the live setting it all sounded like, well, Destroyer, with the new stuff getting scuffed up a bit and the older songs getting some smoothed-out treatments. But there's no doubt that soft-rock vibe was palpable right from the start with album-opening track "Chinatown".

Before the show, I was having a beer with J., and mentioned how it'd be interesting to finally see Destroyer play, upon which he swiftly reminded me that we had, in fact 'em, back in 2008. On being told, the memories of that show flashed back into my consciousness, mostly about the quote-unquote eccentric behaviour of leader/vocalist Dan Bejar. That persona was on display here, as the band launched into "Blue Eyes", with Bejar stopping the song after its first line. He was peering back to the soundman, thinking he was being signalled, though it turned out to be a false alarm: "I'm hallucinating," Bejar muttered, one of the few verbal asides he'd offer. On the whole, Bejar — who wasn't wielding a guitar this time around — came off as more closed off and inward-directed than previously, though still to some degree like he was playing a character.

Instead of wild-eyed rock prophet, though, his mode here was closed-eye visionary, delicately gripping the microphone as he sang. Like his multi-layered lyrics, it's hard to know whether to take his presence at face value — while on stage, is he self-consciously playing the role of anguished artist? Does he maybe really feel that way a bit, but then plays it up for gravitas? I don't assume to say, but there were times that he looked acutely uncomfortable. On the other hand, he also showed a sharp awareness of his surroundings: as "Painter in Your Pocket" was getting started, Shabason was struggling with a beer bottle when Bejar non-nonchalantly reached in his pocket and handed him an opener.

Behind the frontman was a seven-piece band, giving full-force to the new material's lush arrangements. It admirably rendered the Kaputt material with the same smooth hammer deployed on the album and applied the same treatment to the older stuff in the setlist. "It's Gonna Take an Airplane" (from 2004's Your Blues) was considerably bulked up from the original's acoustic guitar/flute mellowness, there was an excellent version of "My Favorite Year" and a spatter-y "3000 Flowers" that melded a rocking edge with the sax line.

Of the new songs, "Downtown" was notable for featuring dual bass action. "Suicide Demo for Kara Walker" featured the same extended intro as the album version, the song stretching past the eleven-minute mark but never feeling too prolonged. The main set closed with the weird disco-isms of "Song for America", and a slowly decaying synth pattern kept playing as the audience called for an encore. Returning to the stage Bejar commented, "as always, you're too kind," about his most protracted direct communication to the crowd.

The encore would only turn out to be one song, but that would be the expansive "Bay of Pigs". Clutching a handful of lyric sheets, Bejar returned to the stage accompanied only by a guitarist and keyboard player Larissa Loyva (whose backing vox throughout the night were a key element of the band's sound) though eventually the rest of the band would filter back to join in as the song slowly ramped up from floating textures to mutant pop. There was an enjoyable crack in the façade when, mid-song, the musicians nearly broke each other up, the "da-da-dums" punctuated by Bejar's half-cut-off laughs. Even if this was a less-forceful show than when I'd seen them before, it was more insistent on my memory, and I reckon that this time I won't forget that I saw Destroyer play.

You can check out something from the latest album here, or listen to an older track get the Kaputt treatment here.

Recording: Herman Dune

2012-01-20T02:05:00.003-05:00

Artist: Herman Dune (feat. Julie Doiron)

Song: Walk Don't Run

Recorded at The Horseshoe Tavern, January 19, 2012.

Herman Dune - Walk Don't Run

Full review to follow. When Julie Doiron announced that she was bumping one of the nights of her own residency at Saving Gigi to catch former collaborators/tourmates Herman Dune, it didn't take a massive leap of faith to think she'd show up on stage. Less expected for me was the amount of full-bore rockin' from the trio, with extended codas aplenty. Good stuff!

Recording: Jonathan Adjemian

2012-01-18T09:32:00.001-05:00

Artist: Jonathan Adjemian

Song: [excerpt from an improvisation]

Recorded at The Earth Ship, March 26, 2011.

Jonathan Adjemian - [excerpt from an improvisation]

My notes for this set can be found here.

Recording: Ghost Eye

2012-01-18T09:31:00.001-05:00

Artist: Ghost Eye

Song: [excerpt from an improvisation]

Recorded at The Earth Ship, March 26, 2011.

Ghost Eye - [excerpt from an improvisation]

My notes for this set can be found here.

Gig: Keir Neuringer

2012-01-18T09:30:00.009-05:00

Keir Neuringer (Jonathan Adjemian / Ghost Eye)

The Earth Ship. Saturday, March 26, 2011.

I kinda suspected that this wasn't going to be the regular sort of show. The listing required an RSVP, and the reply to the email I sent giving me the address to the mysterious Earth Ship listed me as "#13 of 35". So not a big crowd, then. And the address directed one to a "Rear Coach House", making me wonder whether this was going to be in someone's glorified garage.

It turned out to be far more elaborate than that. Passing through the door, the vestibule gave the impression of a gateway to something different, with toy record players spinning broken discs. And then, through a sheet... and into the warm and friendly outpost of The Earth Ship. Attached to the printmaking shop of local artist Jeff Garcia, this living space was filled to the brim with his works, like a giant three-dimensional collage drawn from his mind.

I don't know much about the art world, so I can't speak to all of the context he's working in, but I was immediately drawn to Garcia's work. I had seen him before at a few gigs, though, and I could easily grip the connections between local-sourced, organic music and the DIY approach in his art. Applying a sort of post-apocalyptic bricolage to the world of today, Garcia's art is often sourced from found materials, and has a funky, off-the-grid vibe. In so doing, he makes a strong statement against the crass disposability of our society, every item insisting: we could wring out so much more value from all this stuff we have casually thrown away.

One wall of the high-ceilinged main space was dominated by a giant sculpture of pinecones, each glued to a magnet and attached to a wall in a 30×30 grid, allowing for a near-infinite variety of patterns to be created by removing some. A rope sculpture dangled from above, and it appeared to be a giant plaything for Shouty, the housecat who had the serene self-possession of someone who knows they're really the ones in charge. Every show should have a cat that will climb up onto your lap and cuddle.

Very much a casual, friends-hanging-out vibe, with hearty warm drinks and a wide selection of music playing in the background. At one point, musician Isla Craig pulled out an opera album and played a cut. Perhaps appropriate for a show like this, the place gave the impression that everything was an improvisation and all the terrain was up for grabs — even where openers Simeon Abbott and Steve Ward were going to play took some deliberation before they started setting up essentially in the middle of the space.

Appearing as Ghost Eye, Ward and Abbott would be joined by a visual collaborator, and as a slow rumble of noise built up, Ward playing some low trombone notes over it, pixellated colours from a projector danced over the musicians and onto the pinecones behind them. With some creative applications of new technology, both musicians were using their iThings as instruments in this set, at first for playback to add muttering found-sound voices in the background as well as reverse-masked plinking noises. After a bit, Ward also used it as a microphone, holding it in the bell of his horn to grab sounds for further treatment — and later on, he'd pull up a keyboard app to use as an instrument. Meanwhile, Abbott, his guitar laying flat on the floor, was sticking things in the strings while manipulating sounds with pedals and his own phone.

A mini-fog machine sprayed into the projector's light-path made its digitized blocks seem as indeterminate as the music, which blurred in and out of focus. After one quiet interlude, Abbott started gently hammering his guitar strings while Ward introduced a quiet trombone line behind, using a CD as a mute. Not long after, Abbott was bowing the guitar's strings while Ward added soundbursts from a tape recorder and loop pedal, the sound eventually receding into buzzing-bee washes of looped trombone before finishing with a spooky concrète close.

It's fascinating to list of all the creative innovations used in producing the music, but it wasn't just toy time. The end result was stretched-out but not lax; contemplative but not self-absorbed.¹

Listen to an excerpt form this set here.

Instead of taking over the spot in the centre of the room where Ghost Eye had played, Jonathan Adjemian was perched like a mostly unseen, somewhat-unpredictable oracle on the landing above the entryway. There was an old wooden ladder extending out horizontally from the ledge, as as Adjemian began, Shouty the cat strolled down it to find a perch above the audience and settled in for a nap.

There would be a different sort of improvisation at hand here, as before getting down to the sort of solo keyboard work I'd heard before from Adjemian, he began by telling the story of a traveller arriving in a small town to award them with a statue of one of their leading citizens. Unable to put one of their number above the whole, the stranger proceeded to create statues of everyone in the town — as well as the town itself. Relating the story in a friendly, conversational manner as wizzling analog synth noises built up behind the words, Jeff Garcia, in the kitchen area below, added some live foley by flipping the curtain and slamming the freezer door.

As the story ended, leaving the listeners to reflect upon the difference between the world and simulacra of the world and the consequences of the replication replacing the original, the music slowly built up to some haunting synth-generated noises that sounded like loons or perhaps drifting spirits calling out. As that segued into the "song", Garcia was improvising on an overhead projector, grabbing things at hand to add to a water pan that was being projected onto the wall.

Adjemian started to add a pow-wow like beat as he played a warbling synth solo over top — the effect was strongly evocative of the NFB's Dance vignette. That moved into some more sawtooth patterns, and as it ended, the loon-like cries returned. Given the emotional arc of the music, it almost felt like a retelling of the same story as before. As it finished, when the audience down on the floor started to applaud, Shouty stood up and stretched her back, and walked off the perch like a thespian returning to the wings, as if were a matter of course that the applause was for her.²

Listen to an excerpt from this set here.

New Yorker Keir Neuringer was the night's out-of-town headliner. I hadn't heard of him at all previously, but he fit into the vibe perfectly. Neuringer came off like a solitary traveller reporting on a collapsing society, a road-bound Cassandra staying one step ahead of the flames of destruction or the pitchfork-bearing mobs preferring to ignore the situation and watch TV. The percussion-plus-spoken-word "Conquistadors" was like the work of a doomy beat poet or a we-told-you-so Last Poet, leading off: "First they came for the forests and I did not speak out because I did not live in the forests", a constant pounding rhythm churning like the industrial state looking for more and more raw materials.

He shifted over to his Farfisa to power "Rocket Ships" with a sort of funhouse dread vibe, his statements punctuated with a kickdrum at his feet, then improvised a sawtooth segue to the scorched-earth visions of "Strange Lands", a constant low warble of unease set off against a feedback-y howl. The songs felt like dispatches from a post-Empire America, with old boundaries and categories in flux, a feeling that was heightened even further on "What We Have", where suddenly his roadtrip felt less like Kerouac and more like Cormac McCarthy:

some will fall to their knees
some will stand shoulder to shoulder
some will not even flinch
some have already begun to brace themselves
some will eat flesh
some will shed flesh

Ending with the pronouncement "whatever it is, we all have it... this has all happened already" the song trailed off into an extended coda that melded into an instrumental. After a couple minutes, Neuringer reached over to stick a tape in a cassette player, adding a disembodied, warbling voice halfspeaking in zwippling fastforward bursts with one hand, while the other alternated between keyboard vamps and knob-twiddling effects on the voice, which never quite settled into mere comprehensibility. The whole thing sped up into a whirl, like a frenzied society driving itself to collapse — an apt vision, for I realized afterward that the voice belonged to Helen Caldicott, prophet of nuclear doom and familiar to Canadians as the subject of the NFB doc If You Love This Planet.

But after that, the night ended with some ascension as Neuringer strapped on his saxophone, matched the drone from his keyboard, and as that cut out, kept playing. And playing — with circular breathing that slowly transformed from being a straight drone to a repeating ostinado figure, which became increasingly punctuated by squeals and then finally into something that might sound like a conventional, if wayward solo, series of notes suddenly slowing down like he again was fiddling with the playback head of a tape player. This solo sax piece is titled "The Love Story" and it sounded like a soul-cry against all the previous dark emotions in the songs, Neuringer playing with a restless verve, pushing onward, never stopping.

The whole set, going past forty-five minutes, was non-stop. The circular breathing impressed as a feat of sheer endurance (though, in an attempt to demystify it, Neuringer gathered the crowd in a circle at the end and gave quick tutorial on the basics of the technique) but it was the songs that stuck with me afterward.³ On the whole, a really inspiring night, and the sort of show where you feel privileged to be sharing an earthship journey with such creative passengers.

Listen to a track from this set here.

¹ Besides playing in a variety of groups (as well as solo — his Lone Bone project is rather worth seeing), Ward is also busy as a musical curator, putting together shows of boundary-pushing music in his Panic! series, Monday nights at Somewhere There.

² Adjemian also operates under the bandonym Hoover Party, and can be found playing in a terrific lineup tomorrow night (January 19, 2012) at Holy Oak Café alongside Isla Craig, Alex Lukashevsky and Tenderness.

³ The songs he played derive from a pair of 2011 EP's Neuringer released under the moniker "Afghanistan" — you can check them out on his bandcamp.

Recording: Ruby Coast

2012-01-16T09:33:00.001-05:00

Artist: Ruby Coast

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at NOW Lounge (No Shame All-Ages matinee), March 26, 2011.

Ruby Coast - unknown

My notes for this set can be found here.

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!

Recording: Modern Superstitions

2012-01-16T09:32:00.001-05:00

Artist: Modern Superstitions

Song: No Shame

Recorded at NOW Lounge (No Shame All-Ages matinee), March 26, 2011.

Modern Superstitions - No Shame

My notes for this set can be found here.

Recording: Army Girls

2012-01-16T09:31:00.001-05:00

Artist: Army Girls

Song: The Power

Recorded at NOW Lounge (No Shame All-Ages matinee), March 26, 2011.

Army Girls - The Power

My notes for this set can be found here.

Gig: No Shame All-Ages Matinee

2012-01-16T09:30:00.006-05:00

No Shame All-Ages Matinee (feat. Army Girls / Modern Superstitions / Ruby Coast)

NOW Lounge. Saturday, March 26, 2011.

Following up on their look into the somewhat-underwhelming state of all-ages shows in T.O., NOW decided to be a part of the solution by turning over the Lounge on the ground-floor of their offices over to No Shame's Lauren Schreiber for an afternoon show. As I followed the signs chalked on the Church Street sidewalks into the Lounge, the show was a prima facie success, the room filled with kids of, um, all ages ranging from enthusiastic young'uns bounding underfoot to broody, Beib-coiffed tweens sullenly slouching in the booths along the walls. And on stage, I Eat Kids were probably closer to the young end of the spectrum. Representing for the ten-and-under demographic, the band's enthusiasm was so awww-inducing it was easy to overlook that they were playing songs they wrote at a pretty proficient level. Proud dad Tim Vesely (Violet Archers, ex-The Rheostatics) beamed happily at the side of the room, while a lot of friends danced around up front.

Some of that younger contingent (and their parents) slipped away after that, but there was still quite a mix on hand as rock duo Army Girls took the stage. The all-ages enthusiasm of vocalist/guitarist Carmen Elle (who noted, "I've been playing since I was fifteen") was quite apparent. Backed by drummer Andy Smith, the pair played tunes from their slim but potent songbook.

Out of breath after a churning take of "The Power", Carmen Elle commented, "when I was younger, that was easier to do." But when the sitting row of small-fry taking in the set from right up front started an organized back-and-forth wave during "Cold and Alcohol", she certainly still had enough energy to hop over and lean right up to them, happily hamming it up without missing a lick on her guitar. The set included the five songs that would later end up on the Close to the Bone EP as well as the equally-worthy "Guts".

Listen to a track from this set here.

It had been almost a couple years since I'd crossed paths with Modern Superstitions — they weren't even modern yet — but it seemed like they'd used their time well. They were a fairly taut unit back then, but now were also sounding more snappy — like a switchblade in the pocket of a leather jacket, sharpened and polished.

Vocalist Nyssa Rosaleen delivers with her strong voice, but still isn't super-animated on stage. Or perhaps excess flash just isn't the band's style — the best thing here might be a rock-solid rhythm section (Harry Burgess on bass and Ben Reinhartz on drums) that impresses with coiled potential more than kinetic pizazz. And guitarist Matthew Aldred still exercises a deadpan wit between songs.

All of which is to say there something pleasantly subtle about the band's delivery, a late-night vibe that was a bit at odds with the bright afternoon setting. "This next song is called 'School Days'. That's appropriate," commented Rosaleen, looking down the length of rectangular room, and commenting, "though the children have mainly left." ("Inappropriate!" shouted Aldred.) After the driving "No Shame" (titled, as the band took pains to point out, as a tribute to Lauren Schreiber, who supported the band and put them on her bills many times) they eased back for a couple slower ones, a nice change of pace before tearing back to close out the set.

Sunbleached, their debut full-length, is now near release¹ so I reckon we'll be hearing more about this band soon. After their set, they had some of the show's young patrons sidle up to ask 'em for autographs, so you can take that as a positive sign.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Proudly hailing from Aurora (or at least not taking pains to conceal their hometown), Ruby Coast was playing songs from their then-just released Whatever This Is.² Currently a core three-piece (guit/keyb/drums) playing with a bassist, the band led with the energetic "Stability" and slightly more addled "Dr.Acula".³

I have nothing bad to say about the band. They're a little yelpy for my taste, and maybe slot a little too easily into whatever cubbyhole you keep your Born Ruffians/Tokyo Police Club albums, which is admittedly not my thing.

Still, thanks to Keith Bradford's keyb work, there's an interesting commitment to atmospherics underlying the songs, and there's no doubt they're solid performers on stage — even managing to enlist some audience participation from the teenaged boys who moved up front to see them. Plus, I did appreciate that not everything was jammed into to a narrow musical spectrum, with stuff like "Liza Liza" slowing down the pulse a bit. Despite their album's newness, they even had some new material to present, and that was some of the stuff I liked the most.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Besides the ennobling notion of loading the heads of the next generation with good music before all the mersh crap can take root, I like all-ages shows because you're done efficiently early. In this case, with plenty of time before dinner and, um, the evening's rock'n'roll show. Having made their point, we'll see if NOW takes any further steps to help foster more shows like this in town.

¹ You can hear some songs off it on their soundcloud.

² The album is available for free at their bandcamp.

³ Am I the only one who thinks it would be kinda awesome if Drew Smith did a cover of this?

Recording: Ethio Fidel

2012-01-13T09:32:00.002-05:00

Artist: Ethio Fidel

Song: two unknown songs^*

Recorded at The Music Gallery ("Ethio T.O." concert), March 25, 2011.

Ethio Fidel - unknown

My notes for this set can be found here.

^* Does anyone know the title to either of these? Please leave a comment!

Recording: Canaille

2012-01-13T09:31:00.002-05:00

Artist: Canaille feat. Isla Craig

Song: Yekondowotch Mender (Hirut Bekele cover)

Recorded at The Music Gallery ("Ethio T.O." concert), March 25, 2011.

Canaille feat. Isla Craig - Yekondowotch Mender

My notes for this set can be found here.

Gig: Ethio T.O.

2012-01-13T09:30:00.008-05:00

Ethio T.O. (feat. Canaille feat. Isla Craig / Ethio Fidel)

The Music Gallery. Friday, March 25, 2011.

Billed as "a celebration of Ethiopian & Eritrean music in Toronto", this entry in the Music Gallery's "New World" series did an admirable job in bringing together a really interesting mix under one roof. The full-house was certainly not just the usual MG crowd, and there was a sense of energy in the room as the night began. Starting things up were jazz titans Canaille — or "Can-Isla" as guest curator David Dacks dubbed them, owing to the presence of vocalist Isla Craig on most of the songs. Jeremy Strachan's six-piece started in their usual instrumental mode with "Watusa", a Sun Ra jam they've been playing for awhile. It had a couple ragged spots, but that gave them a chance to get their bearings for the meat of the set. Launching into a new song — one that I recall seeing the band play on the day Strachan had written it — Craig joined the band, weaving her pure tones alongside the horn lines, making this feel elegant and sophisticated.

Although Ethio-groove music has long been one of the defining elements in Strachan's compositional approach for this band, it was intriguing to hear them go full-on, tackling "Yekondowotch Mender", a Hirut Bekele song. I have no way to know if Craig — singing low in her register, but still not down as far as Bekele — was mangling the Amharic, but she sounded great doing it.¹ And by that measure, there's praise due for all the musicians in negotiating this material, staying true to the sound without being slavish copyists. It seemed pretty effortless for the horn line (Strachan plus Jay Hay and Nick Bulligan) and Mike Smith's bass work was super funky. Dan Gaucher, an excellent improvising percussionist, seemed to be playing a bit more by "feel" than we'd hear in the next set. And Jesse Levine — who's knocked my socks off every time I've heard him play with Canaille — was again excellent here with his sonic function of simultaneously tying everything together while adding an unpredictable edge.

The band brought the Bekele song home in three minutes, which is a blink of the eye compared to most Ethiopian bands. After that, though, they settled in for some solid grooves. Most of the material here was reworked versions of the songs that would later show up on the band's excellent Practical Men album — best of all might have been an extended run through "Angeer", the prelude giving Levine a chance to show his stuff before another vocal turn from Craig, the whole thing stretching out past ten minutes. And then, in a version of "Practical Men", Strachan's flute was almost like a duet partner with the vocal.

The set closed with a slowly simmering Tilahun Gessesse song ("Ewedish Nebere") and a reworking of older tune "Francophonie". Really great stuff — a well-built bridge between Toronto and Addis.

Listen to a track from this set here.

That set a high standard for headliners Ethio Fidel, but this band of crafty vets have held their own in sharing the stage with plenty of big names before. The first thing to draw the eye was singer Fantahun Mekonnen, carrying a krar and wearing a cape somewhere on the Elvis/Liberace spectrum. His lute-like instrument drove the first number, which built up into a robust nine-minute jam. (As mentioned above, Ethiopian bands are rarely in a hurry to get to the next song.)

Opposite of Mekonnen in the front line on stage was bandleader Girma Wolde Michael, a true star in the local Ethiopian music scene. He's the guy that touring superstars (like Mahmoud Ahmed) call to play sax when they come to town. They were backed by a rhythm section of Gezahegn Mamo (keybs) and Andargachew Abebe (bass) behind them. And holding down the drum chair was Daniel Barnes, a veteran of the local jazz scene who has schooled himself in the tricky terrain of ethio rhythms to the point that he's also a "go to" guy when someone needs to get a band together.²

For the second song, Mekonnen put down the krar for what would turn out to be a slo-jam, complete with with Mamo's tinkly 80's keys and Abebe's nimble five-string bass runs. Given the recent coolness of such 80's soft-rock sounds, this sounded downright contemporary — the backing track could have come off, say, the latest THOMAS album. Pushing even further than that limpid lite-rock sound, some of the material pushed towards what registered to my ears as smooth jazz. Though a kickin' beat kept it mostly interesting, I wasn't as much of a fan of that part of the band's repertoire.

But there was a whole lot of goodness after that. A real mix, too, with sentimental tizita-style ballads chased with more upbeat songs that got the crowd up and dancing. I'm sure a lot of these were classics from the "golden age", given that a few were familiar even to a neophyte like me. Mekonnen worked his frontman mojo throughout, returning to stage at one point in a different, bright-striped outfit — a strong presence even if it wasn't too chatty with the crowd. After a quiet duo for krar and sax, the set — more than an hour long — ended with the scorching "Behilem".

The crowd called the band back for one more which tore it up even more with another of those classics, Mekonnen hitting an ecstatic series of moaning high notes to appreciative whoops from the crowd.

A lot of great stuff here. I'd originally posted a recording here, but I've added a couple more here so you can appreciate this band's versatility.

On the whole, a very successful night, and a deft bit of programming for the Music Gallery. It's worth noting that the night was guest-curated by David Dacks, who has just taken over as the MG's Artistic Director. That should be seen as a very promising sign for the institution's continued vitality, and hopefully he'll keep mixing things up with more shows like this.³

Also continuing the community-building vibe, the friendly folks at St. George the Martyr — the Music Gallery's landlords — invited the crowd up to the rectory to sit together and share a free meal. A warm way to close out a most-pleasing night.

¹ Although I suspect Craig did fairly well with the Amharic — she gave special thanks to musician Daniel Nebiat (as well as a couple cab drivers!) for helping her with her enunciation.

² His prominence is probably also a result of the fact that most contemporary Ethiopian bands — whether out of fashion or mere convenience — eschew the drummer and usually get by with programmed beats from the keyboard player.

³ Also worth noting is that Batuki Music, this show's co-presenters, are putting together a must-see special event, called Ethiopia: A Musical Perspective (Saturday, February 11, 2012 at Glenn Gould Studio) which will carry forward the spirit of Ethio T.O.

Recording: Planet Creature

2012-01-11T09:03:00.002-05:00

Artist: Planet Creature

Song: My Baby

Recorded at The Piston, March 19, 2011.

Planet Creature - My Baby

My notes for this set can be found here.

Recording: Elk

2012-01-11T09:02:00.001-05:00

Artist: Elk

Song: Rock and Roll

Recorded at The Piston, March 19, 2011.

Elk - Rock and Roll

My notes for this set can be found here.

Recording: Ohmno

2012-01-11T09:01:00.001-05:00

Artist: Ohmno

Song: Chinatown

Recorded at The Piston, March 19, 2011.

Ohmno - Chinatown

My notes for this set can be found here.

Gig: Planet Creature

2012-01-11T09:00:00.009-05:00

Planet Creature (Elk / Ohmno / Gentlemen... The King!)

The Piston. Saturday, March 19, 2011.

A return to The Piston's back room, where Planet Creature had celebrated the release of their EP a couple seasons previously. Like before, they invited out a series of like-minded bands to share the night.

The evening started with a quick, five-song set from Gentlemen... The King! that wasn't quite enough to leave an impression of the band's sound. Leading off with a bit of bluesy hullabaloo, there was just guitar and drums for that first song which didn't fit in with the broodier template the band otherwise employed. Joined by a bassist, the music took a darker turn for a couple songs, but the tone they were seeking was best captured in a pair of covers to close the set, including The Smiths' "Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before" and Echo & the Bunnymen's "The Killing Moon". The latter featured a flashy pair of matching red Epiphone guitars.

That's a different sound that the sleeker, keyboard-enriched tracks that one can find online. Whether this was a bit of a lark of a different direction, I'm not sure, and there's not too many signs of recent activity from the band.

Ohmno seemed unconcerned with grabbing the crowd's attention too much — they even self-effacingly introduced themselves "Crystal Meth on Meth" — and had a decidedly not-in-yr-face musical style. Leading off with instrumental "Fiero", the following "Blue Angels" was half-done before the vocal began. I recognized Tim Okura from Terror Lake — a band which uses a similar we'll-get-to-the-lyrics-eventually approach, though in a much more upbeat way — and some research tells me that the others were previously in Pacific Trash Vortex.

The band's sound is low-slung and locked-in: "we like being droney and minimal," is a fitting self-description. As they picked up steam, a couple of the songs, like "When Yer Dead" and "Chinatown" did have something more like downer-pop momentum. And closer "Beastman Sex Gang" broke from the template by including some stream-of-consciousness style lyrics about people not taking out the garbage and what's going to be for dinner — a bit more off-the-cuff and less laid-back than the rest of the set.

This is the sort of stuff whose goodness is more striking as a delayed reaction than immediate satisfaction, but this is definitely a band worth checking out. There's word of a forthcoming EP¹ so keep an eye out for accompanying live dates.

Listen to a track from this set here.

It hadn't been long since I'd seen Niagara-region surf-rockers Elk, but there were signs here of some rapid development. Leading off with one of their best songs, "Sometime Together" had more of a swagger than I recall, stretching out its legs a bit more than it had previously. There's a canny division of labour in the way the vocals are switched off — not just from song to song, but often in the middle of a line.

That the band seemed more comfortable with some of the material underlined just how much new stuff they're incorporating. Some of it was obviously works-in-progress — at least one of the new tunes started off a little wobbly but ended up with a solid bit of musical interplay. Compared to the last time 'round, "Rock and Roll" was more open in its debt to Chuck Berry, and all the better for it. And maybe it had something to do with my disposition, but I was feeling less overwhelmed by the surf beat that has served as the band's default tempo, with songs like "Spin Me Around" showing a more pop/less surf feel.²

Listen to a track from this set here.

Headliners Planet Creature were also eager to show off some of their newer songs, and as they got going, they actually skipped over several older ones bunched at the start of their setlist to get right to the fresh, post-EP stuff. The band is successful at making any show feel like a party with their friends, so it was no surprise here that when they announced that it was Femke Berkout (of The Hoa Hoa's) birthday, they produced a maraca as a gift to entice her to join them on stage for "Das Pirates".

With all their just-go exuberance, it took the band a couple songs to really settle in, but things were sounding good by "Hymns". There was a big step up here with band's harmonies and everything clicked with "My Baby", Kristina Koski's insistent keyboards playing up against Katerina T's needling guitar, like an argument between two friends, constantly egging each other on.

After more of the newer ones (I have them down as "Soup" and "~~Dolby~~" – in fact, I think the latter is actually "Derby") the band wrapped things up after a too-quick half-dozen songs. Cajoled to do one more, they produced the brand new "Brand New Ball". Good stuff, but — spoiler alert! — just the first of several confident strides from the band in 2011. As they say, watch this space for further revelations.³

Listen to a track from this set here.

¹ For now, you can check out some tracks on their soundcloud.

² Elk will be in town tomorrow night (Thursday, January 12, 2012), playing with Iron Lungs at The Central.

³ Meanwhile, in 2012, a recent dispatch from the band notes the band has a new bassist on board, an album in the mixing stages, and promises more live dates are on the horizon.

Download: Wavelength TWELVE live sampler

2012-01-10T15:50:00.001-05:00

It's the most wonderful time of the year! The line-up for the 12th annual Wavelength Festival (named, helpfully, TWELVE) was just announced. You should go here and roll around in the goodness for a bit.

There's a fair amount of music there that might be familiar if you've ever traipsed around this blog. Just to wrap things up in a tidy little package, I've uploaded a compilation featuring live recordings from thirteen of the twenty bands that are playing the festival. And you can grab it with this link:

Wavelength TWELVE live sampler

If you want to go "a la carte", you can dig around in the tag list at the right and find music from the bands playing the festival and much more. Hopefully in time there will be a compilation of live recordings from this festival, like my 2010 and 2011 collections.

Support the artists who make wonderful music like this happen — pay what you can often + enthusiastically. Also: pick one of the Wavelength organizers that most looks like they need a hug, and give them a hug.

Gig: Christina Petrowska Quilico

2012-01-09T09:00:00.004-05:00

Christina Petrowska-Quilico

Glenn Gould Studio. Thursday, March 17, 2011.

'Sfunny how after never being here before, I was back at the Glenn Gould Studio less than a month later. And this time, it was for a show that would probably be a little more simpatico with the venue's namesake.

For many of those at hand, this would be an emotionally resonant night, coming only a few months after composer Ann Southam's death. The occasion was a celebration of the release of Glass Houses Revisited, a new updating of some older compositions, crafted by Southam specifically for pianist Christina Petrowska-Quilico. Petrowska-Quilico had long worked closely with Southam, and was more like a collaborator than a mere player of the works on offer at this show, with the pieces incorporating editing and alterations that would gives her the status of co-author in all but name.

There were a couple dozen people in the lobby as the doors to the hall opened, and it was your typical older, bourgeois sort of crowd. I felt like a bit of an outlier, but it was an easy group for me to shoulder-check my way past in staking out a spot near the front.¹ The Steinway was on the otherwise bare stage with no microphones, amps, wires, etc. to distract from pure acoustic music in a gorgeous acoustical space. In a cool bit of circularity, the album had been recorded on this very stage, and was being presented in its entirety.

Speaking of circularity, all of the "Glass House" compositions were based on left hand ostinados countered by precise right hand patterns. As Petrowska-Quilico — in an elegant black silk Japanese blouse — took the stage with a quick bow and no other introduction, she launched into "Glass Houses #1" and that elegant circularity was immediately apparent. A rapid chatter on the left hand, and then a counter with the right — a quick cluster, followed by a repeating two-note motif.

There's so much fascinating stuff going on here. Southam's compositional m.o. for this material is to have the two hands playing rigourously independent of each other, each working out a precise mathematical order, free of syncopation in the funky sort of sense. That creates a bit of a tension, as the two hands aren't supposed to "groove" with each other in the way that humans tend to easily fall into.

That theoretical underpinning might give the idea that these are merely "clockwork" pieces, something invented by a composer bent on displaying their technical abilities, but I think part of what fascinates here is how the listener "completes" the composition, receiving it not so much as a series of algorithms as an emotionally-registering statement.

The following "Glass Houses #7" might be my favourite of the set, with a right-hand melody that keeps working its way back around like a niggling memory of something you can't quite place your finger on, while evoking the feel of some of the older elements of the musical tradition — admittedly, the phrase "Bach on crack" filtered through my mind here as the piece moved to its breakneck conclusion. It was hard to not burst out with a hearty "woo!" at the end of that, but I was observing conservatory rules and withholding my applause.²

Were there minor imperfections? I thought I caught a little fumble during "Glass Houses #6", but so what? It's those minor variations that also help to underline the rigourousness of the compositions; put another way, you know that you "get" what's going on when you can distinguish the mistakes. And as the set went on, the fact of the pieces as played artifacts became more important, with the first half closing with the night's two longest compositions, "Glass Houses #3" and the moody, sullen "Glass Houses #13", which went eight and ten minutes respectively, making the player's sheer endurance a part of the whole experience. As the selections stretch out, the repeating loops of the music become something that both performer and audience can get a little more mesmerized by, and just sink into the music.

That led into the intermission — which was probably a necessity for Petrowska-Quilico, who is probably one of the few players able to handle this stuff, after the non-stop, intense playing.

Another route of theoretical entry would be to think of this in relationship to electronic music. Given that meticulous precision, those repeating left-hand ostinados are rather easy to "get" for anyone who's ever listened to sequencers, and the whole thing could be seen as a low-tech way of playing loops off of each other. It's worth noting, in that regard, that Southam was an early adopter of electronic composition, only returning later in life to composing for the piano. But at the same time, in the notes for the show she discussed how the repeating figures evoked childhood memories of folk reels and Don Messer's fiddle. Ultimately, the analogue is digital is analogue in a satisfyingly complicated relationship, and the digits of the hand may get the last note in.

In the second set's selections, "Glass Houses #9" had a pretty fab high pinkie riff on the right hand that I kept waiting to come around again, and "Glass Houses #4" was just dazzlingly dense, clusters of notes rushing up in quick-passing knots. The main portion of the night ended with "Glass Houses #5", almost as note-packed as the previous one and again pushing past eight roiling minutes.

For an encore, Petrowska-Quilico told the crowd she was going to do a slow number, "because I don't think I could do anything fast." Instead, she offered the crowd Southam's haunting "Slow River #7". This was mind-blowingly good — Southam's slow, spare stuff was the material to which I was first drawn, finding it in a pitch-perfect space between Satie and Eno. She closed out the night with another slow one, Liszt's "Little Piano Piece #2", which had a waltz-y regularity in its left-hand movement to make it feel like there was an affinity to the Southam pieces we had heard.³

Coming out from the hall, there were a couple tables in the lobby filled with fruit and fancy sweets, so what the hell — I lingered a bit to nosh. It turned out to be a little reception to complete the album release. There were some fond words from Petrowska-Quilico as well as producer David Jaeger, who talked about the recording process and their relationship with Southam — her absence leaving a slight pang underneath it all. But let her be remembered through these artifacts — and hopefully discovered by more explorers.

¹ This sentence may contain slight exaggerations. Actually, I wasn't the most aggressive person on hand in the jockeying for seats. As the neophyte will soon learn, at shows like this, the primo sightlines come from house left at the front, where you can get the best angle on the keyboard and really see the pianist at work. You could quickly see the crowd divide themselves into groups of people who thought this was a big deal, and crashed that zone right off the hop, and those who were content to sit elsewhere and just lean back to listen.

² Throughout the night, the rest of the audience would be struggling with the same issue, and after a few particularly tricky selections, a few people broke protocol to offer a smattering of applause at the end of each piece, though mostly the applause was saved for the sustained busts at the end of each set.

³ Concurrent with the album of Southam compositions, Petrowska-Quilico was also celebrating the release of her Liszt Anniversary Collection. Those two discs would be followed later in the year with Tapestries, a collection of Canadian piano concerti. The ever-busy Petrowska-Quilico has a couple local performances coming up in the near future, a duo performance with violinist Jacques Israelievitch at York University on January 17, 2012 as well as at January 28 at the Karen Kieser Award concert during the U of T's New Music Festival.

Sunday Playlist #25

2012-01-08T09:00:00.001-05:00

Sunday Playlist #25

Ganglians - Hair

Black Feelings - Torch Bearer

Woods - Blood Dries Darker

Thee Oh Sees - Dead Energy

Doldrums - unknown

Sunday Playlist is a semi-regular feature that brings back some of this blog's previously-posted original live recordings for an encore. You can always click the tags below to see what I originally wrote about the shows these songs came from.

Recording: Holiday Rambler

2012-01-08T03:40:00.000-05:00

Artist: Holiday Rambler

Song: Dogwood

Recorded at Dickens Street Theatre (Feast In The East 9), January 8, 2012.

Holiday Rambler - Dogwood

Full review to follow. Spare and affecting old-timey songs suitable for modern sensibilities. There's a couple more chances to catch Holiday Rambler in the near future: Saturday, January 21, 2012 at DAPS All-Ages IX, Kapisanan Centre and Friday, January 27 at Placebo Space as part of Wavelength 533.

Recording: The Deeep

2012-01-06T09:02:00.002-05:00

Artist: The Deeep

Song: I Am Stretched On Your Grave (Sinéad O'Connor cover)

Recorded at 918 Bathurst (Wavelength 516), March 13, 2011.

The Deeep - I Am Stretched On Your Grave

My notes for this set can be found here.

Recording: Hybrid Moments

2012-01-06T09:01:00.002-05:00

Artist: Hybrid Moments

Song: [excerpt from an improvisation]^*

Recorded at 918 Bathurst (Wavelength 516), March 13, 2011.

Hybrid Moments - [excerpt from an improvisation]

My notes for this set can be found here.

^* So far as I know, anyway. However, it's not impossible that this piece has a title.

Gig: Wavelength 516

2012-01-06T09:00:00.008-05:00

Wavelength 516 (feat. Eons / Hybrid Moments / The Deeep)

918 Bathurst. Sunday, March 13, 2011.

A Sunday night Wavelength is nothing new, but there was a sense of novelty in the show's location, the recently-opened arts space at 918 Bathurst Street. Built as a church and more recently a Buddhist temple, I'd walked past the spot's modest streetfront façade many times paying it no mind — and was thus quite surprised at the grandeur of the main hall. The wooden slats of the high-arched roof meeting a line of windows along the walls gave the impression that this should be at some rustic location by a lake. The room had a woodsy and warm comforting vibe, and my first thought was that I wanted all subsequent shows of any variety to be held here.

Plus, this was a seated show, something worth savouring for a Wavelength. And catering to the unseatable, there was a large open space to stand and mingle behind the chairs. The stage was decorated with loosely-woven cables of fabric in front of the large monolith-like structure at the back wall. The church-y atmosphere seemed to mellow out everyone in attendance, including host Doc Pickles, who was soon grooving on a lone tealight at the front of the stage as he started things going. All told, it was a pitch-perfect atmosphere for the debut performance from the "spectral folk" of Eons.

This trio maps out a newly-discovered fjord on the Bruce Peninsula, feauring three of that band's members, but most centrally Matt Cully, who developed this as an outlet for his songs while BP remained on hiatus due to Neil Haverty's medical leave. There was an element of sadness underneath things that a friend's misfortune was the circumstance that brought this about, and that might be one element accounting for the mournful loneliness that animated the band's laments.

Cully's vox and guitar were supplemented by instrumental shading (on guit, lap steel and keyb) from Andrew Barker as well as Misha Bower's harmonies. The latter was an essential factor here, not just embellishing Cully's voice (which is certainly proficient, but left unadorned might not be enough to carry a full set) but also in acting as sparkplug yin to Cully's more low-key yang, adding her usual engaging presence on stage.

The first song established the mood and fit everything just right into the churchy space before it segued into a cover of Michael Hurley's "Werewolf". There were five originals besides that — the best of the bunch was probably "Arctic Radio", described by Cully as being "about what songs sound like when there's no one there to listen to them", again invoking that sense of spare loneliness that suffused the set.

But still, this was more a celebration than a gloom-fest. There were lots of friends from the BP circle around — not just musicians, but also artists like Jeff Garcia, who had created a fab silkscreened poster for the show. And as the set closed with "Chair on Fire", probably the most uptempo of the lot, the moment felt about exactly right.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Filling up the space with a decidedly different sound was Hybrid Moments, the rawk/improv duopoly of Matt Nish-Lapidus and Wavelength founder Jonny Dovercourt (both on guitars). Showing some continuity with their past sets — which tend to include some off-the-cuff structured improvisations — the pair opened with the more song-like "The Pugilist", which works off a central riff, tossed back and forth between the two guitars.

Things were more experimental after that, like the follow-up that built up to a shred-y dialogue before imploding into a metaloid grind. The set's second improvisation found Nish-Lapidus treating his guitar with drumsticks, one jammed under the strings and another used for percussion while Dovercourt created a churning white noise underneath. That slowly morphed into a cover of their band's titular song, The Misfits' "Hybrid Moments", with vox from Dovercourt, who was rocking a Tardis pendant on a chain around his neck.

Just as the music surfs the line between songs and improvisations, it also exists on both sides of the "environmental" barrier: there was something here for the people who wanted to sit down and pay attention, but it also filled the space nicely for the larger cohort who were standing around at the back of the room, treating this as aural wallpaper decorating their social interactions.¹

Listen to an excerpt from this set here.

"We really advocate body movement... mind movement.... move however you'd like to." This was the opening foray from Isla Craig, T.O.'s 2011 face of positivity. As The Deeep² got started, her own movement was limited, as she crouched on the floor above her loop pedal, building up layers of wordless vocals like pillars of clouds. Victoria Cheong was also down-low to the stage, twisting knobs while Wolfgang Nessel was a bit more mobile, wandering around with his bass.

There were three heads nodding as the music slowly built up, with the Deeep trademarks of looped skankin' riddims underneath Craig's vocals creating a slithering, watery vibe. Appropriate for a band celebrating the release of a 12" single, all the jams here felt like extended versions, with songs and sounds flowing back and forth.

During "Mudd", once the stew was simmering, Craig took her own advice, jumping down off the stage and walking up the central aisle to check on the sound from the floor. The mix in the room was, perhaps, a little too clear for the band's music, given its affinity for low-end glurp. Still, as the set progressed, it became more groove-friendly — though in a sort of molasses-y way — and Matt Cully led the charge to fill in the zone in front of the stage with dancers, Nessel quickly jumping down to join them.

With further ebb and surge, there was a break for the quieter reverse-warped mindscape of "Dreams". Ultimately, the set featured pretty much all of the band's repertoire, ending with a big dance jam leading into "Slow Coaster". A fitting celebration of the band's forward-looking vision.³

Listen to a track from this set here.

And as the show ended, the venue was nicely located for me to amble over to Spadina to go in the Kendal Avenue subway entrance, and nod hello to local hero Joyce Wieland's caribou before stepping on my train home. What more could you ask for?

Wave-heads have a lot to look forward to in the next couple months. WL 532 goes tomorrow night (Saturday, January 7, 2012) at The Garrison, sporting a rocking lineup with Del Bel, The Hollow Earth, Persian Rugs and RLMDL. A quiter, sit-down show, featuring Thieves, Giant Hand and Holiday Rambler, will be on hand at Placebo Space (one of the city's comfiest venues!) on Friday, January 27, 2012. All of that is leadup to one of the most wonderful times of the year, as Wavelength's annual festival is set once again for the Family Day Weekend (February 16 to 19). And if that weren't enough, longtime Wavelength MC Doc Pickles is reclaiming Sunday nights with a new series called Crosswires that launches on February 26th, the weekend after the festival.

¹ No word on anything coming up from the Hybrid Moments camp, but I will note that This Mess, one of Matt Nish-Lapidus's other projects (who really nailed it at their debut show) will be playing the Silver Dollar on Thursday, January 26, 2012 on a bill alongside Cartoons and Hussy.

² The extra "e" was for "extra long set", the band playing for over fifty minutes, including several new/unreleased songs.

³ Such deeep waters can not stay still. These days, you can still find Isla Craig being Isla Craig, as well as working in a whole armload of other bands. VG and WG, meanwhile, have been crafting some experiments as HVYWTR, with some early results emerging a couple months ago — word on the street is that some tapes and live shows are on the horizon.

Recording: The White Wires

2012-01-04T09:34:00.002-05:00

Artist: The White Wires

Song: Just Wanna Be With You

Recorded at Wrongbar (CMW 2011), March 12, 2011.

The White Wires - Just Wanna Be With You

My notes for this set can be found here.

Recording: Teenanger

2012-01-04T09:33:00.002-05:00

Artist: Teenanger

Song: Tired of You

Recorded at Wrongbar (CMW 2011), March 12, 2011.

Teenanger - Tired of You

My notes for this set can be found here.

Recording: Heavy Cream

2012-01-04T09:32:00.001-05:00

Artist: Heavy Cream

Song: Heavy Cream - I Know This^*

Recorded at Wrongbar (CMW 2011), March 12, 2011.

Heavy Cream - I Know This

My notes for this set can be found here.

^* I have also seen this song listed online under the less prosaic title "Boner Party USA"

Recording: The Pack a.d.

2012-01-04T09:31:00.001-05:00

Artist: The Pack a.d.

Song: Crazy

Recorded at Wrongbar (CMW 2011), March 12, 2011.

The Pack a.d. - Crazy

My notes for this set can be found here.

Festival: CMW 2011 (Saturday)

2012-01-04T09:30:00.003-05:00

CMW 2011^* (Saturday) (feat. Fred Penner / Mockingbird Wish Me Luck / The Pack a.d. / Heavy Cream / Ty Segall / Teenanger / White Wires)

Friday, March 11, 2011.

This is an expansion of my initial notes from the festival, which can be found here.

8:30 P.M.: Fred Penner @ The Drake Underground

Well, this was a bit of an outlier on the schedule, venue-wise but even moreso in terms of sentiment. When I first saw the name "Fred Penner" on the schedule I laughed, and then I double-checked that it wasn't an ironically-named pop-punk band, then I marked it in my maybe pile.

And then I showed up to see him. Fred Penner and I have a history, though perhaps not the one that you'd expect. I am, in fact, just a titch past the age to have been mesmerized by the original run of Fred Penner's Place on the CBC. I remember it being on, but with typical kid acumen I dismissed anything I was too grown up for. However, years later, on the day I matriculated from university, Penner was the recipient of an honourary degree — so I've always felt a special affinity for him as a fellow member of my graduating class.¹

And it looked like the bulk of the crowd at The Drake also had some long-standing ties to Penner. If you do the math, you'll note that a wide swath of today's hipsters, bloggers and music writers probably did grow up with Fred Penner, so when that familiar theme music chimed out of the speakers there were a lot of smiles about.

"Imagine a log that I just crawled through," said Fred Penner as he stepped on to the stage at the song's end. Wearing a wireless hands-free mic, he told the crowd to stand up straight, clear their throats and sing along. And as he launched into "What a Day", they did without reserve — some things can just cut right past the scaly growths of irony.

Penner was backed by guitarist Paul O'Neill and two backup singers, who would turn out to be his daughters Haley and Kendra. Penner had his acoustic guitar, but mostly relied on his guileless charm. "It's a little different atmosphere than the usual Fred Penner concert," he said, looking out into the crowd in the darkened basement bar. "But the energy is the same and the joy... is the same." There were some slight nods to the grown-up crowd: inspired by Del Barber, who had played before him, Penner declared he wanted to get back to his folkie roots and announced a Pete Seeger song, pausing to chastise the crowd when they didn't cheer in recognition at the name. The topical "Garbage" was followed by another period piece, as "Happy Feet" (presented complete with kazoos) is well-known as a Fred Penner song but in fact comes from the 1930 flick King of Jazz.

After that he paused for storytime, telling the tale of daughter Haley's first bike ride, pantomiming it while guitarist O'Neill added sound effects. The audience was duly prevailed upon to raise their hands and pledge they'd never ride their bikes with their eyes closed. And as that became the lead-in to "Proud", I looked around at the people clapping along, thinking to myself, "yeah, this is shtick-y as all git-out, but so what?" Even I felt some of the emotional resonance at this stuff.

Speaking of shtick, "Company Coming" paused for some shenanigans from O'Neill , trying to work in the intro to "Stairway to Heaven" to impress any industry types in the crowd before the big finale. For "Sandwiches" ("our all-time second most requested song"), Penner pulled up a couple young women from the audience to sing along and play tambourine — they looked somewhere beyond delighted. And then it was no surprise as the set closed with "The Cat Came Back" and an overpowering wave of unabashedly giddy joy in the room as Penner segued into a mini-medley of "Hit the Road Jack" and "Crabbuckit", complete with cat-appropriate lyrics. As I made my way out, there was already a queue forming at his merch table with people looking eager to take Penner up on his offer of saying hello or getting a picture. This is the stuff that memories are made of.

Listen to a track from this set here.

9:30 P.M.: Mockingbird Wish Me Luck @ Wrongbar

I have much less to say about Kitchener quartet Mockingbird Wish Me Luck. To be honest, I wasn't expecting to catch 'em at all, but Wrongbar was running its sets on the half hour, and as I strolled in they were taking the stage. My pre-festival homework had told me that this wasn't particularly my thing, too, but I knew I was going to be camping out for the night at Wrongbar, and I knew it was going to get busy, so I reckoned to beat the rush.

Featuring an amped-up version of a Heartland college-rock sound, the most distinctive thing here was the fact that the band had not one, but two hoarse-voiced singers. That's a "punk" signifier that doesn't do much for me — in fact, my notes describes their vocal stylings as "Hrarrarrar Huurgh!". That aside, the sort of songs the band were playing reminded more of, say, Buffalo Tom more than anything. Which is a good starting point. But I just couldn't get past the vocal style.

The band's efforts weren't helped when a kick drum pedal died on them and the set kinda skidded to a halt for a couple minutes. I'd been taking this in from up in front of the stage, but after that I went and found a place to sit down and kinda tuned the rest out.

10:30 P.M.: The Pack a.d. @ Wrongbar

The room was filling nicely as this Vancouver duo — Drummer Maya Miller and guitarist/vocalist Becky Black — took the stage. Launching what would be a recurring feature through the night, there were some feedback issues and monitor trouble as the set started. Despite having trouble hearing each other, the pair generated some convincing scuzz-blooze.

Black is a howler and Miller drums with hair-flinging intensity. She was also an engaging ham and a charming banterer between songs. In a between-album phase, the pair were no longer entirely focused on 2010's we kill computers, but were only mixing in a handful from what would become their highly-praised Unpersons, though a few like "Hear Me Out" got an airing. The music is mostly a straight-ahead garage-punk version of the blues, but they did take the foot off the gas pedal a bit after a few songs, for relatively more sedate stuff like "Oh Be Joyful".

Being associated with the blues idiom can be a bit of a stylistic trap, and being a guitar-drums duo can certainly make for certain easy comparisons, but it didn't feel like the band was unduly limiting themselves. The bluesy-ness was more pronounced on some of the older stuff like "Don't Have To Like You", with Black forcefully mumbling the lyrics, but for the newer stuff, it's too reductive to play the White Stripes card — at least live, the band's vibe is more garage-punk splatter, with definite pop potential on songs like "Deer" and especially "Crazy".

They certainly had an evil-invokin' rock'n'roll hoodoo thang going on — especially for one woman in the crowd, who danced in front of the stage for most of the set, then suddenly took to kicking one of the barstools a few times. And during the last song, she picked it up, hurling it across the dancefloor. Good fun 'til somebody loses an eye.

Listen to a track from this set here.

11:40 P.M.: Heavy Cream @ Wrongbar

The sound issues that had plagued the last band were multiplied for Heavy Cream. After a dragged-out turnover, the Nashville four-piece welcomed the crowd with a steady loud hum behind them and had to pause following their first song for a secondary line check. After that, the momentum was never quite there, and the sound was never quite right — for most of the set it was stuck as a dull loud roar punctuated by feedback yelps.

Despite that, the band plunged through and it did get a little better as the set went along. One gets the impression that they've probably played their fair share of basements and dive bars, given their inclination to just make do and plunge onward. It took a little effort to extrapolate, but what was going on underneath the sound problems was definitely good stuff. Catchy poppy punx with a dynamic frontwoman in Jessica McFarland, even with a truncated set stopping short of twenty minutes — three of them spent adjusting things — the band managed to tear off nine songs. No fault of their own that this didn't feel entirely satisfyin', and I marked the band down as one to revisit.²

Listen to a track from this set here.

12:20 A.M.: Ty Segall @ Wrongbar

The joint was now at maximum crammage, that state where it's almost impossible to move or breathe when you're anywhere close to the stage. I was here mostly out of curiousity, but there was obviously a rabid local fanbase for Ty Segall. The prolific Bay Area rocker took the stage, looking every inch like an All-American, a fair-haired cornfed surfer golden boy who could muster a plucky grin in the face of adversity. Which is to say, he didn't look entirely the part of an up-from-the-underground rocker.

His music, too, was apparently not what it seemed to be. Sounding, to my ears, like scrappy DIY rock jams, it was received by the crowd as pure, unadulterated punk. I never really understand how people collectively decide that some artists are meant to be moshed to, so even if Segall's music doesn't immediately register as, y'know, especially mosh-y, the crowd was quickly roiling along. I guess it's some combination of the fact that he plays rough'n'ready rock, delivered with punk-ish intensity and that a certain audience has adopted him. Whatever the recipe, the outcome was barely-controlled chaos, both on the stage and in the crowd.

Playing in a quartet, Segall was backed by second guit, plus bass and drums. With a pretty hefty catalogue of songs to pick from, Segall careened through a dozen or so songs in his thirty-five minutes. Thank goodness that mid-set he had to cadge a spare guitar, allowing a moment's respite. I'm normally one to hold my position, and while I wasn't even in the thick of things, the crowd was so tightly packed, pulsating around me, that eventually I had to bail and find a bit of personal space. Even if it was a good-humoured and amiable crowd — I got a friendly "sorry" from a guy whose arm had bounced off me — it really was more than I liked. Working my way around, I eventually ended up facing perpendicular to the stage, where it was a little calmer.

On the whole, it was good stuff, albeit more of an experience than musically excellent. And like life, I suppose, you can celebrate that you endured it.

Listen to a track from this set here.

1:30 A.M.: Teenanger @ Wrongbar

With a lot of people heading out after Ty Segall, there was a much more manageable crowd left over, though there were some shove-y people pushing their way to the front as Teenanger started. By this point of the night, I was well content to stand behind them. Interestingly, in my mind, Teenager's sound — which can be summarized as "throbbing bad vibes" — was well-suited to the late hour and was exactly the sort of thing that should merit the sort of crowd action Ty Segall received. It's strange to me that people come out for the out-of-town hype and split before the local band that's working at just as high a level.

For their set, the band was focusing on their newer (and then-unreleased) material, some of which will just now be seeing the light of say on their Frights LP³. There's some fabulous songs there, like "S.L.W.". The set included an anti-shout-out to Rob Ford, and some songs (like "Tired of You") burst by in whitehot minute-long flashes while a couple further on in the set stretched things out — including the set-closing rendition of "Frights" that pulled back the velocity to good effect. Keep an eye on Teenanger in 2012, folks.

Listen to a track from this set here.

2:30 A.M.: The White Wires @ Wrongbar

As his bandmates set up around him, bassist Luke Martin was busy with a bit of DIY instrument upkeep, daubing whiteout dots on the frets of his instrument's neck. Such roughshod charm co-exists with precise rock'n'roll songcraft in the band's music. Launching with statement of purpose "Pogo 'Til I Puke Tonight", The White Wires are easy-to-grasp in the best way — when I first saw 'em, I noted they have "as much Eddie Cochrane as Young Canadians in their lineage" and that seems about right.

Playing with the wobbly certainty of the last band up (and therefore being the ones partying for the longest while waiting), singer/guitarist Ian Manhire uses breakneck speed to elevate his songs on the evergreen topics of rockin', partyin' and lookin' for a little love. Zipping by in something of a blur, there was a sort of soft ending to the set — after efficiently cranking out ten songs in twenty-five minutes, the band thought they were done. Told they had ten more minutes, they shrugged and went back at it for three more tunes. Things started pulling apart at the seams a bit toward the end, but it felt about right. White Wires are pretty great live band, and this was a good way to wrap up the festival.

Afterwards, the remnants of the crowd lurched out into the night. With the time change it was now four a.m., which made it feel even more like the end of a full day's night of rock'n'roll.

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 This was, in fact, by far the most memorable part of my convocation, as after receiving his degree, Penner pulled out his guitar and did a couple songs reminding us all that we could be whatever we wanted to be.

Fred Penner should be on hand to greet undergrads on their first day of university telling them that.

² And in fact, I did so at the next available opportunity.

³ Coming out on January 24 on Telephone Explosion records, there are a lot of folks salivating for this record — some scene-watchers even venturing to predict that this might push the band up into the wider consciousness.

2011 Gig List

2012-01-01T14:00:00.013-05:00

Giant Hand (Winchester Warm)
The Imperial Pub Backroom 2011-01-06 (Thursday)

Out of This Spark 4th Anniversary Celebration (feat. OOTS Family Band / Evening Hymns / Richard Laviolette and The Oil Spills / The Pale Mornings / Jenny Omnichord / The Phonemes / Kite Hill)
The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2011-01-07 (Friday)

Frankie Rose and The Outs (Little Girls)
The Shop under Parts & Labour 2011-01-12 (Wednesday)

FOUR CORNERS II (feat. Lullabye Arkestra / Quest for Fire / Sun Ra Ra Ra / Rituals)
Steelworkers Hall 2011-01-14 (Friday)

Sean Nicholas Savage (Dr. Ew / Army Girls)
!059 2011-01-15 (Saturday)

Canaille (Stop Time)
The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2011-01-21 (Friday)

Dentata (Anagram / Bruised Knees / Holy Mount)
The Silver Dollar 2011-01-21 (Friday)

Live Love Large Benefit Concert (feat. Gentleman Reg / Hooded Fang / Kat Burns)
Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto 2011-01-28 (Friday)

The C is for Cure (Matinée Show) (feat. Snowblink / Kith & Kin / The Deeep / Steven McKay)
The Music Gallery 2011-01-29 (Saturday)

The C is for Cure (Evening Show) (feat. Evening Hymns / Austra / Timber Timbre)
The Music Gallery 2011-01-29 (Saturday)

Your 33 Black Angels (Pow Wows / HotKid)
The Silver Dollar 2011-01-29 (Saturday)

Khôra (Not the Wind, Not the Flag)
The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2011-02-02 (Wednesday)

Do Make Say Think
Sonic Boom Records 2011-02-03 (Thursday)

Julie Doiron (Little Scream / Steven McKay)
The Horseshoe 2011-02-03 (Thursday)

Hush Arbors (Jason Ajemian / Loom / Spiritual Sky Blues Band)
Placebo Space 2011-02-05 (Saturday)

The Radio Dept. (Young Prisms)
Lee's Palace 2011-02-07 (Monday)

Old World Vulture (Ostrich Tuning / Epigram)
The Boat 2011-02-10 (Thursday)

Resolutionaries Marimba Band
The Gladstone Hotel (Melody Bar) 2011-02-11 (Friday)

catl (Steamboat / Youth Crime)
The Horseshoe Tavern 2011-02-11 (Friday)

Daps All-Ages 6 (feat. Colour Connection / Nicholas Doubleyou and The B-Squad / Hut / Abstract Random / Army Girls)
Kapisanan Philippine Centre for Arts & Culture 2011-02-12 (Saturday)

Bonjay
Soundscapes 2011-02-12 (Saturday)

Rebekah Higgs (Tasseomancy / Laura Barrett)
Rivoli 2011-02-12 (Saturday)

ELEVEN! The Wavelength 11th Anniversary Festival – Night 1 (feat. The Jim Storie Juniors / Bruised Knees / The Guest Bedroom / Anagram)
The Boat 2011-02-16 (Wednesday)

The Dears
Sonic Boom Records 2011-02-17 (Thursday)

ELEVEN! The Wavelength 11th Anniversary Festival – Night 2 (feat. Not The Wind, Not The Flag / Gordon Grdina’s East Van Strings / Eiyn Sof / Kite Hill)
The Music Gallery 2011-02-17 (Thursday)

ELEVEN! The Wavelength 11th Anniversary Festival – Night 3 (feat. Doldrums / Romo Roto / Pat Jordache / Minotaurs / Woodhands)
Steam Whistle Brewery 2011-02-18 (Friday)

ELEVEN! The Wavelength 11th Anniversary Festival – Studio Session #1 (feat. Not The Wind, Not The Flag / Woodhands)
The Tranzac (Tiki Room) 2011-02-19 (Saturday)

ELEVEN! The Wavelength 11th Anniversary Festival – Night 4 (feat. Grimes / Eric Chenaux Electric Trio / Little Girls / Maylee Todd / Hooded Fang)
The Great Hall 2011-02-19 (Saturday)

ELEVEN! The Wavelength 11th Anniversary Festival – Night 5 (feat. Ghostlight / Simply Saucer / Neon Windbreaker / LAST [Lullabye Arkestra & Steamboat Superstars Anniversary Band])
The Garrison 2011-02-20 (Sunday)

Chang-a-Lang (Terror Lake / Elk / Cigarettes)
The Horseshoe Tavern 2011-02-21 (Monday)

Okavango: An African Orchestra
Glenn Gould Studio 2011-02-25 (Friday)

Betty Burke
Holy Oak Café 2011-02-25 (Friday)

Dum Dum Girls (Minks / Dirty Beaches)
El Mocambo 2011-02-26 (Saturday)

New Creations Festival: "Short Ride In A Fast Machine"
Roy Thomson Hall 2011-03-02 (Wednesday)

Pemi Paull
The Music Gallery 2011-03-03 (Thursday)

New Creations Festival: "Electronica Meets Orchestra"
Roy Thomson Hall 2011-03-05 (Saturday)

Elfin Saddle (Picastro / Khôra)
The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2011-03-05 (Saturday)

Mantler's Visual Music
TIFF Lightbox 2011-03-09 (Wednesday)

The Balconies
Sonic Boom Records 2011-03-10 (Thursday)

CMW: Canadian Music Week
Thursday – Night 2011-03-10
Friday – in-stores 2011-03-10
Friday – Night 2011-03-11
Saturday – Afternoon 2011-03-12
Saturday – Night 2011-03-12

Wavelength 516 (feat. The Deeep / Hybrid Moments / Eons)
918 Bathurst Arts Centre 2011-03-13 (Sunday)

Christina Petrowska Quilico
Glenn Gould Studio 2011-03-17 (Thursday)

Planet Creature (Elk / Ohmno / Gentlemen... The King!)
The Piston 2011-03-19 (Saturday)

Ethio T.O. (feat. Girma Wolde Michael's Ethio Fidel / Canaille with Isla Craig)
Music Gallery 2011-03-25 (Friday)

No Shame All-Ages Matinée (feat. Ruby Coast / Modern Superstitions / Army Girls)
NOW Lounge 2011-03-26 (Saturday)

Keir Neuringer (Jonathan Adjemian / Ghost Eye)
The Earth Ship 2011-03-26 (Saturday)

Destroyer (The War on Drugs / Mantler)
Lee's Palace 2011-03-31 (Thursday)

Weekend
Sonic Boom Records 2011-04-01 (Friday)

Daniel Nebiat
The Gladstone Hotel (Melody Bar) 2011-04-01 (Friday)

The Mountain Goats
The Opera House 2011-04-03 (Sunday)

Nomeansno (METZ)
Lee's Palace 2011-04-04 (Monday)

Daniel Romano (The Weather Station)
Dakota Tavern 2011-04-05 (Tuesday)

Barnyard Records Triple CD Launch (feat. AIMToronto Orchestra / Evan Parker/Wes Neal/Joe Sorbara / Halcyon Science Band)
918 Bathurst Arts Space 2011-04-09 (Saturday)

Jon Langford & His Sadies (Dean Waco / Jon Langford's Skull Orchard / The Good Family)
The Horseshoe 2011-04-15 (Friday)

Record Store Day 2011 (feat. Teenanger / Bidniband / Rouge / Ben Gunning / Sister / Light Fires)
Sonic Boom 2011-04-16 (Saturday)

The Sadies
Toronto Reference Library 2011-04-16 (Saturday)

Fergus & Geronimo (Surf City / Bruised Knees)
The Garrison 2011-04-16 (Saturday)

"Support Afrofest" Concert (Feat. Donné Roberts / Ruth Mathiang / The Resolutionaries Marimba Band / Afrafranto)
918 Bathurst Arts Centre 2011-04-22 (Friday)

Flowers Of Hell (RatTail / Planet Creature)
The Cameron House (backroom) 2011-04-23 (Saturday)

Godspeed You Black Emperor!
Lee's Palace 2011-04-24 (Sunday)

The Hoa Hoa's (Ostrich Tuning)
The Boat 2011-04-29 (Friday)

Emergents Series IV featuring Katelyn Clark & Patrick Dupuis + GREX
The Music Gallery 2011-05-14 (Thursday)

One Hundred Dollars (Nordic Nomadic)
The Great Hall 2011-05-13 (Friday)

The Ex & Brass Unbound (The Swyves)
Lee's Palace 2011-05-18 (Wednesday)

Jennifer Castle (Bahamas / Carl Didur)
The Horseshoe 2011-05-19 (Thursday)

Crystal Stilts (Actual Water / Les Frauleins)
Sneaky Dee's 2011-05-22 (Sunday)

Damon & Naomi (Amor de Días)
The Horseshoe 2011-05-25 (Wednesday)

The Davey Parker Radio Sound (Revolvers / Broken Bricks)
The Garrison 2011-05-27 (Friday)

Healing Power Picnic III (feat. Allison Peacock & Alia O'Brien / Claudio / Hoover Party / Jennifer Castle / Guy Dallas / Sex Worker / Psychic Reality / New Civilization)
South Humber Park 2011-05-28 (Saturday)

Doug Paisley
Soundscapes 2011-05-31 (Tuesday)

Doug Paisley
The Rivoli 2011-06-04 (Saturday)

Nick Kuepfer (Silent Land Time Machine / Khôra/ I Have Eaten The City)
The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2011-06-08 (Wednesday)

Kathryn Calder
The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2011-06-10 (Friday)

The Beets (Brilliant Colors / Planet Creature)
The Shop Under Parts & Labour 2011-06-14 (Tuesday)

NXNE
2011-06-15 (Wednesday) (preliminary notes)
2011-06-16 (Thursday) (preliminary notes)
2011-06-17 (Friday) (preliminary notes)
2011-06-18 (Saturday) (preliminary notes)

Omar Souleyman
Lee's Palace 2011-07-06 (Wednesday)

Afrofest 2011 (feat. Thomas Mapfumo / Dizu Plaatjies and Ibuyambo / Femi Abosede & Culture Force / The Tich Maredza Band / Anastasio & Zalang Band / Zekuhl)
Queen's Park 2011-07-09–2011-07-10 (Saturday + Sunday)

Kurt Vile (Woods)
Lee's Palace 2011-07-13 (Wednesday)

Quest For Fire (Holy Mount / The Shooting Guns)
The Silver Dollar 2011-07-15 (Friday)

Spontaneous Combustion Anniversary Party (feat. Colin Fisher + Mark Hundevad / Pterodactyl / Ulama / Ryan Driver)
The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2011-07-16 (Saturday)

Real Estate (Dent May / RatTail)
The Garrison 2011-07-19 (Tuesday)

FOUR CORNERS III (feat. Dentata, Tropics, Boars, The Soupcans)
Steelworkers Hall 2011-07-22 (Friday)

WL 522: Band On The Run (feat. Rambunctious / Eons / Digits / Pale Mornings / Lullabye Arkestra)
various locations 2011-07-23 (Saturday)

EMA (Helado Negro)
The Garrison 2011-07-23 (Saturday)

Bana Y'Afrique Festival (feat. KacheKashala / Njacko Backo & Kalimba Kalimba / Afrafranto)
David Pecaut Square 2011-07-24 (Sunday)

Out Of The Box Festival: 3 Dimensions Of Rock And Roll Part 1 (feat. The Hoa Hoas / Rival Boys / Planet Creature / The Davey Parker Radio Sound / The Cheap Speakers)
Toronto Underground Cinema 2011-07-29 (Friday)

Out Of The Box Festival: 3 Dimensions Of Rock And Roll Part 2 (feat. Papermaps / Heartbeat Hotel / Foxes in Fiction / Human Bodies / Trap Tiger)
Toronto Underground Cinema 2011-07-30 (Saturday)

R.R.R.R.R: Trash Art and Music Festival (feat. Makeout Videotape / Yamantaka Sonic Titan / Lemon Bucket Orchestra / Maracatu Mar Aberto
El Gordo back patio 2011-07-31 (Sunday)

Out Of The Box Festival (feat. The Jessica Stewart Few / Lake Forest / The Cautioneers/ Loom)
The Great Hall 2011-07-31 (Sunday)

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
Sonic Boom Records 2011-08-01 (Monday)

Handsome Furs
The Horseshoe 2011-08-01 (Monday)

Hooded Fang (Steven McKay)
SummerWorks Festival – The Lower Ossington Theatre 2011-08-05 (Friday)

The Dirt Picnic (feat. Anagram / The Holy Cobras / The Ultimatemost High / Teenanger / No No Zero / Ell V Gore)
Royal Canadian Legion, Branch 344 2011-08-06 (Saturday)

Great Bloomers (House League)
Summerworks Festival – The Lower Ossington Theatre 2011-08-10 (Wednesday)

Bruce Peninsula (Jennifer Castle)
Summerworks Festival – The Lower Ossington Theatre 2011-08-11 (Thursday)

Miracle Fortress (Ruby Coast)
Summerworks Festival – The Lower Ossington Theatre 2011-08-12 (Friday)

The ALL CAPS! Island Festival: Day 1 (feat. Moon King / Jen Castle / Monogrenade / Evening Hymns / Julie Doiron / More or Les)
Artscape Gibraltar Point (Toronto Island) 2011-08-13 (Saturday)

The ALL CAPS! Island Festival: Day 2 (feat. Muskox / Dog Bus / Steamboat / The Wooden Sky / DD/MM/YYYY / Rich Aucoin)
Artscape Gibraltar Point (Toronto Island) 2011-08-14 (Sunday)

The Weather Station (Daniel Romano / Eons)
CSI Annex 2011-08-19 (Friday)

MV & EE (Spectre Folk / Eric Chenaux / Tradition)
Placebo Space 2011-08-21 (Sunday)

Msaada: A Fundraiser for East Africa Relief (feat. Daniel Nebiat, Donné Roberts, Njacko Backo and Val, Sonia Aimy, Hussein Adani, Yared Tesfaye)
Lula Lounge 2011-08-25 (Thursday)

The Hoa Hoa's (Revolvers)
The Boat 2011-08-25 (Thursday)

Colin Stetson (Emily Wells)
The Drake Underground 2011-08-26 (Friday)

The Hoa Hoa's (Action Makes / Your 33 Black Angels)
The Boat 2011-08-26 (Friday)

The Hoa Hoa's (Chevalier Avant Garde / Your 33 Black Angels / Planet Creature)
Troy's Loft 2011-08-27 (Saturday)

Lisa Bozikovic (Holly Andruchuk / Brothers & Sisters)
Holy Oak Café 2011-09-01 (Thursday)

Toronto New Music Marathon (feat. Flowers of Hell / Contact Contemporary Music / John Farah / Continuum Contemporary Music / Michelle Simmons / Quartetto Graphica / Tiina Kiik)
Yonge-Dundas Square 2011-09-03 (Saturday)

ALL CAPS! Decompression Show (feat. Digits / Fresh Flesh / The Weather Station)
Artscape Gibraltar Point 2011-09-04 (Sunday)

The Jim Jones Revue (Kid Congo Powers & The Pink Monkey Birds)
The Horseshoe 2011-09-13 (Tuesday)

Muskox (L CON)
The Tranzac (Main Hall) 2011-09-14 (Wednesday)

Army Girls (Tropics / Brian Borcherdt)
Double Double Land 2011-09-15 (Thursday)

Andre Ethier (Deloro / Sandro Perri)
The Horseshoe 2011-09-16 (Friday)

Prince Enoki's Insect Orchestra (The Lemon Bucket Orkestra)
Lula Lounge 2011-09-22 (Thursday)

The Raincoats (Grass Widow)
Wrongbar 2011-09-23 (Friday)

Marnie Stern (No Joy / Army Girls)
Wrongbar 2011-09-23 (Friday)

Hooded Fang (Odonis Odonis / Wio-K)
The Academy of Lions Crossfit Gym (courtyard) 2011-09-24 (Saturday)

Elliott BROOD
Sonic Boom 2011-09-27 (Tuesday)

Sidi Touré
Lula Lounge 2011-09-29 (Thursday)

Ohbijou (Julie Doiron)
Trinity-St. Paul's United Church 2011-09-30 (Friday)

Hooded Fang
Toronto Public Library (Sanderson branch) 2011-10-01 (Saturday)

Daps All Ages Vol. VII (feat. The Grapefruit Colour / Isla Craig / Mirror Phase / Loom)
Kapisanan Philippine Centre for Arts & Culture 2011-10-01 (Saturday)

Nuit Blanche
various locations 2011-10-01 (Saturday)

Veronica Falls (Army Girls / Persian Rugs)
The Shop under Parts & Labour 2011-10-02 (Sunday)

Wild Flag (Yellowfever)
Lee's Palace 2011-10-11 (Tuesday)

Loom (OG Melody / Elfin Choir)
Placebo Space 2011-10-13 (Thursday)

Braids (Pepper Rabbit / Born Gold)
The Horseshoe 2011-10-14 (Friday)

Dum Dum Girls (Crocodiles / Colleen Green)
Lee's Palace 2011-10-16 (Sunday)

Hans-Joachim Roedelius (Lorde Awesome)
The Garrison 2011-10-17 (Monday)

Tasseomancy (Slim Twig / Princess Century)
The Great Hall 2011-10-20 (Thursday)

Bruce Peninsula (Bahamas / Frederick Squire)
Lee's Palace 2011-10-27 (Thursday)

WL 528: Wavelength Halloween Party with Corpusse — Film Screening + Performance
Cinecycle 2011-10-29 (Saturday)

A Winged Victory for the Sullen (Benoit Pioulard / Kyle Bobby Dunn)
The Drake Underground 2011-11-01 (Tuesday)

The Sea and Cake (Brokeback)
Lee's Palace 2011-11-05 (Saturday)

Wooden Shjips (Birds of Avalon / Biblical)
The Horseshoe Tavern 2011-11-07 (Monday)

DD/MM/YYYY (Child Bite)
918 Bathurst Centre for Culture 2011-11-10 (Thursday)

Sandro Perri (Andre Ethier)
The Tranzac 2011-11-12 (Saturday)

Sandro Perri (Hollow Earth / Brandon Valdivia / Jeff Burke)
The Tranzac 2011-11-13 (Sunday)

Inhabitants (Lone Bone / Drumheller)
The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2011-11-18 (Friday)

Wavelength 529: LOVEL(IN)ESS (feat. So Much Sorry / Flowers of Hell / more)
The Garrison 2011-11-18 (Friday)

Canaille (I Am Robot and Proud)
Tranzac 2011-11-19 (Saturday)

Daps All Ages Vol. VIII (feat. Christien Summers / Memoryhouse / Maiko Watson)
Kapisanan Philippine Centre for Arts & Culture 2011-11-26 (Saturday)

Heartbeat Hotel (Ostrich Tuning / Foxes In Fiction / Carnival Moon)
The Silver Dollar 2011-11-26 (Saturday)

Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba (Daniel Nebiat)
The Great Hall 2011-11-27 (Sunday)

Devon Williams (Persian Rugs / Grounders)
The Garrison 2011-11-30 (Wednesday)

Eucalyptus
Soundscapes 2011-12-01 (Thursday)

Eve Egoyan
Glenn Gould Studio 2011-12-02 (Friday)

Hooded Fang (Army Girls / L Con)
The Horseshoe Tavern 2011-12-02 (Friday)

Wavelength 530 (feat. Ell V Gore / Soupcans / Cartoons / Tonkapuma)
Soybomb HQ 2011-12-03 (Saturday)

Doug Tielli
Soundscapes 2011-12-06 (Tuesday)

Jason Collett presents The Basement Revue (feat. The Weather Station / Joe Pernice / Snowblink / "Tex Message" / The Order of Good Cheer)
The Dakota Tavern 2011-12-06 (Tuesday)

AGOrienteering: A Cartographic Composition for the Radiant Brass Ensemble and Mobile Audience
Art Gallery of Ontario 2011-12-07 (Wednesday)

Anna Calvi (The Gift)
Lee's Palace 2011-12-08 (Thursday)

The Two Koreas (Sports / Planet Creature)
The Silver Dollar 2011-12-09 (Friday)

Highlife Help: Flood Relief Benefit (feat. Afrafranto)
Lula Lounge 2011-12-11 (Sunday)

James Chance (Slim Twig / Ell V Gore / The Soupcans)
The Silver Dollar 2011-12-16 (Friday)

Jason Collett presents The Basement Revue (feat. Brandon Canning / Andy Kim / Kevin Drew / AroarA / Feist / Danielle Duval)
The Dakota Tavern 2011-12-20 (Tuesday)

Sloan (The Rural Alberta Advantage / Ohbijou / Bonjay)
The Great Hall 2011-12-21 (Wednesday)

Wavelength 531 (feat. OPOPO / The Whirly Birds / Holy Mount / Soft Copy / This Mess)
The Garrison 2011-12-29 (Thursday)

Tranzac New Year's Eve (feat. The Weather Station / Drumhellyptus / Kite Hill / The Elwins / Moon King / Maylee Todd / Rouge / Dr. Ew)
The Tranzac 2011-12-31 (Saturday)

Shows above without links will be written up as time permits.

Sunday Playlist #24

2012-01-01T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sunday Playlist #24

Holy Fuck - Red Lights

Lioness - You're My Heart

Broken Social Scene - All to All

The Two Koreas - Cloth Coat Revolution

Katie Stelmanis - The Villian

Recording: Dr. Ew

2012-01-01T04:41:00.000-05:00

Artist: Dr. Ew

Song: Oh Human History

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), December 31, 2011.

Dr. Ew - Oh Human History

Full review to follow. Bringing a bulked-up band (including Tranzac mainstay Bobby Wiseman) and some rocked-up arrangements to his New Year's Eve show, Drew Smith shocked some folks looking for genteel pop songs. "Judas!" cried one. Smith hardly looked up as he muttered under his breath, "I don't believe you." Then the band played fucking loud.

Recording: Maylee Todd

2012-01-01T04:32:00.000-05:00

Artist: Maylee Todd

Song: Haven't You Heard (Patrice Rushen cover)

Recorded at The Tranzac (Main Hall), December 31, 2011.

Maylee Todd - Haven't You Heard

Full review to follow. Back in 2008, Maylee Todd had to lead the New Year's Eve crowd in some calisthenics to get them sweating. Nowadays, she and her band just have to flex their funk muscles to get the same effect.

Recording: The Elwins

2012-01-01T04:25:00.000-05:00

Artist: The Elwins

Song: On Your Doorstep

Recorded at The Tranzac (Main Hall), December 31, 2011.

The Elwins - On Your Doorstep

Full review to follow. The Elwins got the Tranzac crowd ready for the change of the year with some new songs showing off an agreeable mix of rock crunch and bubblegum stickiness.

Recording: The Whirly Birds

2011-12-30T04:17:00.001-05:00

Artist: The Whirly Birds

Song: Holding Ever Still

Recorded at The Garrison (Wavelength 531), December 29, 2011.

The Whirly Birds - Holding Ever Still

Full review to follow. Shorthanded and pressed into service before they were expecting to meet their public, Pete Carmichael (ex-Diableros) and the fine fellows of The Whirly Birds hit the ground running — or, to use a more apt metaphor, successfully fled the nest — at tonight's Wavelength.

Recording: This Mess

2011-12-30T04:08:00.003-05:00

Artist: This Mess

Song: ½ Steps^*

Recorded at The Garrison (Wavelength 531), December 29, 2011.

This Mess - ½ Steps

Review to follow.

^* Thanks to my source who has passed the title of this along to me.

Recording: Paper Lions

2011-12-26T09:03:00.002-05:00

Artist: Paper Lions

Song: Ghost Writer

Recorded at Sonic Boom Records (CMW 2011), March 12, 2011.

Paper Lions - Ghost Writer

My notes for this set can be found here.

Recording: Dinosaur Bones

2011-12-26T09:02:00.001-05:00

Artist: Dinosaur Bones

Song: Highwire Act

Recorded at The Baitshop (CMW 2011), March 12, 2011.

Dinosaur Bones - Highwire Act

My notes for this set can be found here.

Recording: Zoobombs

2011-12-26T09:01:00.002-05:00

Artist: Zoobombs

Song: Dolf^*

Recorded at The Baitshop (CMW 2011), March 12, 2011.

Zoobombs - Dolf

My notes for this set can be found here.

^* Thanks to a commenter for passing along the title to this one.

Festival: CMW 2011 (Saturday afternoon)

2011-12-26T09:00:00.005-05:00

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.

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.

Sunday Playlist #23

2011-12-25T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sunday Playlist #23

Zeus - The Renegade

Broken Bricks - Need You Here

The Pinecones - For in the Shadow of a Moonbeam + Ardmore Jenny

Ghostkeeper - Well Well Well

Terror Lake - Redskin Panic

Album: Piège / Meter Runs EP

2011-12-23T17:00:00.002-05:00

Artist: Piège

Album: Meter Runs EP

Somewhere between a single and EP, these five tracks give us a look ahead to a forthcoming Piège full-length. This release is centred around the title track, which pairs Nick Storring¹ with the prolific Thomas Gill². "Meter Runs" is powered by Gill's soft-power vocal over a subtle elctronic throb which underpins the drifting feeling of being in a cab on a cold winter night, neither here nor there — in a liminal space free of whatever burdens await at the end of the ride.

The song is reprised in a "seized dub" incarnation, Gill's vocals blurring into syllabic component parts before dissipating into a haze of trumpet, as well as an re-recorded re-invention of the song by Gill. The b-sides include the fairly self-explanatory "Dance: Your Nights Are Always Young" and a fab cover of The Blue Nile's "The Downtown Lights", both carried by Storring's vox.

The vibe throughout is a pliant yielding of flesh melting into dreams melting into late-nite streaks of light seen through a car window — a dance soundtrack for long, dark December nights when you feel too lonely to stay home but too de-energized to go out.

This EP is currently available as a free download on Piège's bandcamp.

Track Picks: "Meter Runs", "The Downtown Lights"

¹ Storring's work under his own name includes cello-centric electroacoustic scree.

² Gill records on his own as THOMAS, and can also be found on recent albums by OG Melody, Bernice and Loom, to name but a few.

Recording: catl

2011-12-23T10:30:00.002-05:00

Artist: catl

Song: You Can't Blame Me (Ike & Tina Turner cover)

Recorded at the Toronto Fringe Creation Lab (Little Lunchtime Concert), November 18, 2011.

catl - You Can't Blame Me

Last month I was invited out to the Fringe's lovely offices in the new CSI Annex building to capture the sound for the first of a new series of intimate acoustic sessions. The video from the session is now posted (see below), so I thought I'd throw this up as a bonus track from the set. Enjoy!

N.B.: Do note that catl will be playing December 31, 2011 at the Dakota Tavern — a sure bet for a rip-roarin' way to ring in the New Year.

Recording: Sloan

2011-12-22T02:15:00.001-05:00

Artist: Sloan

Song: Everything You've Done Wrong

Recorded at The Great Hall, December 21, 2011.

Sloan - Everything You've Done Wrong

Full review to follow. A fundraiser organized by Fucked Up to benefit Barriere Lake Legal Defense Fund & COUNTERfit Harm Reduction Services featured excellent sets throughout, but headliners Sloan — playing One Chord to Another in its entirety — also packed an unexpected emotional punch.

I think it'd be fair to say that I listened to that album as much as I listened to anything in 1996, and even if it's been a decade since I've heard it, so much of it was branded into me. '96 was a transitional year, and I have vivid memories of listening to that album on a dubbed cassette in a battery-powered boombox in the cab of the U-Haul that was taking me to Toronto. Hearing the songs brought back those days with an unexpected sharpness, and evoked a weird, ebullient sadness as it also dredged up with heavy immediacy Some Troubles I Had.

But still, the best of the music's uplift is also part of the psychic residue and as I looked around at friends and acquaintances — Anyone Who's Anyone was there — it was hard to feel more bothered with queasy nostalgia than lifted up a bit in the moment.

Recording: Danielle Duval

2011-12-21T03:57:00.000-05:00

Artist: Danielle Duval

Song: Ambulance

Recorded at The Dakota Tavern (Jason Collett's Basement Revue), December 20, 2011.

Danielle Duval - Ambulance

Full review to follow.

Recording: Feist

2011-12-21T03:46:00.002-05:00

Artist: Feist

Song: Graveyard [solo]

Recorded at The Dakota Tavern (Jason Collett's Basement Revue), December 20, 2011.

Feist - Graveyard [solo]

Full review to follow. Tonight's Basement Revue had a whole lotta Broken Social Scenesters in the crowd — and on stage, too. Besides a trio of new songs from Jason Collett, there were solo spots for Brendan Canning, Kevin Drew and Andrew Whiteman's new AroarA project. Oh, hey, and also a short solo set from Leslie Feist. Let's not even try and pretend that's not pretty cool.

There's a couple minor scuff noises near the start of this, but it otherwise sounds pretty nice.

Recording: AroarA

2011-12-21T03:38:00.000-05:00

Artist: AroarA

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at The Dakota Tavern (Jason Collett's Basement Revue), December 20, 2011.

AroarA - unknown

Full review to follow. AroarA is Andrew Whiteman (Broken Social Scene, Apostle of Hustle) joined by Ariel Engle to dabble in dabke, bhangra and a whole heap of other rhythms. Intriguing stuff, based on a short set as a part of a cavalcade of BSSers playing at tonight's Basement Revue.

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!

Recording: Elephant Stone

2011-12-20T09:02:00.001-05:00

Artist: Elephant Stone

Song: The Straight Line

Recorded at Rancho Relaxo (CMW), March 11, 2011.

Elephant Stone - The Straight Line

My notes for this set can be found here.

Recording: Amanita Bloom

2011-12-20T09:01:00.002-05:00

Artist: Amanita Bloom

Song: Hi Honey

Recorded at El Mocambo (CMW), March 11, 2011.

Amanita Bloom - Hi Honey

My notes for this set can be found here.

Festival: CMW 2011 (Friday)

2011-12-20T09:00:00.009-05:00

CMW 2011^* (Friday) (feat. Tennis System / Amanita Bloom / The Wilderness / Powers / Elephant Stone)

Friday, March 11, 2011.

This is an expansion of my initial notes from the festival, which can be found here.

9:00 P.M.: Tennis System @ Comfort Zone

For my first night of CMW, I had just settled in at Lee's. On Friday, I was a little more mobile, but mostly sticking along the Spadina/College axis. Or, to start, right at the heart of it in the Silver Dollar's seedy underbelly space known as Comfort Zone. Suffering the unbuzzed-visiting-band's fate, there was barely a handful of people in the room as I came in a few minutes past the hour with The Tennis System already on stage. And those that were on hand were mostly hanging back and seated in the room's shadowy corners, leaving the space in front of the stage very empty as I moved in to check 'em out. Regardless, the L.A.-via-Washington D.C. quartet were playing with bracing volume.

Making their first foreign excursion, Tennis System make what could broadly be termed 90's style alt-guitar rock — informed by shoegaze-type sounds, but more often in a secondhand sort of way — as if, say, filtered through early Smashing Pumpkins. Their vibe was also cut with a blue collar undercarriage that was less art-rock than shoegaze-y bands often deliver: even if the vox were low and textural, the arrangements were mostly reined in and the overall tone wasn't smear-y. They did, though, have a propensity for opacity, evidenced by song titles like "Esoteric" and "Arcane".

That gave a fruitful tension to their sound that paid off in some of the different faucets they brought to the stage: the set's penultimate number was the expansive seven-plus minutes of "The Web", with a big, shoegaze-style instrumental ending which then segued into "What Not to Do", something closer to a garage rock number, to finish up.

Not groundbreaking stuff, but I enjoyed this. More than most of the bands I would see on the night, I would say they're a band worth hearing again — they'd certainly fit right into a psych-garage bill upstairs at The Silver Dollar.¹

Listen to a track from this set here.

9:30 P.M.: Amanita Bloom @ El Mocambo

On the other side of College, the El Mo was running its sets on the half-hour, so I managed to hit my next band with pretty much no dead time. This Montréal-based four-piece came recommended to me by the good folks at Optical Sounds, but it seems like the word on them hadn't really reached down the length of the 401 yet as they also had a pretty sparse crowd to play to. But given the band's spacious arrangements and after-hours vibe, this felt more proper with some elbow room than a packed/wired-up crowd would have been.

The band announced themselves with opener "Often in the Springtime", with singer/guitarist Étienne Morin's slightly quavery croon at the centre of things. Backed with a bass/drums/keyb lineup, the band members chatted in french amongst themselves, but Morin sang and bantered en anglais. (Dominic Leclerc, whose sound sometimes veered toward The Doors, had a franco-positive "E" at the end of the "ROLAND" on his keyboard.)

The band stretched out on a few of the songs, like "Hi Honey", which had enough reverb-y twang to lend it some atmosphere, but not so much to peg it solidly as retro. Similarly, there's a certain toughness underneath, but the music isn't in-your-face intense — ultimately, the best invocation here might be noir-ish. Another flavour was the blues-y slide in "Rattle Fish" — in local terms, there was a bit of a sonic common ground here with, say, The Mark Inside.

The set included six songs off their full-length Furniture Music album, and closed with a new one called "The Pharmacist's Pharmacist", which included more saturated psychedelic keyboards and a bit of a raveup to close things out. Definitely a solid set, and I dug it okay, but the band's reserved edge kept them from really getting under my skin at the time. Listening back now, I think I'm starting to appreciate how solid this stuff is.

Listen to a track from this set here.

11:00 P.M.: The Wilderness @ Comfort Zone

By the time I returned to Comfort Zone, where there were a few more people on hand, I just managed to catching the end of the blisteringness of HotKid. That would mark a pivot point in the night's lineup from capital-R Rock to something more akin to one of Alt Altman's electro-friendly Silent Shout events — and indeed I spotted him in the crowd taking this in. There were certainly hints of that in The Wilderness, who came across as a sorta less-grim Joy Division, courtesy of vocalist Lee Piazza's baritone. With a drum at hand for extra percussion, Piazza was in striking red pants and also shoeless — after completing his preparations before the set, he walked barefoot over the soundboard, and I cringed a little internally, hoping he was up to date with his tetanus shots. Though perhaps I was buying into the Comfort Zone's mythos a little too much.

And although there was a downerish vibe from Piazza's vox, that was countered by the decidedly non-mopey bounce in the music, with both guitarist Nate Lyons-Fisher and drummer Chris Mason augmenting their work with synth sleekness while Jami Lefebvre added an e-bow glide to "Systems". The potential for this to veer into mere gloomfunk was also countered when, during "Simon Templar", Piazza tossed out a bag of balloons for the crowd to blow up and bat around.

The songs that the band was playing here would subsequently emerge on their .272 album,² and to be honest, it didn't leave too much of a mark on me. There was nothing specifically unlikable here, though Piazza hewed a little too close to banter-y unctuousness on one hand and Matt Beringer-isms on the other for me to totally get into it.

Midnight: Powers @ Comfort Zone

With nothing else planned for this timeslot, I stuck in CZ to catch this group. The only thing I knew about them is that they are a reformulation of The Ghost is Dancing, a band that hadn't done much for me in their day ("another sprawling cute-rock collective" was my take). So it's to their credit that the now-four piece is at least not at all like what they used to be.

The room's blacklighting was supplemented by some more that the band brought — they kept things in the dark pretty much otherwise. The sound was electro-fied and processed, with the drummer augmented with a laptop as well as two keyboard players and a vocalist playing a DI'ed guitar. The set's first song didn't have much forward thrust, and just kinda laid there — though it introduced the notion that the band was willing to harness texture as much as anything else.

There was more of a pulse after that, and I got the notion that the band is interested in playing with some big dynamics of tension and release. That would be their biggest stock-in-trade, though there were hints of a more straight-ahead pop sensibility as well, such as the New Order vibe of "Sleeping Patterns". That one made me feel more in sync with the dancers up against the stage. The song had a great groove, although the vocal delivery was a little underwhelming. In fact, the vocals switched back and forth a little bit, but neither vocalist was coming across particularly strongly, though surely some of that can be laid on CZ's sound system.

All things considered, I didn't like any of live takes of these songs as much as the recorded versions that have now emerged. But let's leave that as implying there's room for improvement, and the backhand complement that I think this band is more likely to win some grudging approval from me than its predecessor.

1:00 A.M.: Elephant Stone @ Rancho Relaxo

I closed out the night by ducking around the corner to Rancho, which was a glasses-fogging sweltering sauna as I entered. For a few minutes after I came up the stairs I thought I might simply keel over from the sultry heat. Perhaps it's best then that I had a few minutes to adjust while the band was mired in a prolonged setup, and didn't get things going til about a quarter past the hour. That would leave them being extremely time-conscious for the whole of their set, cutting things back by a couple songs.

But they didn't rush through the stuff that they did play, starting with a couple minutes of sitar drone that slowly ramped up into the funky psychedelic instrumental "The Straight Line". This was genuinely groovy stuff — there should have been a lava lamp at the front of the stage to watch.

The Montréal group is a five piece under the command of Rishi Dhir, who was, at the outset, seated on a raised platform with his sitar. After seven simmering minutes, he switched to bass and the songs became a bit more standard-issue psychedelicized pop, bringing especially to mind an 80's Creation Records-type revisiting of 60's pop styles — it should be noted that their Stone Roses-invoking band name doesn't come by accident. Still, there were plenty nods to the 60's originators of the style as well: while soundchecking, keyboardist Bobby Fraser was noodling with a mellotron setting over the opening of Strawberry Fields, and later, while Dhir switched instruments, he kept the drone up with a harmonium-esque sound.

Because of that long setup ("we have a lot of gear," Dhir noted slightly sheepishly), they only played three songs after the long instrumental opener. The rest of the set was agreeable, but didn't quite engage me as much as "The Straight Line". My biggest wish would be for the sitar-led drive in that jam to be be better integrated with the popsongs. Maybe in a full set that happens more naturally, and closer "Don't You Know" did hint at it, employing a prerecorded sitar loop at the start before Dhir switched back to the live one for the song's lengthy instrumental close. Definitely worthy of further exploration.

Listen to a track from this set here.

¹ The band has a couple albums' worth of agreeable material to check out on their bandcamp.

² The album is available as a free download at their bandcamp. I note that Rance Mulliniks had a career .272 average, but I presume the recording's title comes from something less obscure.

Sunday Playlist #22

2011-12-18T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sunday Playlist #22

Let's Wrestle - We Are The Men You'll Grow to Love Soon

Diamond Rings (Featuring PS I Love You) - All Yr Songs

Zebrassieres - Beach Fight

CoCoComa - Water Into Wine

Planet Creature - Ramona

Recording: Slim Twig

2011-12-17T05:18:00.001-05:00

Artist: Slim Twig

Song: I'll Always Be A Child^*

Recorded at The Silver Dollar, December 16, 2011.

Slim Twig - I'll Always Be A Child

Full review to follow. In case you hadn't noticed, Slim Twig is back with a new band, doing an excellent job channelling his pop impulses through the funhouse mirror.

^* Thanks to Jennifer for passing along the title to this one.

Recording: Kith and Kin

2011-12-15T23:30:00.001-05:00

Artist: Kith and Kin

Song: Sorrows Away

Recorded at The Music Gallery, December 15, 2011.

Kith and Kin - Sorrows Away

Full review to follow. You don't have to be aligned with any particular holiday tradition to be captivated by the beautiful voices of this family group. Lovely, lovely stuff.

Recording: Bravestation

2011-12-15T09:32:00.001-05:00

Artist: Bravestation

Song: White Wolves

Recorded at Sonic Boom Records (CMW), March 11, 2011.

Bravestation - White Wolves

My notes for this set can be found here.

Recording: Bombay Bicycle Club

2011-12-15T09:31:00.001-05:00

Artist: Bombay Bicycle Club

Song: Rinse Me Down

Recorded at Sonic Boom Records (CMW), March 11, 2011.

Bombay Bicycle Club - Rinse Me Down

My notes for this set can be found here.

In-store: CMW 2011/Sonic Boom (Friday)

2011-12-15T09:30:00.001-05:00

(Bombay Bicycle Club / J Mascis / Bravestation)

Sonic Boom Records. Friday, March 11, 2011.

Started off a full day of CMW with some more in-store action downstairs at Sonic Boom. There was a decent smattering of folks on hand as I caught the end of a set by local alt-bro yalpers Pkew Pkew Pkew. Looking around, there was an unusual number of highschoolers on hand, many of them sitting down on the floor and lounging like it was a proper basement party.

I was sorta feeling warm-heated towards them for supporting local music when suddenly the casual sprawl turned into a mass of kids up against the stage, jockeying for position as the next band started to set up. That would turn out to be Bombay Bicycle Club, a British band with some buzz-appeal. Once stools and a banjo were brought out, it looked like this was going be an unplugged-style appearance. And as vocalist Jack Steadman casually sang the old bluegrass/gospel standard "I'll Fly Away" as his compadres soundchecked around him, I figured they were going to be one of that new wave of British roots-inspired bands that I'd heard vaguely about. The band's music was more "rock" than that, though, but how much this stripped-down set departed from their usual I can't say — "if this is too quiet for anyone, we're going to be playing at Lee's Palace tonight with some real instruments," was the rocknowledgement from the stage.

The set started with "Evening/Morning", that banjo playing against Steadman's quavery vocals. Otherwise, besides the pleasant-enough lope of "Rinse Me Down", none of the other handful of originals made much of an impression on me, but the young crowd in front of them was suitably impressed. "This is the first audience we've ever played to on this side of the Atlantic," Steadman informed them, whipping them up a little more.

I had the band pegged as earnest, clean-cut types, but perhaps they weren't not so blandly innocent after all: it might be kinda audaciously skeezy to cover Loudon Wainwright III's "Motel Blues", with its baldly-stated ambitions ("come up to my motel room and treat me right") to a crowd full of highschool-aged girls. Well, to the boys, too — I don't want to make groundless assumptions about what kind of groupies they were courting. And, somewhat confounding my notions of who this band might be getting marketed to, it was a dude-heavy crowd, full of enthusiastic lads. Just as I was jotting down "mostly harmless" as a concluding thought about the set in my notepad, I overheard two of them as they were putting on their coats:

Dude #1: That was very legit.
Dude #2: That one? That was the sickest song.

Listen to a track from this set here.

And then there was a weird sort of transference in the room as the large bulk of that young crowd booked it out of there and their spots up front were quickly filled in by members of the older cohort that had been been building up for the last half of Bombay Bicycle Club's set. The net outcome was a slightly smaller crowd, albeit a much taller one, patiently awaiting J Mascis. Mascis, who dared to be an alt-rock guitar hero in a time when such a thing was frowned upon, was playing songs from his newly-released Several Shades of Why. That album is, in some technical sense, his first proper "solo" album — so long as you don't count his albums backed by The Fog or the several of Dinosaur Jr.'s albums where he was essentially a one-man band.

But here, most decidedly playing on his own, Mascis treated the crowd to some hints of wry humour, like leading off set-starting "Listen to Me" with a "this is the first song on the new album" crack. That was pretty audience-engaging for the oft-laconic guitarist — it felt more directly within the bounds of his public persona when the next song (the new album's title track) screeched to a quick halt for an extended bout of tuning with the room holding an awkward silence. Interestingly, Mascis employed a loop pedal for that one to add a static part to hold things steady while he moved off on one of the nimble excursions that are recognized as his most articulate expressions.

Less expected was "Circle of Friends", a cover introduced with what seemed at first some especially random banter: "how many people remember Paul Simon's wife? Edie Brickell? Any fans out there?" Of course, all the randomness is tempered by the moments (like during "Ammaring") when he just plays, and suddenly you're all like, "oh yeah, guitar god. Right."

After that, he asked if there was anything anyone wanted to hear, and "Severed Lips" was the first thing shouted, so he graciously tore that one off and chased it with another (and less obvious) Dino Jr. cut, Green Mind's "Flying Cloud". A really enjoyable set — and it didn't leave my ears ringing afterward, like that time I saw Dinosaur Jr.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Although a lot of the crowd departed, I stuck around to check out local quartet Bravestation. With guitar, bass, drums and electronics/laptop, they presented a pop-forward electro-textured version of rock, the synth-y sounds and click-track percussion rendered vital with plenty of extra percussion.

Starting with "Clocks & Spears", they showcased the five songs from their 2010 EP. Though everything in the short set was well-performed — guitarist Derek Wilson especially showed a nimble touch — none of the tunes really stuck with me. But there were encouraging signs, like closer "White Wolves" which played that frisky rhythm/cold synths duality well. Not a band that I'd rush out to see again right away, but I won't regret having a chance for a progress report a little further down the road.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Recording: Afrafranto

2011-12-12T01:47:00.001-05:00

Artist: Afrafranto

Songs: Abrantse + Juliana

Recorded at Lula Lounge ("Highlife Help" Benefit Concert), December 11, 2011.

Afrafranto - Abrantse

Afrafranto - Juliana

Full review to follow. In late October, sudden flash flooding caused major damage in Accra, Ghana. Among those affected was Professor John Collins, musicologist founder of the Bokoor African Popular Music Archive Foundation (BAPMAF), doing important work to preserve Ghana's cultural heritage. His home, housing the archive, was flooded and his family endangered, causing major property damage. This show was put together to help raise funds for repairs. Collins' dedication needs to be celebrated and assisted, so let's hope that the attention and concern raised by this dark event can serve as a catalyst for future support for BAPMAF's work. You can help here.

Some days it feels like an honour to be able to do this. This happens to be a very nice soundboard/microphone mix, so let's start with a couple songs for now. Special thanks to Batuki Music and Howard at Lula Lounge.

Sunday Playlist #21

2011-12-11T09:00:00.004-05:00

Sunday Playlist #21

Language-Arts - Coughdrop

Germans - Same Old Things

Ghost Trees - From London with Love

The Barcelona Pavilion - How Are You People Going To Have Fun If None Of You People Ever Participate?

Wet Nurse - unknown

Recording: The Two Koreas

2011-12-10T02:12:00.002-05:00

Artist: The Two Koreas

Song: Bad Captains/Boy Teen Oslo^*

Recorded at The Silver Dollar, December 9, 2011.

The Two Koreas - Bad Captains/Boy Teen Oslo

Full review to follow. The Two Koreas' bracing dance grooves are stretching out to ever-longer lengths — to rather good effect.

^* Thanks to a commenter for passing the titles along.

Recording: Young Galaxy

2011-12-09T11:03:00.001-05:00

Artist: Young Galaxy

Song: We Have Everything

Recorded at Lee's Palace (CMW 2011), March 10, 2011.

Young Galaxy - We Have Everything

My notes for this set can be found here.

Recording: Imaginary Cities

2011-12-09T11:02:00.001-05:00

Artist: Imaginary Cities

Song: Say Us

Recorded at Lee's Palace (CMW 2011), March 10, 2011.

Imaginary Cities - Say Us

My notes for this set can be found here.

Recording: The Wilderness of Manitoba

2011-12-09T11:01:00.001-05:00

Artist: The Wilderness of Manitoba

Song: Orono Park

Recorded at Lee's Palace (CMW 2011), March 10, 2011.

The Wilderness of Manitoba - Orono Park

My notes for this set can be found here.

Festival: CMW 2011 (Thursday)

2011-12-09T11:00:00.004-05:00

CMW 2011^* (Thursday) (feat. The Wilderness of Manitoba / Miracle Fortress / Imaginary Cities / Young Galaxy)

Thursday, March 10, 2011.

This is an expansion of my initial notes from the festival, which can be found here.

8:00 P.M.: The Wilderness of Manitoba @ Lee's Palace

For their first time at Lee's, these local folk harmonizers were happy to be playing in their own backyard ("just a twenty minute walk from our house"), making for an easier time than the bands coming from all around the world. They were also playing, at the outset, to a crowd that they could have fit in their house, facing the that typical festival early-slot slightly antiseptic sight of an empty-ish bar with about a half-dozen camera-toting types in front of the stage, snapping away — and not much else.

Showing some awareness of the environment they'd be playing in, the band put together a very well-constructed setlist. After starting with "Hermit", just to announce themselves, they followed with a few quieter songs while the room was quiet — "The Great Hall" got a very nice reading — and after that ramping it up as the place filled in, ending with their more rambunctious material. That meant Will Whitwham's vocals weren't lost along the chatter too much. There was also a nice mix of older and newer material, with "Evening" and the fine new "Chasing Horses" rubbing shoulders before the set closed out with a rollicking version of "Dreamcatchers".¹

Listen to a track from this set here.

9:00 P.M.: Miracle Fortress @ Lee's Palace

"We'd like to introduce you to some new songs," said Graham Van Pelt as he finished his preparations. True to his word, he presented a set filled with material that would emerge a couple months later on sophomore album Was I the Wave?. He also brought his own lights, laser-y pinpoints that zigzagged around the dancefloor, occasionally blinding audience members with direct light blasts² while leaving the stage almost entirely in darkness. The Remain in Light-ish textures of "Tracers", including an extended instrumental intro, showed off Van Pelt's new sound, which brings a definite unified sensibility, although a rather different one than he displayed on his first album. Although I'd had a hint that this was the direction he was going in, one got the sense that some people in the crowd were disappointed that it was different songs and a different sound that what they already knew.

Also on stage was drummer Greg Napier, who also plays alongside Van Pelt in Think About Life as well as in his own project Special Noise. Right up front and facing the singer, he was turned perpendicular to the crowd — a layout that may well bring to mind Woodhands, which can only raise unflattering comparisons to that band's Paul Banwatt. Here, rather than driving things, Napier felt more like window-dressing, adding accents to the rhythm tracks. The show could have gone on without him, but he did add some kineticism on stage.

It turned out to be a relatively quick set — just five songs — ending with the I'll-House-You-isms of "Raw Spectacle". But it was certainly enough to make a bold statement of what his new album would be like.

Listen to a track from this set here.

10:00 P.M.: Imaginary Cities @ Lee's Palace

Weirdly enough, when I had previously seen Winnipeg's Imaginary Cities, it was also while I was waiting to see Young Galaxy. And the most glib evaluation I could give of them would be to say that they are a pleasant diversion to pass the time while you wait for another band.

That last time 'round they were pretty new as a unit and a generally unknown quality, their biggest calling card being Rusty Matyas' known affiliations with The Waking Eyes and as a touring member of The Weakerthans. But less than a year later, they definitely had a few woo-hooing fans, and, impressively, one dude who stood up front, mouthing all the lyrics to himself.

And there were signs of a band with a lot more miles on the road — "Say You" had a bit more belt to it, and the band presented with more swagger generally. Marti Sarbit's soul-referencing vocal stylings are the band's best feature, and she was in good form here.

Some of the material felt like stuck-in-first ballad-fodder, like "Where'd all the Living Go" — even if it gave Matyas and the bassist a chance to show off some co-ordinated "rock" moves. And it was good to see that the band is expanding their songbook with new material like "Cherry Blossom Tree" and "Marry the Sea", but maybe because the set was front-loaded with the older, road-tested stuff and the latter part with more of their newer songs that I found it most pleasant at the start followed by diminishing returns.

They certainly put their all into it. By the time the band went out with slow-dance "That's Where it's at Sam", Sarbit sounded winded. And they'd clearly won over a few more people, though ultimately it just doesn't seem like they're fated to have a particularly electrifying effect on me.

Listen to a track from this set here.

11:00 P.M.: Young Galaxy @ Lee's Palace

Swapping fire for water, Young Galaxy decided to push themselves out of their safety zone, reinventing themselves with a glossier, more-dancefloor/less-rock sound on their Shapeshifting album, which they were launching with a quick tour before pausing for some parental leave. And though it is a sonic departure, it's also a continuing evolution from where they had been. Including, for example, in the increased reliance on Catherine McCandless as the lead vocalist, announced here right from the start on "Blown Minded". She has a striking vocal presence, and puts a more unique stamp on the music than partner Stephen Ramsay. For this show, whether it was the challenge of playing new songs with a new lineup or the added wrinkle of being pronouncedly pregnant, she wasn't quite nailing all her marks here — "Phantoms", for example, felt like it was just hinting at its potential.

"It's all so new for us. It's like a new band, basically... it's the first time we've played these songs live." said Ramsay, who was still in top form in handling the bulk of the banter. Now a five-piece, Ramsay (guit) and McCandless (keyb and electronics) were joined by an additional keyboard player, bass and drums, and for this being the first show for this incarnation of the live band, it went generally well. That Ramsay was pretty open about it all ("we're not slick yet... so thanks for your kindness.") made it feel more endearing than stiff.

"This is the dance test," Ramsay said before "Peripheral Visionaries", and after an opening shapeshift-y trio of songs, there was an "old one", with "Queen Drum" to act as a reminder of the past. Even it had some additional electronic textures in the background, and in another switch, "Long Live the Fallen World", which had served as set closer for the past while, had been supplanted by "B.S.E.". That'd be "Black Swan Event" to the less acronym-minded, and its refrain of being "intoxicated by re-invention" was sort of the key to the whole thing.

Listen to a track from this set here.

¹ No pending live dates for the band, but if you're seasonally inclined, they've just released a couple xmas songs.

² Miracle Fortress: come for the songs, stay for the free laser eye surgery! It should be noted that at CMW, with so many media types around, a standing-in-the-dark type of stage presentation often has the unintended effect of forcing the photogs to break out the flash, kinda undermining the effect.

Recording: Anna Calvi

2011-12-09T01:20:00.000-05:00

Artist: Anna Calvi

Song: Love Won't Be Leaving

Recorded at Lee's Palace, December 8, 2011.

Anna Calvi - Love Won't Be Leaving

Review to follow.

Recording: The New Music Ensemble

2011-12-09T01:15:00.000-05:00

Artist: The New Music Ensemble of the Glenn Gould School

Song: In Vain [excerpt] (composer: Georg Friedrich Haas)

Recorded at Conservatory Theatre (Royal Conservatory of Music), December 8, 2011.

The New Music Ensemble of the Glenn Gould School - In Vain [excerpt]

Full review to follow. An excellent night's music from the students of the Conservatory's Glenn Gould School. With composer Haas in attendance, the ensemble navigated the tricky hour-long composition, which was a slowly-unfolding encounter with microtonality. Even more impressive: two sections of the composition (including this extract) were played in total darkness. The light design added an extra layer of drama and structure, and in the later, longer period of darkness, I found myself on the edge of my seat, feeling the tension rachet up as the "silent percussion" of light flashes began. A very impressive night.

Recording: Radiant Brass Ensemble

2011-12-08T01:22:00.000-05:00

Artist: Radiant Brass Ensemble

Song: AGOrienteering [excerpt]

Recorded at the Art Gallery of Ontario, December 7, 2011.

Radiant Brass Ensemble - AGOrienteering [excerpt]

Full review to follow. Scott Thomson's "cartographic composition" defined a physical route through the second floor galleries of the AGO for eight musicians, who would occasionally stop and play a dialogue when their paths crossed. If my map-reading and time-keeping skills are right, this snippet is a meeting between Nicole Rampersaud and Jim Lewis. The Galleria Italia turns out to have great sonic qualities — can we get more music there?