Recording: Matters

Artist: Matters

Song: Junkpile^*

Recorded at The Garrison, April 7, 2011.

Matters - Junkpile

My notes for this set can be found here.

^* Thanks to Zaid, we'll use this as a tentative title for now.

Gig: PS I Love You

PS I Love You (Matters / Motëm)

The Garrison. Thursday, April 7, 2011.

Another show that I headed out to on a last-minute decision. I surely dig the headliner, but it hadn't been that long since I'd saw 'em. But the addition of Matters to the bill made this a must-see. Figuring I wouldn't be the only one thinking that way, I was on hand fairly early on to make sure I got in.

Once I was in, that made for more time, I suppose, to appreciate the fact that the night had been "branded" by some car company. [Deleted: several angry rambling sentences.] If a car company offers you free swag, don't take it! It's soiled and will cause you spiritual damage. [Deleted: further angry ranting about automobile companies.]

Anyway, there was a nicely robust crowd on hand as a figure took the stage and lit the candles on his candelabra, telling the crowd they are about to witness "the Toronto debut of the Motëm ceremony". Hailing from Hamilton, the mysterious Motëm¹ was wearing a toque and plaid and controlled his squiggy electronic music from behind a table full of gear. His performance encompassed a sort of mime/vogue dance style to his beatz, occasionally twisting a knob to make it extra-squelchy and tossing in a slogan here and there ("you better work!", "Let's Get it On").

Just like on the mixtapes he releases, the music segued from one song to the next. But the goal seemed to be more about creating an experience than just playing the music — the whole thing was a mashup of dance music, hip-hop's b-boy stances and performance art. It was kinda goofy/amusing for about ten minutes, but increasingly less so as it went along. Ultimately, this just isn't something that I "get". But no less than John O'Regan — Diamond Rings himself — was front and centre, having a great time, and I know that the cultural sophisticates over at Hype Lighter love this guy to bits, so note well that I'm probably out to lunch on this one.²

The transformation of The D'Urbervilles into Matters was meant to mark a break with the past, but there's far too much of a continuum with what they had become to really see it that way. Or, to put that another way, the biggest changes away from the sound that the band had explored on their first album We Are the Hunters had already been evident for quite some time before the name change. And similarly, this rebooting was obviously in the works for quite a while — back at least to the band's 2010 NXNE appearance, when there were whispers that that could be the band's last show, and they sold off all their old merch. After that came radio silence from the band as the members' other projects kept them busy, but the announcement of their transition to Matters — along with the release of a 7"³ — did manage to get a nice burst of media attention.

Evolution is the sort of thing you might not notice if you're not paying attention, so the attention-grabbing one-two punch of "Cito G/Boys 2 Men", with the tension-release craftsmanship and skittery structure deployed at a bolder level than Hunters-era D'Urbs would probably used might well have taken some by surprise — but those are songs that had been in the band's setlist for a little while now.

The newer stuff matches a sleek synth punch with guitar menace and a bolder sense of swagger. That latter quality would mostly be emanating from frontman John O'Regan, whose on-stage confidence and presence have expanded in tandem with the explosion of his Diamond Rings project. And even though for this show he was makeup-free and rocking the "classic John O." look — complete with black-on-black Jays cap⁴ — he brought a similar sense of all-that attitude.

That would give the performance plenty of verve and a sense of energy, even if it was, in fact, a similar set to the final time I'd seen The D'Urbs, featuring the songs presumably bound for the band's second album. Including their brooding/hi-rev cover of Timber Timber's "Magic Arrow", the nine-song set went forty minutes with no looks back to the first album.

When we'll get to hear these songs again is unknown. Word on the street is that concurrent with this burst of shows the band finished recording that second album, but since then, there's been no official Matters activity. Given everyone's other life and musical commitments⁵, it looks like this is most definitely on the backburner. It's not impossible that the advancement of time and the success of other projects might leave the recordings orphaned as a "lost album" that we'll eventually wonder about in hushed terms — and even as these same people are still amongst us, their collective presence (especially as a powerful live unit) will be missed.

Listen to a song from this set here.

An admiration for Matters was also brought into the headlining set by Kingston's PS I Love You, as singer/guitarist Paul Saulnier was sporting one of their new stickers on his headband — "I feel weird taking the stage after them," he commented.

But as the duo launched into "Meet Me at the Muster Station" and a pretty speedy "Breadends" they were showing they'd earned their headliner chops. Tightly organized, most of the set came in two-song bursts, and even then with only the quickest of pauses between — there was no tentativeness with this well-toured material. "Scattered" drifted a bit, but Benjamin Nelson's snappy drumming on "Get Over" grabbed me back.

When you see a band a few times, it's always interesting to hear the little differences — this time out, there was a whole tonne less vocals in the mix than the last time I saw 'em on the same stage. But there was accordingly more solo-tastic guitar — "Butterflies & Boners" melted faces nicely. Saulnier had also upgraded his foot-actuated bass keyboard to a new Moog model, and I could certainly feel that in my chest throughout the set.

There was also some new material such as "Sentimental Dishes", which mostly followed the same trajectory plotted by Saulnier's past work.⁶ And given the extra microphone over at the edge of the stage, it was no surprise to see John O'Regan — who had appeared on the single version of the song in his Diamond Rings alter ego — come out to add some vocals for the encore's "Leftovers".

Listen to a song from this set here.

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¹ Note the umlaut and the accent are on the second syllable of his name.

² Motëm will be sharing the Garrison stage with PS I Love You once again as part of the grand finale of the Wavelength TWELVE festival on Sunday, February 19, 2012.

³ The release of the single for "Get In Or Get Out" was accompanied by a stylish video directed by Colin Medley and Jared Raab.

⁴ The Blue Jays' own rebranding should give an impetus for a whole new range of sartorial choices for O'Regan — if they haven't already, they should really be hiring Diamond Rings as a merchandise spokesmodel.

⁵ These guys can be seen in Forest City Lovers, Diamond Rings and House League. The latter two both have just wrapped up new recordings, though no word yet on when they'll surface for the listening public.

⁶ PS I Love You have just wrapped up their second album, so hopefully there'll be some more new material previewed when they play the above-mentioned Wavelength Festival show. For the love of Pete, bring your earplugs!

Sunday Playlist #2

Sunday Playlist #2: Out of This Spark

Community-minded local label Out of this Spark celebrated their 4th anniversary this weekend with a show that set the bar for this year's concerts, so let's celebrate with some live selections from their roster.

Snowblink - Rut and Nuzzle

OOTS will be re-releasing Snowblink's lovely Long Live album on February 15, 2011.

Timber Timbre - Trouble Comes Knockin'

Forest City Lovers - Song For Morrie

Evening Hymns - Broken Rifle

The D'Urbervilles - Get In or Get Out

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You can always click the tags below to see what I originally wrote about the shows these songs came from.

NXNE 2010: Saturday (Part 1)

NXNE — North by Northeast Festival, Toronto, 2010.

Saturday, June 19, 2010. Featuring: The Soft Pack, PC Worship, The Grates, Jane Vain, The D'Urbervilles

4 p.m.: The Soft Pack @ Yonge-Dundas Square

Taking an early start on a trip out to meet with some friends, headed down for my only exposure to the big outdoor stage at Yonge-Dundas Square.¹ I figured this early in the day it wouldn't be too crowded, which turned out to be correct. On a hot and blindingly bright afternoon, there were clumps of people standing around to take in The Soft Pack, but lots of elbow room at hand. I'd enjoyed the band enough the night before to warrant an encore, and it's always interesting to see how music that sounded great in a crowded club translates in such a different environment. As I came up from the subway, the band was rocking out an extended groove, and at the song's close vocalist Matt Lamkin joked to the crowd, "Thank you guys very much! We're Iggy Pop and the Stooges." In fact, looking around the square, one could see that there were already people in attendance waiting out all the early bands for the night's much-hyped headliner.

But in the meantime, The Soft Pack did a good job — the bigger stage and sound system gave their music a bit of expansiveness. "Bright Side" felt perfectly right in the open air. The band played from a nearly-identical setlist to what they'd done the night before, down to that set-ending "Gagdad", though here it didn't get to simmer for quite as long. And as always, it was amusing to take this in against all the indeterminacies of playing in the open square, with lots of people with only the most tangential interest in the band on the stage wandering around. Someone was getting into the World Cup spirit, tooting a vuvuzela between songs.

Next up were local spazz-rock explorers DD/MM/YYYY but, in deference to the crazy heat, I retreated to the beer garden and found a relatively shady spot. Not having seen them for a couple years, I've been meaning to catch the Daymonths to get a grip on how their sound is progressing, but this wasn't the day for it. After that, headed uptown for some quality patio time. My friends there were intent on checking out the Stooges, so I came back down with them a while later, but mostly just to check out the now-gigantic crowd before retreating to less packed surroundings.

9:15 p.m.: PC Worship @ The Garrison

I figured that wherever I found myself in the earlier hours of the night I'd have some elbow room, given that there was not only the huge draw of the Stooges gig at the Square, but also the BSS/Pavement show on the island. But still, it was a bit surprising to walk into the back room of The Garrison a few minutes past the hour and see no one else in sight. Mildly eerie.

Brooklyn's PC Worship had gotten the bad luck of the draw to be going head-to-head with Iggy Pop and it looked like they were delaying their start as much as possible on the hope of having any sort of audience to play to. By the time they roused themselves on stage, it was a quarter past the hour and there was a small handful of people around. Their timeslot wasn't the only bit of bad luck that the band was up against — the bass that was being passed back and forth on the stage between songs was explained by vocalist Justin Frye to be a result of the the regular bassist sustaining a nasty hand injury.

But, despite all of that, once the band got going, things were fairly interesting. At the outset the band sounded not unlike Woods, sporting a twisty, lo-fi psychedelic sensibility. Of the five members on stage, the two front-and-centre were both seated and switching between instruments — one playing saxophone and lap-style slide guitar (plus handling some of the rotation bass duties) and the other played violin and did sound manipulations on a rig that included a turntable and a pair of old tape decks. With all of these tools at their disposal, the band was equally capable of spazzing out or hitting a few poptones.

The latter tendency came to the fore on "Staring at the Sun", a woozy pop gem with a Pixies-like bassline and little squelchy bursts of tape-rewinding noise. "Wake Up in the Dark" was, in contrast, a sloggy, druggy ode to monotone inertia that built to a no-wave skronkfest, Frye tugging at the bass strings like he was trying to tear them off.

Now fully into it, Frye announced, "we're going to do a cover song", only to be told by a NXNE apparatchik that it would be their last. Frye reconsidered, and sounding wounded said, "we're not gonna play a cover song, we're gonna play 'Sittin' in My Car' — which is what I'm gonna be doing after this." Signing up for things like NXNE is a bit of a crapshoot for a band, and Frye sounded pretty bummed out, getting to shout out his frustration a bit in the song — "come on, man!"

Making his own mini-revolt at the end, he commented, "it looks like we still have thirty seconds left!" as he tore into a punkrock rant, "I'm so fucked! Every day!" whether it was one of their own songs or a remembered hardcore burst, that ended the set. A tough night for the band, and they obviously didn't reach the sort of audience they were hoping for, which is a shame, as there's definitely a local audience for stuff like this.

Listen to a track from this set here.

10 p.m.: The Grates @ Wrongbar

Headed down to Wrongbar, catching Australian trio The Grates just getting on stage. The band has a couple albums out, but seemed to be sporting a lot of new material. It was hard to make out many of the lyrics, but it didn't seem to matter that much — this was happy bop-along music, with sub-three-minute songs, appealing to those who might find Metric too staid and self-serious. Which is to say, very "pop". The band featured vocalist Patience Hodgson backed with live guitar and drums with some backing tracks supplementing things. But, in a sense, everything was window-dressing for the frenetic Hodgson, who was constant explosive energy in motion. Wearing duck-adorned brass knuckles around her neck, she expounded on the Batusi between songs ("sexiest dance ever invented!") and got involved with the audience when the music was playing. Not content to just ruffle the hair of the patrons up front, soon she was sitting on an audience member's shoulders to sing a slower-paced number.

Musically, it wasn't highly memorable. Closer "19 20 20" (from their 2006 debut album) had a bit of an appealing rough edge recalling Be Your Own Pet, but that edge wasn't there for most of the set, and may more indicate what they're moving beyond. The entertaining Hodgson aside, not much to recommend the band. They felt something like the musical equivalent of a vodka cooler — sweet, fizzy and full of empty calories. Pleasant enough while it's in front of you, but nothing you'd remember the next day.

11 p.m.: Jane Vain @ The Drake Underground

With nothing insisting itself on me in this timeslot, I again perched myself where I'd want to be later on, heading back east down Queen to the Drake Underground. Passed some time with Jane Vain who turned out to be a band, not a person. Formerly Jane Vain and the Dark Matter, the frontwoman is in fact Jamie Fooks, originally from Calgary, now based in Montréal. With their second album just out, the band already gave the sense of being comfortably in their tour groove, from the drummer's inside-out t-shirt to the inside jokes flying back and forth on stage. Guitarist Nathan Curry kept drawing scandalized looks from Fooks by making a series of increasingly-outlandish claims after each song ("This song has the devil's chord in it", "this next song is about having sex with someone while they're asleep").

Musically, the band's main gear was slightly-gloomy indie rock. Fooks, a pleasant singer with a smoky voice, started off on keybs, and moved later to guitar, which made for some nice intertwining parts with Curry. "The Solution" had some interesting atmospherics, but didn't totally hold my attention. That largely extrapolated to the rest of the set — nothing wrong with any of this, and there were some good moments, but it didn't really win me over. A few people up front were into this, but the smallish crowd on hand was generally indifferent, and as the crowd began to swell towards the set's end, it was clear they were waiting on someone else.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Midnight: The D'Urbervilles @ The Drake Underground

Perhaps, like myself, the crowd had heard some of the carefully-dropped hints here-and-there that this might be be The D'Urbervilles' last show. The fact that they were selling off their stock of t-shirts at fire-sale prices was a sign that something was afoot. Not having any solid information, I didn't know what to think, but I was here just in case. Plus, and more pragmatically, one could look ahead and guess that there might be less shows for The D'Urbs on the horizon, when you consider the explosive response to John O'Regan's Diamond Rings project, plus the prospect of a new album from Forest City Lovers, of which Tim Bruton and Kyle Donnelly are members. That's enough to give one the notion that the D'Urbs might get shifted to the backburner, putting that long-awaited second album on hold.²

O'Regan's purple strat no longer has the word "YAA(!)" in taped letters, but he was adorned, as frequently in the past, in a vintage logo Blue Jays t-shirt and cap — appropriate for the set-opening "Cito G" ("back to back/ we're bringing it back"), which segued into "Boys To Men". A quick dip into the older stuff for "Hot Tips", the guitars buzzing hungrily. A couple more new songs followed, and it's all really good stuff — having heard most of these live two or three times now, I'm totally convinced that the band has topped their previous work. Ultimately, there would only be two We Are the Hunters tracks, though to close things out, the band reached back even further for "Shout It Out! (Organ Song)" from their debut EP.

O'Regan's recent persona makeover as Diamond Rings doesn't explicitly carry over to his work here, except perhaps in a more relaxed and extroverted demeanour as he carries himself with a bit more brashness. Meanwhile, The D'Urbervilles remain a formidable unit — still one of the city's best live bands — so we can only hope that success elsewhere doesn't leave a band as good as this as a mere stepping stone.

Listen to a track from this set here.

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¹ In and of itself, the free shows at YDS have been a big plus for the festival. They certainly get people who aren't running out to get a wristband — or maybe to otherwise take in a show at all — excited about NXNE and add a layer of "event-ness" to the proceedings that can get lost in the whole meticulous process of dealing with all the showcases. And anything that gets bands out of the bars and playing in the daytime during the festival is also positive. That said, other things being equal, I'm generally content to situate myself where the crowds aren't, so I wasn't exactly in a rush to see a lot of stuff there.

² As of this writing, things have been quiet in the D'Urbs' online presence, but they are playing Pop Montreal this weekend.

Recording: The D'Urbervilles

Artist: The D'Urbervilles

Song: The Receiver

Recorded at The Drake Underground, June 19, 2010. (NXNE 2010)

The D'Urbervilles - The Receiver

My notes for this set can be found here.

Recording: The D'Urbervilles

Artist: The D'Urbervilles

Song: Cito G/Boys To Men^*

Recorded at the Out of This Spark 3rd Anniversary Party, The Garrison, January 22, 2010.

The D'Urbervilles - Cito G/Boys To Men

My notes for this set can be found here.

^* Thanks to Colin for the titles.

Gig: Out of this Spark 3rd Anniversary Party

Out of this Spark 3rd Anniversary Party (feat. The D’Urbervilles, Forest City Lovers, Evening Hymns)

The Garrison. Saturday, January 22, 2010.

The anniversary celebrations for local label Out of This Spark have been a warm spot in January's cold for the past couple years, and this time around the party had moved from the Tranzac over to The Garrison. Looks like they coulda picked an even bigger room yet, as the ticketless were being turned away at the door when I arrived, a bit late, missing Jenny Omnichord's opening set. At least that meant a most pleasant lack of dead time as Evening Hymns were just taking the stage and strapping on their instruments as I was finding a spot on the pool table to store my parka.¹

Now a five piece, James Bonetta's band has slimmed down from when I'd seen them previously, with Tim Bruton on extra guitar plus Sylvie Smith adding bass duties to her vocal role. On the stage, a swirling, ambient instrumental introduction built up for a couple minutes, textures of keyb and guit with multitalented/man-of-many-bands Shaun Brodie laying down some trumpet licks on top. That opening build led into "Lanterns", rising up to a climax with more trumpet underneath Bonetta's treated and looped vocals, before collapsing into the regret-tinged "Dead Deer", with Smith doubling the lead vocal, and Brodie switching over to accordion. For my money, these robust arrangements to start the set were the sweetest fruit in the band's basket. Launching into "Cedars", Bonnetta commented, "this is a quiet song. Do what you gotta do." Given the less-than-stellar time I'd had with chatty people at the Garrison the night before, I was worried that that might mean general talking and ignoring the band, but it wasn't so bad on this night.

Then the band exited the stage, leaving Bonnetta alone as he launched into "Mtn. Song" — a surprising choice for a solo spot, given that this was previously a big, roiling band production with extra percussion. Turns out, though, that Bonnetta had some tricks up his sleeve, and the song was turned into something else entirely. Starting off slow and quiet, it slowly went from a coffeehouse folk song into an extended coda, recreating the album version's almost psychedelic ending, with Bonnetta adding layers of vocals via looping pedal à la Nif-D or Jamie Lidell. Stretching out past nine minutes, I don't know that I preferred this to the previous arrangement, but I surely do appreciate Bonnetta's willingness to tinker with his songs a bit and find different ways to present them. After that, the band — who had come around up front to watch that happening, not just holing up backstage to pound back some beers or anything — returned for a rollicking take through "Broken Rifle". The set ended with a new one whose name I didn't catch ("Cabin in the" something — "Cabin in the Burn", maybe?) that the band clearly enjoyed rocking out to. I've found Evening Hymns is sort of on the cusp for me, in terms of how much it engages me, but the fact that the live incarnation is ever-changing and treating the songs as malleable processes and not Songs Fixed In Place For All Time gives me cause to stay on their side.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Keeping one step (or several, preferably) ahead of the talkers, I decided to be proactive and moved right up to the front to see Forest City Lovers, settling in pretty much under the stage right speaker. Which turned out to be the right move for the half-hour set, as it sounded pretty good up there.

Although the band is and shall ever be most closely shaped by vocalist/songwriter Kat Burns, the D'Urbervilification² of FCL continues apace — in addition to Kyle Donnelly on bass, Tim Bruton (who we've seen joining the band on stage in the past) is now listed as a full-time member.³ Over the past couple years, there's been a slow and steadily evolution of the band's live sound into something a bit meatier and more "rock", which is totally to my liking. On this night, the band sounded close to excellent, with perhaps only Donnelly's bass a bit high in the mix early on.

The set started with "Don't Go", sounding better than I've ever heard it, and the band was playing with a pleasing self-assuredness from the outset. FCL is now building up enough of a catalogue that it faces us with that happy dilemma of having too many good songs, and with the influx of new material, we're not going to get to hear all the old favourites every time. Fortunately, the new stuff is pretty good. The band played both sides of their recent 7", with Sylvie Smith coming out to add some backing vox to "If I Were a Tree", a slightly-dendrophiliac romantic sketch all the sweeter for sly double entendres like "if I were a tree / I'd give you wood". We also got what were told was a brand new song (opening lines "clear winter morning / we walk by the lake") and another one that I believe is new, ending with the refrain "we are what we believe in".⁴ I wouldn't have minded another song or two, but a very fine set overall, and Burns left the stage saying, "there'll be a special surprise after the D'Urbervilles, so stick around".

Listen to a track from this set here.

High energy as always, The D'Urbervilles started their set with a blast of new material — although we've been hearing some it if for long enough that some, like "Get In or Get Out", is already familiar, while "Spin the Bottle" can not be certifiably introduced by John O'Regan (now a blond, and possibly having more fun) as "an oldie". In fact, the bulk of the set was satisfyingly devoted to new stuff, which is, at turns, harder hitting and slinkier than previous. Completely entertaining but unassuming on stage as always, O'Regan and co. were rather fabulous, taut and energetic throughout. The set started off with a two-guit attack, though most of the songs involved O'Regan or Tim Bruton on keyb. The half-hour went by in a whir, again leaving the crowd wanting more. In case I haven't been adequately clear: solidly in the top tier of this city's acts.

Check out the band's set-opening salvo here.

And then, re-emerging, O'Regan said, "I guess we'll do some more... we'll all do some more." Members from all the evening's bands were assembling on stage for something of a re-enactment of the beloved joint performance at last year's Summerworks Festival. Let's dub them the OOTS Family Band after the performers' propensity to refer to their label in that rhymes-with-boots way. A raucous three song effort, leading off with the D'Urbs' "Dragnet", featuring Jenny Omnichord on bass. Following which, she sat down and plugged in her omnichord to lead one of her own songs, the full band sound (and Mika Posen's violin in particular) adding some lovely flesh to the song's bones. And then closing with a brisk and urgent take of FCL's "Country Road". Certainly in keeping with the shared spirit of the evening and Out of This Spark as a whole.

Listen to a track from this set here.

A very fine evening, and a tantalizing glimpse of what we can only hope is increased success for the label and these bands. With D'Urbs and FCL both headed towards new releases, I think OOTS will be staying on our radar in a big way for the rest of the year, and we can only hope their biggest problem will be finding a place big enough to hold their anniversary party next year.

---

¹ Reading back over this, it never occurred to me until just now that it's mildly odd that the folks at The Garrison have kept the pool table opposite the bar pushed up against the wall. Given that it functions well enough as a leaning place and communal coat pile, it seems functional and all, I guess. Maybe they push it out to the middle of the floor during the day and hustle folks just in from the countryside.

² This is my new favourite word, and is offered free of charge to anyone who wants to use it as the name of their D'Urbs cover band.

³ I'm slow on the uptake — when did this happen?

⁴ If true, then that's cause for concern for me about eighty per cent of the time.

2009 In Review: Best Concerts (Part II)

Part I of this retrospective can be found here. As with the first part, clicking on the headers will take you to my full review from the show.

The D'Urbervilles / Forest City Lovers

The Theatre Centre (Summerworks Festival Music Series). 2009-08-13 (Thursday)

An extra-long wait out on the sidewalk before getting into the stuffy basement space of The Theatre Centre did nothing to diminish the joy of this unique gig. A short set from Forest City Lovers melded seamlessly into The D'Urbs storming the stage, West Side Story style and playing a few songs before the bands took a break and emerged, seven players wide, in a combined joint force to play a collaborative set. "I wondered to myself whether FCL's more delicate edges might get overwhelmed by the D'Urbs' rollicking energy. As it shook out, the bands'd put enough thought into this to avoid that pitfall, and managed to put the extra hands into more texture rather than more volume. [...] The bands, though dripping in sweat, were clearly having a ball." The sort of thing that you go back and forth on after the fact — it'd be so cool to see that happen again, but as a unique singularity it's all the more precious.

Sometimes, stepping back to find that sweet spot in the venue's sound-field takes a back seat to just, like, being right there up front, so my recordings from the night aren't immaculate, but they get something of it across.

The Dutchess & The Duke

Bicycle Film Festival afterparty, Studio Gallery. 2009-08-22 (Saturday)

Another sweaty night, in a show at a ramshackle semi-venue, had an enjoyable undercard¹, but then I was taken by surprise by the headliners, a band I knew pretty much nothing about: "not long into the set, I realize I'm being completely fucking blown away. R&B in the sense that early Stones or Them or The Animals were R&B, the band had a batch of excellently-written songs, delivered here with off-the-cuff casualness blearily sagging into exhausted raggedness. It really felt like there was zero distance between performer and audience: shakers and tambourines were shared around, we sweated like they sweated, and the drummer's bottle of Johnny Walker Red got passed around so everyone could get a swig. By the end of the set, the walls were dripping with condensation and guitars were well nigh impossible to keep in tune. A singalong of 'I Am Just a Ghost' capped the set — one of the best shows of the year."

Check out recordings from The Dutchess and The Duke, as well as the night's other bands, here.

Wyrd Visions

Bite Your Tongue 1, The Guild 2009-09-06 (Saturday)

This entire show — sending the downtown-bound concert crowd through Scarborough to the beautiful bluffs at the Guild Inn — was a pretty special time, but this transporting set was the most affecting: "Playing on a double-necked guitar, with occasional accents from a looping pedal, his songs were droney folk rambles — folk in the olde Brittania sort of way. Imagine Jandek as a minstrel singing songs of the boggy dew, and you're kinda on the right track. The fact that his set, just over a half-hour, consisted of four songs indicates that his tunes are designed to unspool themselves in their own dreamtime. All of these elements could go so wrong, and could veer to the unlistenable or the precious. But in these circumstances — the near-dark and the first stars winking on in the sky; the fecund descending dampness; crickets chirping in the background — it was perfect, almost sublime."²

If I dare say so myself, I think my recording from Wyrd Visions' set is rather good. My other recordings from the evening are pretty nice, too.

Getatchew Mekuria & The Ex & Guests

SPK Polish Combatants Hall 2009-09-12 (Saturday)

An Ethiopian New Year's special, with a mish-mash crowd merging folks from the Ethiopian community with grizzled old leather-jacket punks and younger Wavelength types, all drinking strong Polish beer and getting funky to a Dutch punk band backing a musical legend. "Most of all, throughout, it was sax heaven. Mekuria, now in his seventies, plays with a rich, groovy tone filled with vital emotion. There is undoubtedly tonnes to be said about the technical side of his craft, his technique, and how he bridges Ethiopian and European styles, but while playing with such vitality it's hard not just to slip into the richness of it. There were no few times where I just wanted the song to keep going, which isn't always (usually?) the way I feel in the midst of a ninety minute set."

I got a decent, not great, recording of that set, but it's still plenty groovy.

The Vic Chesnutt Band

Lee's Palace. 2009-11-07 (Saturday)

Damn damn damn. This show should have been memorable for different reasons. For pairing a gifted and unique songwriter with a powerful band, including members of the Silver Mt. Zion & Tra-La-La Band and guitar hero Guy Picciotto, adding depth and widescreen sweep to his songs for an intense ninety minutes. Or for the laconic, deadpan wit that Vic Chesnutt exhibited on stage. But now, all I mostly think about is "Flirted With You All My Life", when he sang, "O Death, clearly I'm not ready yet." And then, not so many weeks later, changed his mind about that.

R.I.P. Vic Chesnutt, 1964-2009. His music will be remembered; my recording is here.

The Hidden Cameras

The Opera House. 2009-12-05 (Saturday)

In my older, crankier years, I'm becoming increasingly resistant to large-venue shows, so that this show at the not-well-loved Opera House was one of my favourites speaks to the band's talent for scaling their spectacle to the size of the room and showing all challengers how to attain collective glee. Let's see: choir, dancers, banners, audience participation, the band in the crowd and the crowd on the stage. Add to that a delicious opening set from Gentleman Reg³, who'd be one of the many extras on hand for the main act, and this was an excellent night out, that made me feel, upon leaving the venue, optimistic somehow.

This was a treat for more than just the ears, but you can check out a track here.

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¹ Including fine sets from The Bitters and now-already-defunct local shoegazers Heaven, as well as Austin spazz-punks Mutating Meltdown, the band that I was actually sorta there to see.

² An honourable mention should be made here to this concert's sequel, Bite Your Tongue 2, held in November at circus training school Centre of Gravity, which was also an excellent time. Especially memorable was Corpusse's maximally-committed electro-metal. Note to the folks at Bite Yr Tongue: more, please.

³ Gentleman Reg's live work as a whole throughout the year merits him a special citation on this list as well — I can't pick one set, but his many local shows throughout the year, with his band building up steam from month to month, were a definite highlight.

Recording: Ohbijou

Artist: Ohbijou (feat. John O'Regan)

Song: The Otherside

Recorded at Lee's Palace (Friends in Bellwoods 2 release party), Friday, August 28, 2009.

Ohbijou (feat. John O'Regan) - The Otherside

My notes for this set can be found here.

Gig: "Friends in Bellwoods 2" release party (Friday)

"Friends in Bellwoods 2" release party (Friday) (Featuring: Ohbijou / Forest City Lovers / Evening Hymns / Bocce)

Lee's Palace. Friday, August 28, 2009.

Out to Lee's on a Friday night for the second of three release parties for the Ohbijou-curated Friends in Bellwoods 2 compilation.¹ Given that this double-disc set, forty tracks deep, feels like a bit of a snapshot of one corner of the scene du jour, these events bringing many of these bands together lent a sense of occasion to the evening.

First up on the "big stage" show at Lee's was Jonas Bonnetta's Evening Hymns, who had left me with something of a middlin' feeling when I first encountered them at Ohbijou's CD release party back in June. A second dose served to improve my disposition somewhat.² Figuring there'd be some quieter moments that I didn't want ruined by the chattering types, snagged myself a position right up front, and perhaps the unadulterated access to the music made it go down easier. For those keeping track of the inter-band crossovers, Evening Hymns on this night still included Gavin and Wyatt from The Wooden Sky, Ohbijou's James Bunton on drums plus Sylvie Smith's secret-ingredient vox. After leading with comp cut "Cedars" and a rollicking version of "Lanterns", Smith took the mike to sing lead for her own FiB feature, the sweetly country-tinged "On Our Own". "Mountain Song" featured some extra percussion by Leon from Germans, and following the bouncy pop of "Broken Rifle" were some more special guests, the hoodie-clad D'Urbervilles taking the stage to join Jonas for a run through their FiB cut, a lean and menacing cover of Timber Timbre's "Magic Arrow". Very exciting.³

Listen to a track from this set here.

Next up were Forest City Lovers. Perhaps inspired by the "Family Band" configuration, conjoined with The D'Urbervilles, that they played in at their Summerworks gig, this was the rockingest FCL set I've seen. Part of that extra energy undoubtedly came from Tim Bruton of the D'Urbs, who sat in playing second guit for the bulk of the set. The extra energy undoubtedly pushed Kat Burns' vox down into the mix a bit, which is unfortunate, but the extra drive really added some zest to the proceedings. FiB track "Minneapolis" was followed by a cameo by Ohbijou's Jenny Mecija and Anissa Hart adding some extra strings. And then an amazing hat-trick of songs, with "Orphans" and "Watching the Streetlights Grow" — two of Burns' finest compositions — followed by an smoldering take of "Waiting By The Fence". I've seen FCL live in a variety of circumstances, and this was the finest set I have seen them deliver.

Listen to a track from this set here.

The club had filled in decently by the start of the Forest City Lovers set, but it was looking pretty much like a sell-out by the time Ohbijou took the stage. Still wanting to be in front of the talkers, I ended up right against the stage, in front of Casey's monitor, meaning I got to hear the set with plenty of Andrew Kinoshita's rhythm guit in front of me, but at least it was never overpowered by the crowd. The band helped in that regard, playing, like FCL before them a pretty peppy and upbeat set — Ohbijou in party mode. Which meant that a lot of the songs' usual nuance was left for the wayside in favour of a different kind of emotional connection. After a couple songs establishing this mood, the cavalcade of guest stars began with John O'Regan of The D'Urbervilles joining in on "The Otherside", swapping the melancholy for a jaunty edge. The stage was then filled full of even more friends for a singalong of "Staten Island Waltz", a song written by Sarah Creskey who contributed vox along with a crowd including Basia Bulat, Sylvie Smith, Jonas Bonnetta and quite a few more, all joining in as Casey passed around lyric sheets. Nils Edenloff then came on to trade verses on "To Rest in Peace on Righteous Tides", another track from the first album not aired out for a little while. And, after a couple more songs, Ohbijou pushed it to their disco-dancing zenith as Gentleman Reg and Kelly McMichael joined them for a cover of Annie's "Heartbeat", complete with extended wokkachikka riffing. Certainly different than a usual night out with Ohbijou, but a helluva party.

Listen to a track from this set here.

All of which set the mood well for Bocce, a Waterloo-based crew I knew only by reputation. With a drummer plus three guys up front on synths, effects and vox they created a frenzied dance party. It might not be totally inaccurate to assert that when it comes to evaluating the relative merits of DOR bands I'm a bit more of an uninterested observer than a disinterested one and also fair to note that someone without a slip in their hip isn't the right person to say if what the band was doing was working. Fair enough. But still, I stuck around to see what I could get out of it and found it to be a generally fun experience, if not strongly affecting me. The band, at least, knew what their job was and went about their business of catering chaos with a fair amount of enthusiasm. Tony Salomone⁴ was the most kinetic, moving around the stage and beyond into the crowd. The band was on for forty-five minutes, the set concluding with a pass-the-mic freestyle with a heap of guests that included Kat Burns quite credibly rapping a few verses⁵ and ended up with members of the audience dancing on stage. So, yeah, fun stuff and a good end to the night.

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¹ It's been a month or three since I've been to Lee's — when did they do that bit of interior design and straighten up the little jog at the entrance? Definitely a good idea.

² Afterthought: Something in this set must've worked, since I've had "Cedars" stuck in my head for the past two or three days now.

³ So, back-to-back times I've seen the D'Urbervilles essentially storming the stage while another band was playing and taking over the gig — now I'm going to start expecting them to burst out of the the wings at, like, every show I go to, some sort of righteous vengeance force swooping down like KRS-One on P.M. Dawn.

⁴ Wearing a totally boss Thrush Hermit Smart Bomb t-shirt.

⁵ Not the first time I've seen her busting rhymes on stage, if you include her gangsta turn at the Rock Lottery.

Recording: "The Family Band"

Artist: "The Family Band" (Forest City Lovers + The D'Urbervilles)

Song: Watching The Streetlights Grow

Recorded at the Theatre Centre, Summerworks Festival, August 13, 2009.

"The Family Band" - Watching The Streetlights Grow

My notes for this set can be found here.

Recording: The D'Urbervilles

Artist: The D'Urbervilles

Song: Get In or Get Out

Recorded at the Theatre Centre, Summerworks Festival, August 13, 2009.

The D'Urbervilles - Get In or Get Out

My notes for this set can be found here.

Gig: The D'Urbervilles / Forest City Lovers

The D'Urbervilles / Forest City Lovers

The Theatre Centre (Summerworks Festival Music Series). Thursday, August 13, 2009

Celebrity encounter! Frank Chromewaves had sent out a call for audio from Joe Strummer's 1999 T.O. gig, something that I happened to have in my stash, so as Frank was walking by to head into the Theatre Centre, I accosted him and passed the material along and chatted a bit. A class act, natch.

The word on the street was that the night's set wasn't just going to be one band followed by the other, but more of a collaboration. More details were scant but theorized over. Such time-passing diversions were again required, as we were left sitting around outside in sultry heat well past the doors time, watching the building crowd for this show slowly block the ongoing panoramic entertainment of Queen Street. Once we were granted our ingress, the reason for this night's delay was apparent: the stage had been split in two and angled out into a V, with a drum kit on each. On the floor in front, two sets of gear were set up in near mirror-image. Grabbed a spot to sit at the base of the first riser as the crowd — by a good chunk the largest I'd seen so far at the Summerworks gigs — filled in.

Forest City Lovers didn't keep us waiting long once the crowd was in place. Taking their place on the stage right half of the setup, the crew launched into a short set of their delightful pop, animated by Kat Burns' shyly smiling vox. A good way to start the night, the crowd sitting down and adjusting to the underground gloopy warmness.

At the end of five songs came the switchover. Kyle Donnelly (a member of both bands and pulling double duty) started a bass riff while the rest of FCL started snapping their fingers like the Sharks challenging the Jets. Drummer Greg Santilly appeared behind his kit, pummeling out his beat, and suddenly the rest of the D'Urbs flung themselves out, stage left, and into "Spin the Bottle", as if picking up the West Side Story challenge and banishing the Sharks off their turf.

When I'd last seen The D'Urbs at CMW I was left with a sense of astonishment at how powerful a rock'n'roll machine the band had become, and on this night I'd say I felt that even moreso. The band played five songs — including two new ones — during their half of the set, and at the start, the switchover was so quick that the crowd stayed put sitting down. It only took a couple guys moving up once "The Receiver" started for the open space on the dancefloor to be filled up with sweaty, dancing people, and suddenly I was about two feet from vocalist John O'Reagan. The set ended with "This is the Life" and a new song — powerful stuff all around — and the band announced that they'd take a short break before reconvening, both bands combined, as "The Family Band".

Listen to a track from this set here.

I was interested as the full seven-piece joint band came out to see how the two sounds would combine, and wondered to myself whether FCL's more delicate edges might get overwhelmed by the D'Urbs' rollicking energy. As it shook out, the bands'd put enough thought into this to avoid that pitfall, and managed to put the extra hands into more texture rather than more volume. Which isn't to say that this wasn't muscular — we're talking about a seven-piece, two drummer combo here, after all — but it generally meant at least two people on keybs, plus Mika Posen's violin enriching the sound. Things really hit their stride and felt like a true collaboration in the middle of the set, when John added background vox to a lovely version "Watching The Streetlights Grow" that built up to a beautiful coda, followed by a funky party version of "Dragnet" that had John and Kat trading verses. The set had been announced as a birthday celebration special for Out of This Spark honcho Stuart Duncan and must've felt like a treat indeed. The bands, though dripping in sweat, were clearly having a ball and have to be congratulated for putting something like this together. I'd seen these two bands share a stage before¹, but seeing them working together like this was a whole other thing. One to be remembered. Although the crowd would have gladly stayed for more, the band returned to the stage only for a final bow before sending the crowd out to the cooler outside air.

Listen to a track from this set here.

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¹ At their joint CD release party at the Tranzac, March '08.

Gig: CMW (Friday)

CMW: Hooded Fang / Teenanger / Japandroids / The Mark Inside / The D'Urbervilles / The Ghost is Dancing

Gladstone Hotel Ballroom / The Silver Dollar. Friday, March 13, 2009.

Walked into the Gladstone Ballroom just as Hooded Fang were getting underway. Didn't see anything else especially eye-grabbing as an option, so I thought I'd check them out despite having seen them last month. Got a fairly similar set, but that at least showed consistency of their talent, and that it was no fluke the first time around. Once again they made me smile. Good bouncy pop.

Teenanger looked like a diverse bunch of miscreants (nerd/slimebag/reprobate/sexy chick) that had ended up in a band together. They were basically mining from a rich vein of Stooge-y rock. Just starting to build up a good head of steam a couple of songs in, all momentum was sapped from the set when a broken string (and no backup guit) brought things to a complete halt for a few minutes. A contingency plan for this sort of eventuality is definitely indicated for the future. Once things got going again, they were pretty good, although for one reason or another the guitar was pretty quiet for the rest of the set. Whether the room's sound system was just underpowered for this kind of thing, or perhaps the guitarist didn't crank things fully up after replacing the string, it made the band feel a bit less biting than it should have — music like this demands a loud, mean, snarling guitar sound. Even though the songs didn't stick with me, I enjoyed their set, and I dig what they do.

I had read some interesting things about Japandroids and they were probably the main reason I'd come down to the Gladstone. A two-piece (guit/drums) from Vancouver, with both members shouting along.¹ An obvious point of comparison would be No Age, but these guys are coming from a different place, more straight-up garage². When they started, I was a little doubtful: with their off-the-cuff shouty hooks, the first thing that came to mind was Armada.³ But as the set went on, they won me over as I realized these guys had found a sweet spot between sounding rough and sounding tight. The lads were also in a spot between swagger and modesty, making casual overtures to the women in the room while seeming humbled to be out on the road, playing for strangers. By set's end, I was a convert, and the deal was sealed on the last song when Brian lurched behind the drum kit, and then, while attempting to step out, tripped backwards over the monitor, and ended up sprawled out, still playing. As the song ended, he shouted, "we're going up the CN Tower, and you guys should come with us!"⁴

In the warm glow of that, it was time to switch venues and by luck there was a streetcar pulling up as I got to the stop. Made my way east and north to The Silver Dollar and had good timing again, as The Mark Inside were just finishing their setting up. It'd been ages and ages since I'd been to the Silver Dollar, and I'd forgotten how claustrophobic it gets when the place is full, as it happened to be. Looking for room, I forged through the narrow peninsula in front of the stage and did find a bit more breathing space on the other side, though regardless of where I was standing, there seemed to be a loud drunk shouting at someone just inches away from me. As the band started, I tried to remember where I'd read something positive about them, but was drawing a complete blank.⁵ With no preconceptions, I can say they were a very good band who were not totally my style. Good solid rock, very proficient. If I had to guess, I'd wager that a blues-rock band lurks in their background... and that a Tragically Hip-esque band lurks in their future, though without the mytho-poetic baggage. Very well-received by the crowd.

Next up was The D'Urbervilles, who were the band I'd come to see. Singer John O'Regan (tall, laser-beam glare) still projects a youthful image, arriving on stage wearing a backpack and being handed a slurpee soonafter, giving a bit of image of a high school-aged Ian Curtis. But despite their youthful appearance, this is a band that has fast matured. I last saw them almost exactly a year ago, at their album release gig, and their musical growth since then was palpable, as was their confidence. In short, they gave the sense that they have become who they are. Their set was powerful and spooky focused. This was one where I genuinely wish the band had been able to stay on for longer. The D'Urbervilles really come across like a band in their moment, so hopefully there are bigger stages in their future.

Anything might have seemed like a comedown after that, but The Ghost is Dancing felt more like a plummet. Another sprawling cute-rock collective, replete with props (their presence was announced with their name spelled out on a Lite-Brite) and instrument changes aplenty, there just wasn't anything I could get into here. The band was six members deep, which seemed like at least two too many, as it left the songs feeling over-arranged and all mashed together instead of layered. Not for me. I was feeling beat by then, and getting no lift from this music, decided it was time to make my way home.

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¹ In a fiendishly nerdy coincidence the drummer is named David Prowse. Although I imagine he must have taken some grief over this, it seems likely that anyone who'd make fun of someone about this would be the sort of person easily beaten up anyways.

² Although if I were trying to be cool, I'm sure I could find some west coast punk band to place them in some sort of rock lineage. Maybe just a touch of early NoMeansNo?

³ Obviously sans Herman Menderchuck.

⁴ I note they already have another local show lined up, May 9 at the El Mo. I recommend it.

⁵ It was only after a week or so later, that I put it together in my head that I'd read their new album was recorded with Arctic Monkeys producer Jim Abbis, and that they opened a string of UK dates for The Hold Steady. Interestingly, one wonders if this would have shaped my appreciation of the band had I remembered this going in.