1000 Songs: Melody Lau

1000 Songs: Melody Lau

I have now posted one thousand songs from my live recordings to this blog. My introductory thoughts on that landmark can be found here, but long story short: I asked some folks to pick some of their favourites to help me celebrate.

Today's list is from freelance music journalist Melody Lau (twitter: @melodylamb). There's too just much going on under the umbrella of the "Melody Lau brand" to list it all here, but if you ask her at tomorrow night's launch show (with trivia! and prizes! and bands!) for the new issue of Static Zine, she might reel off an impressive list of publications for you. Look for the one in a top hat and/or sombrero.

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To Joe and Mechanical Forest Sound — the most hardworking man in the Toronto music scene. How we haven’t given you the key to the city yet, I do not know. Get on it, Rob Ford!
Here's a bit of nostalgia from me but as you will soon notice, I am a young'un and with youth comes plenty of embarrassing anecdotes. Only for Joe!

The Hidden Cameras - I Believe in The Good of Life

The final night of Wavelength 500 will always be a memorable night, even if I can't remember fragments of it. This is what happens when you're single on Valentine's Day: you have a few too many drinks, watch a bunch of amazing bands, tell Owen Pallett you love him as he politely walks away from you and conclude the night by jumping onstage with The Hidden Cameras. I shared a mic with Kevin Drew briefly; I now know how Leslie Feist feels, kind of. Who needed a Valentine when we all had Wavelength?

Rich Aucoin - It

This was my first time seeing Rich Aucoin live and to say he blew me away is a serious understatement. I didn’t know anything about him prior to his set but I was assured by a friend that he was "a mix of Daft Punk and the Arcade Fire" — quite the loaded descriptor but hell, he lived up to it. Shows don’t get more life-affirming and magical than this; Rich Aucoin is the showman of our generation.

Wayne Petti - Up On the Hillside

Listen to this recording and tell me that you don’t have a crush on Wayne Petti. Exactly. Little did I know that we would go on to be co-workers at Criminal Records, except not really. We never had a shift together but that might be because I had mentioned my huge crush on him during my job interview. Regardless, we will always have this show at the Music Gallery. He asked the audience to sing and, yes, I sang (possibly off-key).

The Balconies - The Slo

I had convinced my bosses at Criminal Records to book this in-store so I feel particularly proud of this in-store set. The Balconies have been one of my favourites, live and on record, since I first saw them in 2009 and even though they've yet to release a new full-length since, I still listen to their 2009 self-titled record and think, "Holy shit, that voice! Those melodies! Yes!" Surely, they’ll return with some more of that soon.

Gentleman Reg - The Boyfriend Song

"Boyfriend, boyfriend, where are you? I ain’t got no money and I ain’t got no boyfriend." Needless to say, my best friend and I found these lyrics quite perfect as we spent that New Year's single. It sounds like I'm single a lot but I swear, I dat... oh, I can’t lie. I'm essentially dating my career these days. After all, I ain't got money!

Bonus memory! The Rural Alberta Advantage - Goodbye

I was still a young, impressionable (and under-aged) blogger when The Rural Alberta Advantage played this Canadian Music Week showcase. They remain one of my favourite Toronto bands but it's tough to take them in at a venue like the Phoenix nowadays after seeing such intimate performances like this one. And one can't get more intimate than this song, specifically. [Ed. note: Indeed. Man, I really wish I had a recording of this show.]

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You can always click on the tags below to read more about the shows these songs came from. Have there been four or five songs posted here that made an impact on you? If you'd like to get in on the action and make a list, feel free to send me an email: mechanicalforestsound@gmail.com.

Recording: The Balconies

Artist: The Balconies

Song: Tiger

Recorded at Sonic Boom Records (CMW), March 10, 2011.

The Balconies - Tiger

My notes for this set can be found here.

In-store: The Balconies

The Balconies

Sonic Boom Records. Thursday, March 10, 2011.

As a lead-in to the night's CMW-ing, dropped in to the basement at Sonic Boom. The store did an admirable job in putting together their own parallel mini-festival, with three full days of in-store concerts — a cozy environment to hang out and run into friends and familiar faces.

On this Thursday evening, I managed to catch the end of The Paint Movement — it's been awhile, and I need to catch a full set from 'em at some point — but was there for The Balconies. Since the '09 release of their debut album, they've been building up new material, and they were showcasing it here, leading off with one of their new ones before bringing out the older "Battle Royale". Besides that, there'd only be one more song from the album.

For whatever reason, I think every time I see the band I'm mildly shocked that they're as rock as they are — perhaps in my head I always remember their poppy side that's a bit more prominent on the album. It's also interesting to note that sibling Jacquie Neville — always a dynamic focus on stage — seems to be emerging as a frontwoman for the band even more, singing lead on the first three songs here before brother Stephen took a turn — although, of course, in most of them there's a certain amount of back-and forth. Still, this is a shift that plays to their greatest strengths.

The new songs included "Kill Count" and "Tiger", both sides of what would subsequently end up on a 7".¹ With nine songs in thirty-five minutes, this was nearly a full set from the band, and they weren't stinting on the effort, having to pause to catch their breath after a few songs. "We've been hibernating for the winter," Jacquie said, noting they'd been doing more behind-the-scenes work on new material than playing around town. Interestingly, after all the new material, the older "Serious Bedtime" came out less sharp in comparison, the harmonies falling a little flat — although when a band is playing in a record shop, you can never be sure if they can all hear each other as well as they'd like. Still, the newer stuff was delivered with a sharp focus, so that augers well as the band gears things up for their second album.

Listen to a track from this set here.

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¹ This single has now been expanded to an EP that includes three beefed-up re-recordings of songs from the debut. And underlying the increased role of Jacquie Neville mentioned above, it must be noted that she is indeed the "lead vocalist" on all five songs of the Kill Count EP.

Currente calamo: CMW 2011 (Thursday)

CMW 2011 (Thursday)^*

While these shows are fresh in my mind I want to get some quick notes down. I'm a nerd for not wanting to throw my full reviews out of sequence, so there'll be a fuller accounting of the night by and by.

6 p.m.: The Balconies @ Sonic Boom

A good turnout during the first afternoon of a three-day mini-festival in Sonic Boom's basement, the store raising the bar once again and hosting an hourly daytime cavalcade of acts. The Balconies were making something of a spring awakening, emerging out of hibernation with a set filled with new material. The new songs leaned a bit more towards "rock" — and away from "pop" — than the stuff from their debut album that we'd gotten used to, as well as leaning more heavily on guitarist Jacquie Neville to take an even larger share of the vocals. Neither of these are a bad thing. The new songs might be a bit less immediate than their precursors, but I'm prepared to give them a good chance to grow more on me — I'm sure we'll be getting plenty of chances to see them over the next few months.

8:30 p.m.: The Wildnerness of Manitoba @ Lee's Palace

The crowd slowly filing in to Lee's wasn't too substantial at first, which meant there were less people discovering this fine band, but also meant there was enough quiet to appreciate what they were doing. They took advantage of that, front-loading some of the quieter material at the start of the set. Proud to be playing Lee's for the first time, they were mostly relying of their familiar material, though ace new one "Chasing Horses" made it into the set list. As the room filled, the band got a bit more raucous, never getting drowned out by the crowd, so hopefully some new ears were exposed to their richly harmonized sounds.

9:30 p.m.: Miracle Fortress @ Lee's Palace

It's been more than a year-and-a-half since I've checked out Graham Van Pelt's pop project, and the stuff that he was working on then has now fully gestated with a new album finally on its way. Jumping out of the gate with a strong Talking Heads vibe, the material has an 80's DOR undercarriage. Joined by a drummer on stage, Van Pelt still isn't putting on much of a show, but this time brought some high-powered lights and lasers to dazzle/blind the crowd. Not that such a distraction is necessary — he's on to a good sound, and there were a few top-notch songs here.

Listen to a track from this set here.

10:30 p.m.: Imaginary Cities @ Lee's Palace

Strangely enough, this is a band I've seen twice while waiting for Young Galaxy to play. But while they were very new and rather an unknown quality last year at NXNE, here they had a crowd of fans waiting to see them — fans enthusiastic enough to be singing along to themselves. The band was certainly more natural in their delivery than when I saw them last year, but that confidence has manifested in a bit too much bland smoothness. There's nothing wrong with their brand of soulful rock'n'roll, but it didn't really stick with me at all.

11:30 p.m.: Young Galaxy @ Lee's Palace

"It's like a new band," said singer/guitarist Stephen Ramsay, commenting on a set filled with both new material and a torqued musical approach. That's evident on their new third album Shapeshifting, and Ramsay told the crowd they were the "guinea pigs", the first to be subjected to the new live approach. Trading in anthemic guitars for more shimmery keybs, the band has metaphorically made the elemental shift from fire to water, well symbolized by singer Catherine McCandless, who was très enceinte. In the past Young Galaxy have been a bit of a hit-or-miss live proposition, but I think that the mechanized elements of the new approach are enforcing some regularity on their sound. Which has to be considered a good thing, as this was an interesting set, with even older material gaining a new disco-y sheen.

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^* A note on nomenclature: for years both the industry showcase and music festival components were known as Canadian Music Week. But as of a couple years ago, 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 Festival presented by Canadian Music Week" throughout.

Recording: The Balconies

Artist: The Balconies

Song: The Slo

Recorded at Criminal Records, March 12, 2010.

The Balconies - The Slo

My notes for this set can be found here.

In-store: The Balconies / Ghostkeeper

The Balconies / Ghostkeeper

Criminal Records. Friday, March 12, 2010.

One of the side benefits of something like CMW is getting extra chances to catch bands play. The cool people at Criminal Records are definitely into the spirit of it, putting on early in-store shows on a couple nights that served as a good way to ease into an evening of venue-hopping.

On a cold, rainy Friday, I was thinking I was going to get to Queen Street just in time to catch the start of the show — but any worries I was going to be late evaporated when I noticed that Balconies' singer/guitarist Jacquie Neville was on the same streetcar as me.¹ So indeed I had a couple minutes to settle in as the band got ready to play. Perhaps it was bleh-inducing rain outside, but the crowd on hand was a bit thin given the amount of buzz around the bands on hand.

The Balconies, for example, have turned a lot of heads with their high-energy live sets. I know I was sold when I saw 'em playing late last year and listening to their poptastic, self-titled debut album absolutely sealed the deal. More familiar with them now, I was able to spend more time just enjoying the band and less trying to think on how to describe them.² The Neville siblings traded off leads to start, with Jacquie on "Ghost Fever" followed by Stephen on "Lulu" and from there the trio continued for over half an hour — almost a full-length set for a band with a single-album repertoire. The band threw themselves into it with break-a-sweat gusto, too, clearly not scaling back their energy because this was "just" an in-store show. I was glad to have the chance to see them again and confirm that the one show I saw was no fluke — you can mark The Balconies down as a reliable source of rockin' fun.³

Listen to a track from this set here.

After a break for the bands to switch over, an even smaller crowd stuck around for out-of-towners Ghostkeeper. Not just a cool band name, they are in fact named after singer/guitarist Shane Ghostkeeper, rockin' with his Métis heritage on display in his beaded guitar strap and feather dangling from his guitar. Hailing from Alberta, the band is apparently usually a five-piece, but was stripped down to a trio for in-store purposes. The group are aligned with Chad VanGaalen's Flemish Eye label, but take that as a commitment to a certain skewed approach to music-making more than sharing a sound with any of their label-mates.

The band played a sort of abstracted, experimental take on blues-rock, an interesting mix that had their songs sounding as if they might be as likely to veer into a Pavement cover as into, say, The Georgia Satellites' "Keep Your Hands to Yourself". The songs' structures weren't off-the-shelf rote, but the excursions did sometimes lose focus. Meanwhile, in the store's PA, drummer Sarah Houle's vox sorta disappeared into the mix. But there was something interesting going on here — I wouldn't say the band is all the way there yet, but given the half-hour ended strongly with "Well Well Well" and "Turn Up the Heat", there's signs that Ghostkeeper are on to something.

Listen to a track from this set here.

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¹ Celebrities! They travel just like we do!

² I'll stick with my earlier assessment of Laura Branigan meets the The dB's, even if that hasn't seemed to have caught on anywhere else yet.

³ And if you haven't seen The Balconies yet, I note they're playing a Steam Whistle "Unsigned" show on May 28th.

Recording: The Balconies

Artist: The Balconies

Song: 300 Pages

Recorded at The Horseshoe Tavern, November 5, 2009.

The Balconies - 300 Pages

My notes for this set can be found here.

Gig: Dog Day

Dog Day / Immaculate Machine / The Balconies

The Horseshoe Tavern. Thursday, November 5, 2009.

Sometimes, you're interested in seeing a band live, but not quite interested enough to go see them. But when you throw a couple bands like together at once, it might be enough to tip the balance. As far as I could tell, Dog Day and Immaculate Machine weren't actually on tour together so much as they both happened to hit T.O. on the same night, and while I've been casually interested in both for awhile, I'd never investigated either too closely. So, a good opportunity.

Plus, truth be told, I was also here as much as anything to check out openers The Balconies (via Ottawa, now local) who have been accumulating some statospheric word-of-mouth over the past few months. Fairly warranted, as it would turn out — this new-wave trio gives the impression of being quite good now and of being on the cusp of more. With two lead vocalists in Jacquie Neville (guit) and Stephen Neville (bass), they sometimes sounded a bit like two separate bands, although perpendicularly complementary ones. Each vocalist approached a distinctly '80's vibe from a different direction: Jacquie a bit more pop, Stephen more college rock — kinda a "you put chocolate in my peanut butter!" admixture of Laura Branigan and The dB's.¹ Both are capable singers, although Jacquie has the more immediately compelling vox.² But when they put their voices together, such as on "Lulu", interesting things started to happen.

The set started with an almost-unaccompanied vocal from Jacquie before the twitchy, new-wave beat kicked in. She turned out be a rather crafty guit player, sometimes sounding like a more user-friendly Keith Levine, while Stephen played a fluid bass, sometimes verging on the too-funky. But their various combinations of smoothness and grit plus their dedication to catchy bite-sized tunes serves them well, and they managed a quickly-moving, dud-free forty minute set. A band to keep your eye out for.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Even without the Kathryn Calder connection, it's pretty tempting to compare Immaculate Machine to The New Pornographers. Both could be described as left-coast bands under the leadership of a singer with penchant for complicating 70's AM pop and a belief in female backing vocals as an all-powerful curative. And while it might be unfair at some level to compare Brooke Gallupe to Carl Newman, given that each is pursuing a different sort of vision, a casual listener trying to decide what is worth listening to might simply shrug his shoulders and conclude that Gallupe is no Carl Newman.

This is admittedly, more or less where I had stood with this band, having sampled '07's Fables album and not having found it especially memorable. But I was certainly willing to see what they could bring live.³ They opened with a trio from this year's High on Jackson Hill, which formed the core of the setlist — "Only Love You for Your Car" being particularly appealing. "C'mon Sea Legs" hit that sweet point of perfect backing vox, suggesting that maybe I should give Fables another spin. The quiet "And it Was" was followed up by the disco-beat of "Sound the Alarms", showing the range of sounds that can comfortably exist under their umbrella. Gallupe was also a fine banterer, recounting stories about living in Victoria and visiting an apartment in Hamburg that The Beatles lived in. Not every song did it for me, but I found some more respect for the band than I had coming in.

Listen to a track from this set here.

I must confess: I have an ongoing problem where I'll often intractably confuse and conflate pairs of bands that I first hear about at roughly at the same time, even if they have roughly nothing to do with each other.⁴ So, for a couple years, I kept getting Dog Day mixed up with Two Hours Traffic, despite the fact that, east-coat origins aside, they have nothing to do with each other. And the fact that I've found Two Hours Traffic to be vaguely pleasant but not worth thinking about meant that I'd also dismissed his Halifax combo without particularly meaning to. Anyways, once I managed to recognize that the aggressive post-punk band that people were praising was, in fact, Dog Day, I made a mental note I wanted to check 'em out.

The four-piece offers a strong visual counterpoint as its focus, with the lanky guitarist/vocalist Seth Smith bouncing lines off pint-sized bassist Nancy Urich, who was a compelling musical foil throughout. Their musical styles mirrored their appearance, with her plucky, tenacious basslines nudging along Smith's guitar work. Underneath it all was Crystal Thili's keybs, never drawing attention to themselves, but keeping everything grounded. The band also had a new drummer in tow, propelling the songs forward with an unfussy, hard-hitting rhythmical sense.

One song brought to mind Eric's Trip, or, perhaps, even more, Rick White's Elevator work before it got all psychedelic — which made sense when at the end of the track Smith commented that it was from a new EP that had, in fact, been produced by White. But that sort of animated/sluggish post-punk is where the band was pitching itself. The band was apparently largely doing material from their new album Concentration, which seems to be less well-loved by some of the more longstanding fans in attendance — "Love Makes It Mad" from their first EP drew the loudest cheers of the night, and afterwards, I heard some guys on their way out lamenting beloved older tunes left unplayed. Myself, I have no basis of comparison, but I like what I heard. The main set ended with Smith and Urich grinding guit and bass together in a string-on-string shoving match before the band came out for one last one, explaining that they couldn't fill most of the requests for old stuff, as the new line-up only had so many songs down. Forty-five minutes that didn't blow my mind but certainly left me with the impression that this was the sort of thing I like.

Listen to a track from this set here.

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¹ It's hard to know if the kids today — who have had access to monumental amounts of music that I never could have imagined coming into contact with at that age — actually did come into contact with the things I'm hearing, or if it's something else, or if they just came into it independently.

² Drummer Liam Jaeger also offered some credible vox, offering plenty opportunities for some inneresting vocal layering.

³ In a revealing sign of the times that we live in, the members of the band were spotted passing around a bottle of hand sanitizer between setting up their gear and starting their set. Which actually makes enormous sense — pandemic worries aside, can you think of many working environments that are filthier and more pawed by gawd-knows-who than a bar's concert stage?

⁴ Privately, I think of this as the Shout Out Out Out/You Say party! We Say Die! dilemma, as no matter what I do, I keep getting those two bands mixed up. At any given time, I'm often unable to even remember the name of one or the other, so I can't even clearly express who I'm mixing them up with.