Sunday Playlist #40: Dance for Spring!
Fool's Gold - Surprise Hotel (Part I)
Ethio Stars Band - Aykedashem Lebe
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.
Sunday Playlist #12: Let's Dance
Nif-D - Centre of Gravity excerpt
You can always click the tags below to see what I originally wrote about the shows these songs came from.
Artist: Bocce
Song: Bachelor
Recorded at The Lower Ossington Theatre (SummerWorks Festival), August 14, 2010.
Bocce - BachelorMy notes for this set can be found here.
Bocce (RatTail)
The Lower Ossington Theatre (SummerWorks Festival). Saturday, August 14, 2010.
The last night of the SummerWorks concert series was not overrun with patrons. No doubt a lot of the potential draw was on the Island watching Arcade Fire, or just pulled away by other Saturday night options.
Like a couple other shows in the run, this wasn't an immediately intuitive doubleheader, so I was curious to see if there was going to be non-overlapping crowds eager for each of the bands. Or maybe no crowd at all. Even with the start time pushed back there were still only about twentyish — maybe — people on hand as RatTail began. A slightly different lineup for the band, now featuring Tim Fagan (ex-Germans) on bass, who was keeping a close eye on drummer Jesse Matthews. I'm guessing both from being less familiar with the material as much as a matter of style, his bottom-end work was a bit more restrained and lower in the mix than I've seen with the band in the past.
A few songs in, the Bocce crowd started to arrive. Though they looked like they were ready for a night of dancing, while RatTail was on they sat down and ignored the band more or less. The set became a sort of case study on the whole notion of the artist feeding off the crowd's energy — or the lack of it in this case. Sometimes, a band will get into it when there's not a lot of attention being paid to them, to try and spark some energy on the room, or just, like, kick against the indifference. Here, instead of amping it up, guitarist/vocalist Jasmyn Burke closed in a bit — during "In Bloom", she sang with her eyes closed, as if she were drawing out a hazy memory of something.
With all of that, the overall vibe of the set was more contained than I've seen from the band in the past. Some of that might just be in the nature of the band's newer material, like "Green Guitar" (complete with harmonica) and the introspective "I Simply". As with the other times I've seen RatTail, I enjoyed it, but this time 'round the band felt a bit too tentative.
Listen to a track from this set here.
A lot of the time there's diminishing returns involved if you see a band more than once in a short period of time, so I was a little worried that I might not be viewing Bocce with fresh eyes, having caught them just a week before at the ALL CAPS Island show. As their set started, the room was fuller than it had been for RatTail, but it was still pretty sparse. Most of the crowd were right up on the floor, though there were a few people sitting a couple rows back in the seats, like they were expecting a play rather than a dance party.
Ben Ong, whose keyboard was set up below the stage, started things off by playing drumsticks on the dancefloor, quickly shattering one. That would be a sign of things to come. When I last saw them, I noted how they're very "live" for an electronic band. Here, there was a bit of gear failure, one of the Casios sorta falling over and getting unplugged, forcing some on-the-fly improvisation to keep things going. After that, the keyboard was on the fritz, forcing the band to decide what they could play that wasn't reliant on it. But none of that managed to block the band's momentum.
Once again demonstrating that no stage can contain him, singer Tony Salomone jogged off to grab a beer during one song's introduction and otherwise kept mobile. There were plenty of live-contingent moments throughout — someone would accidentally step on a tambourine, pick it up and bash it for a bit and then kick it away. Being forced to say, "We're making this up as we go along" might be an admission for some bands that they were over their heads, but here it felt like the band was plunged right into their element. Here's an example of a band that rolled with a small crowd and equipment problems and took it up a notch or several, pulling out a totally fun set.
Is it just random, the things we come to like? Who'd've thunk it that I'd come to enjoy Bocce this much? As things wrapped up, I grabbed a copy of their Disambigulation album1. In the end, it was a fascinating show on several levels, and a worthy close to the SummerWorks concert series, even if it didn't get the draw it deserved.2
Listen to a track from this set here.
1 Although I suggest you should also head out to a show and grab a copy from the band, you can also download it here for free.
2 And once again, we should single out programmer Kevin Parnell, who put together a fine set of shows. We should also note that SummerWorks 2011 is slated to run August 5-15, so make a preliminary note in your calendar now.
Artist: Bocce
Song: Mr. X
Recorded at The ALL CAPS! Island Festival (Day One), Artscape Gibraltar Point, August 7, 2010.
Bocce - Mr. XMy notes for this set can be found here.
Wavelength presents The ALL CAPS! Island Festival (Day One) (feat. The Soupcans / Huelepega Sound System/ Krista L.L. Muir / Rick White / Dog Day / Bocce)
Artscape Gibraltar Point. Saturday, August 7, 2010.
Last year's Wavelength-abetted ALL CAPS! island show was amongst the year's best, so when it was announced that this year's version was going to be a two-day affair, I was doubly delighted. Not in the least because spreading the goodness over two days meant that the day would be less of a marathon, starting more toward the evening instead of the afternoon. And with getting back to the mainland a top concern, island shows always wrap up nice and early as well. And so, on a fairly delightful day, took the ferry out to Hanlan's and had a most pleasant stroll over to Artscape Gibraltar Point, the artists' live/work space that still feels very much like the old schoolhouse it used to be.
Working hard to keep things entertaining for patrons of all ages, there were a variety of ancillary activities besides the music, including games and a tarot card reader outside. Inside, besides open artists' studios to visit, and a room dedicated to some spoken word material, there was a pile of sports equipment available to borrow at the merch table, along with earplugs to protect young ears. And face-painting!1 Even amongst the thin early turnout, it was nice to see some familiar faces on site, and more throughout the day as things filled in. It was a likable, easy-going sort of crowd, as if being on the island gave everyone a chance to unclench a little bit.
Well, maybe for everyone except local punkrockarollers The Soupcans, leading the day off loudfastrules style. With guitar and bass and a two-piece stand-up drum kit that almost managed to overwhelm everything else, the band were out to make a snotty/tuneful racket. The vox were in the yowl and hurgh zone and way down in the mix, though I reckon they like it that way.
If these guys were the cast of a movie, they'd be space-miners in an escape pod fleeing a dying asteroid, slowly going mad, eyeing each other with unshaven, paranoid suspicion. Their feedback-y, shout-y songs were filled with a sorta jokey, almost overly-affected will to cartoon-punk nihilism and rock'n'roll rebellion — though with a knowing edge of how goofy that stance is.2 On being told they had time for one more song they "rebelled" and played two — not such a massive transgression when the songs are all under two minutes. If you like howling feedback filling the gaps between songs, this is the band for you — not reinventing any wheels, but a bracing bit of fun.
Listen to a track from this set here.
A change of direction following that, with Huelepega Sound System setting up. "Originally from Columbia and... El Salvador?" host Georgia Webber asked, looking over at the band.
"Mississauga," one said back casually.
"Well, that just got less interesting," she trailed off, though that perhaps underlines how any of us assume that mutant culture couldn't arise out of someplace we tend to think of as spectacularly unexotic. Self-described as "doombia", or more precisely, "chopped and screwed Colombia-via-Mexican cumbia", with some slowed-down vocal samples and other bits worked in with a sort of dub methodology. Here, the music started with a groovy beat, the trio working laptops and other electronics enhanced by live percussion. In keeping with the idea of being a "sound system" rather than a band, one got the idea that they were versioning existing music more than "playing", pushing them into that grey area where music is being mixed and remixed so radically that it becomes something new. The finer points of what this music "is" is mostly left to worried trainspotters — for the most part it exists to get people moving.
By which standard, this wasn't a runaway success. In this space, with bright evening daylight streaming in through the windows and a thin assortment of people paying close attention, there wasn't a dance breakout or anything. On the other hand, as another element in the environment, serving as a sonic backdrop for the folks choosing to sit out on the back lawn and wandering in and out, it fit well. I don't know anything about cumbia — or pretty much any contemporary Latin American music, really — so this was a chance to listen to something that I probably wouldn't have checked out of my own volition. Interesting stuff, and I'm glad the show included something that was really outside my normal range.
Listen to a track from this set here.
After some time to wander around and take in the surroundings — there's a particularly nice bit of beach right nearby — came back in time to hear Georgia Webber, herself a former student in this building, re-tell the story of ghostly lighthousekeeper J.P. Rademuller before turning things over to Krista L.L. Muir. The "L.L." is the remnant of the time Muir spent under the nom de guerre Lederhosen Lucil and that moniker, along with the fact that her chosen instrument is the ukulele, gives a hint of the gung-ho vaudevillian persona that she brings to stage. Her bouncy onstage demeanour would be a good framing device to keep attention on her low-key but pleasing vocals.
Playing only with the accompaniment of a bassist, Muir confessed that she was using this audience as guinea pigs as she incorporated some laptop-provided backing tracks into her set. The results were mixed. Still learning the ropes of incorporating the laptop on stage was making her slightly discombobulated — later in the set she'd confess, "I'm not used to karaoke! I'm used to real bodies."
There were some subtle charmers here, like "Concrete Love Song", but when the file with the beats for "Fruit Belt" wouldn't open, the resulting low-tech clapalong jaunt was the most fun of the set, showing that Muir was at her best when relying on her own abilities as an entertainer, engaging the audience and even throwing in some rockin' leg kicks at the end of "Drugging the Drain". The laptop problems came again at the end of the set, forcing a re-start of "Between Atoms"3 before they just gave up on the song and went out on another human-powered clapalong, this one en français. All things considered, I probably enjoyed the set more when realworld indeterminacy supplanted the carefully constructed laptop stuff.
Listen to a track from this set here.
And from there, the action moved outside to the foot of the possibly-haunted Gibraltar Point lighthouse. There was still a mellow, lighthearted vibe in the air — something that's helped along upon seeing some of the folks that one normally sees in darkened bars walking around in full facepaint, their inner dragon or butterfly nature on display for all to see. And as sunset approached, the amiable Rick White played while some hastily-moved projection machines from General Chaos lit the masonry behind him. Working without a setlist, White flipped through his notebook ("this is my memory") to find songs to play. He spent a good chunk of his set in the area filled with songs from 2009's 137, including the catchy "Perception", but also stopped on the lovely "Why Be So Curious?" which he wrote for The Sadies4 and had an appropriately pastoral vibe. And speaking of seeing the forest for the trees, White pulled out a couple covers, including Linda Ronstadt's "Different Drum" and Syd Barrett's "Flaming". Ruefully flipping past a bunch of Beau Brummels, White commented that once he got started he just wanted to keep playing covers. Instead, he covered himself, dipping back to Elevator for "The Change".
It was still quite light as the set started, but it quickly drained away as the sun went down, giving the lighthouse a spookier vibe. Once White got going, it looked like he could have kept playing for quite a spell, but with pressure to keep things on schedule, he sent the crowd back in to the schoolhouse to check out a band that he had recently produced.
Listen to a track from this set here.
That would be Halifax's Dog Day, now playing as a stripped-down two-piece of core members Seth Smith and Nancy Urich. It would a sort of return to the garage for the pair, whose music recalls but doesn't imitate the low-slung guitar-based glory of classic college rock from the 80's and 90's. I was a bit late in coming to the band, but they won me over when I saw them playing last year, and even moreso with their Concentration album, so I was curious to see if they'd managed to achieve addition through subtraction — one can see the economic sense of this alignment, but rock'n'roll-wise, two heads is usually less good than four.
All told, this setup was a bit more limiting than the old quartet. Urich's drumming was sometimes a bit of a work in progress, but it got the job done. The strength of of songs was the main thing, and most of new material the band played was pretty good. I especially dug "Eurozone" — I'd've used the adjective "moody" to describe it, but that kinda applies to them all. The first few songs were with Smith on guitar and Urich on drums; midway, they'd switch off for a couple songs, and that worked well, too. On the last song of the set, it did seem to come all together, the music well-arranged enough that it didn't feel like there was anything missing. So if, as it looks like, the band is sticking with this lineup, it sounds like they have the potential to grow into it.
Listen to a track from this set here.
The crowd thinned after that set, with some opting to grab an early ferry back to the mainland, but there was one band left to go. Waterloo's Bocce led with "Transmission", which began with a more deliberate build than I remembered the band bringing to the table — or perhaps I just mentally edited that part out since the last time I saw 'em, since what I mostly remember about that set was dance-y craziness. That would come, but I had the impression that the band has learned something about pacing themselves.
Perhaps appropriate to the venue, at the start it felt rather like a school dance, with almost everyone standing against the walls until the boogie imperative took over and people started moving along to the vocoder-heavy dance beats. By the time the band kicked up "Disco Juan" ("it's a sham! / Damn!") things were moving pretty good. The band even threw in a verse from Woodhands' "Can't See Straight" for good measure.
The best thing about Bocce, though, is that no matter how robotic their sounds might be, they're always very "live" in their execution — this is not one of those "just press play" sort of groups. This is thanks in no small part to the bouncy kineticism of vocalist Tony Salomone, who likes to get active during a show — here he ran over to the merch table to grab a skipping rope to try and get the crowd hopping. Good fun.
Listen to a track from this set here.
That would be the end of the first day's activities, and as most of the remaining crowd hopped on their bikes to cruise back to the ferry docks, I had a nice stroll back with AA, as we made our way back though the uncitylike nightdarkness to grab that last ferry back to the non-island part of the world.
1 The latter was undertaken, to awesome effect, by Maria Bui, who probably also deserves a medal or hug or some form of recognition for her work with Fuzzy Logic Recordings.
2 Surfing that line, one song was introduced with the angry shout of "this is about a sandwich!"
3 That one would be the title track of Muir's next album, which is slated for a spring '11 release.
4 The Sadies recorded it on 2004's Favourite Colours. White also performed "Anna Leigh", another one he gave to The Sadies.
For the third year, Toronto's long-running SummerWorks festival is supplementing its theatrical programme with a Music Series. This year the music portion finds a new home at The Lower Ossington Theatre (100A Ossington), and has expanded beyond just the concert-format shows of the past couple years to include Musical Works in Concert ("an opportunity for creators, composers, and lyricists with a platform to showcase musical work in development ") as well as shows in the Performance Bar (downstairs at the Ossington Theatre) where a bevy of musicians will be special guests to some manner of freewheeling drop-in improv.
It looks like a very well-chosen lineup that you can look over here. Many of the artists — both in the concert series and in the performance bar — will be familiar to readers of this blog, and I feel like I can recommend quite a few of them. Plus, I can back up my words with some live samples to give you an idea of what you might be in for.
If you want to read more about any of these artists, just click on the labels at the bottom of this post.
Leading things off with a two-night stand is one of the city's most theatrical bands, a perfect fit for this Festival. In fact, word is that the band will be doing a theatrical re-interpretation of last year's Origin:Orphan. The band's performances always have the sense of being an event, and this one looks like it might be something special.
Listen! The Hidden Cameras - Fear of Zine Failure (Recorded at the Opera House, December 5, 2009.)
Allie Hughes has transcended past a flirtation with reality TV (as a contestant on How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria) to craft sophisticated pop that's smart enough not to alienate jaded listeners in Toronto's indie scene, daring to be a technically proficient singer in a milieu that often prefers the cough-ahem-authenticity of the rough-hewn.
Listen! Allie Hughes - Headmaster (Recorded at The Garrison, March 5, 2010)
see above
Whether performing space-funk workouts with her band Pegwee Power or performing soulful solo jams on her harp, Maylee Todd brings star power to the stage.
Listen! Maylee Todd & Pegwee Power - Aerobics in Space (Recorded at The Drake Underground, March 25, 2010)
Previously known as Ghost Bees, this duo of twin sisters Sari and Romy Lightman transfix with their spare folk stylings. A little bit of off-kilter spookiness that would go down well in any cemetery or haunted house.
One of the city's best, Laura Barrett brings her kalimba-powered songs to bear on pressing issues of love, optimism, and other science projects.
Listen! Laura Barrett - Ferryland (Recorded at Jason Collett's Basement Revue, Dakota Tavern, December 22, 2009)
Most recently gaining attention as Owen Pallett's on-stage co-conspirator, Thomas Gill — the band THOMAS' namesake — has in fact collaborated with many local musicians in addition to leading his own combo. With falsetto vocals augmented by Felicity Williams' soulful pipes, THOMAS dares to be soft in the face of a hard world.
The musical partnership of Daniela Gesundheit and Dan Goldman, Snowblink takes a beautiful voice and wraps it in reverb and antlers, then loops more voices around that. The band have been playing some choice new material lately, and often throw in a stripped-down cover recasting a song you thought you knew in a haunting new light.
Listen! Snowblink - unknown (Recorded at Poor Pilgrim Island Show 4 (St. Andrew-by-the-lake Church), July 18, 2010)
Singer/guitarist Paul Saulnier of Kingston duo PS I Love You fills the stage with guitar and bass (courtesy of foot pedals), bringing a hard-edged rock attack with DOR attitude. Suitable for those who want to hoist their beers up in the air but not alienating those who want to dance.
Listen! P.S. I Love You - Facelove (Recorded at Wavelength 494, The Garrison, December 20, 2009)
Quickly becoming a sensation, Diamond Rings (a.k.a. John O'Regan of local rockers The D'Urbervilles) has gained notice and rapidly-increasing audiences not because of gimmicks or eye-catching videos so much as from bringing some top-notch pop songs to the stage. Presented with increasing assuredness, O'Regan knows how to meld melancholy bedroom pop with electro-glam bombast, pulling off more than a few anthems in the process.
Listen! Diamond Rings - Something Else (Recorded at Owen Pallett's 30th Birthday Party, Lula Lounge, Sunday, September 6, 2009)
Reggae and soulful flourishes complement Odario Williams' ecumenical hip-hop, brought to life with an energetic live band. A guaranteed party-starter.
Listen! Grand Analog - Not Enough Mondays (Recorded at Daps All-Ages V, Kapisanan Philippine Centre, April 10, 2010)
Those who came to folk-rock via Fleet Foxes will find as much to like in this band as those who came to folk-rock via Crosby, Stills & Nash. Featuring warm harmonies and banjo, this band has advanced their craft pretty rapidly in a fairly short time. (appearing with The Mountains & The Trees, Entire Cities and The Weather Station)
Listen! The Wilderness of Manitoba - Evening (Recorded at The Garrison, January 21, 2010)
The two adjectives that come first to mind when describing Picastro would be "sleepy" and "downer" — this is not music to listen to while operating heavy machinery. But there's a melancholy beauty in the slowly-spun arrangements behind Liz Hysen's songs. Highly recommended for those who don't finch in the face of interiority.
Listen! Picastro - Hortur (Recorded at Wavelength 500 (night 4), SPK Polish Combatants Hall, February 13, 2010)
Jonas Bonnetta's Evening Hymns, meanwhile, also have a bit of a haunted quality to them, evoking ghost-filled forests and abandoned cabins. Working in a roots-y vein, Bonnetta is capable of creating striking music on his own, but fleshed out with a band works toward a ragged grandeur.
Listen! Evening Hymns - Dead Deer (Recorded at the Out of This Spark 3rd Anniversary Party, The Garrison, January 22, 2010)
A one-man band with a laptop and bin full of electronics, Matt Smith (a.k.a Nifty and/or Nif-D) is also a master of the looping pedal, folding layers of his own vocals into his real-time electronic compositions. Equally capable of creating ambient soundscapes and dancefloor bangers, Nif-D never plays the same set twice.
Listen! Nif-D - Centre of Gravity excerpt (Recorded at Centre of Gravity, November 21, 2009. Bite Your Tongue #2)
Returning to the music programme after presenting his musical/theatrical hybrid "Actionable" in last year's SummerWorks, activist, bon vivant and Canadian music legend Bob Wiseman may bring some or all of these elements to this show: guitar, accordion, keyboards, storytelling, outrage, short films, love songs.
Listen! Bob Wiseman - The Disappearing Trick (Summerworks Festival (Factory Studio Theatre). Saturday, August 15, 2009)
Last chance to dance! As kinetic and mildly chaotic as the sport that they are named after is not, this synth-rockin' crew will probably leave the Lower Ossington Theatre in a sweaty mess.
Listen! Bocce - Disco Juan (Recorded at Lee's Palace (Friends in Bellwoods 2 release party), Friday, August 28, 2009)
Purveyors of a smartly-torqued indie-rock sound, trio RatTail features guitarist Jasmyn Burke's vocals, with a flattened monotone affect that veers off into yelps, as the most immediately arresting element in their arsenal. They fit well against the lean post-punk groove of the music, with Ryan Mounsey's bass often seizing the melodic lead space against the slashing guitar lines.
Listen! RatTail - George Mounsey (Recorded at Wavelength P.S. Kensington, May 30, 2010)
"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.
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.
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