Sunday Playlist #27

Sunday Playlist #27: Feelin' Exhausted, Ragin' On

Constantines - Justice

Hospital Ships - I Want It to Get Out

Fred Squire - You Sing Low And We Will Sing High

Deloro - No Fun

Titus Andronicus - The Battle of Hampton Roads (Part I)

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

Recording: Deloro

Artist: Deloro

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at The Shop under Parts & Labour, October 22, 2010.

Deloro - unknown

My notes for this set can be found here. Do note that the sound quality here is a notch below what I usually offer.

^* Tony Romano said, "sometimes you wonder things" at the start of this one. I don't know if that was to identify the song or just a general musing. If anyone can confirm that as the title, please leave a comment.

Gig: Anagram

Anagram (Deloro / Bruised Knees)

The Shop under Parts & Labour. Friday, October 22, 2010.

A return for Anagram to the bomb-shelter environs of The Shop, this time as the headliner celebrating the long-awaited release of Majewski¹, their second album. The album adds by subtraction, stripping things down to the raw fury that the band exhibits at their shows, with Willy Mason's taut guitar lines the counterpoint to brother Matt's aggressively slurred vocals.

This would count as highly-anticipated in some circles, and I figured there'd be a tightly-packed crowd coming out for this one. I figured it would be a good idea to get there early — fortunately there was an intriguing pair of openers to start things up.

Leading off the night was Bruised Knees, who don't share much information about themselves on their myspace, but I recognized Chuck Skullz (ex-Creeping Nobodies). Leading off with a five-minute instrumental featuring textured guitar and extra percussion, they were definitely not afraid to let the songs stretch out. With a detuned, off-centre groove, the first point of comparison here is probably going to be Sonic Youth — Skullz' guitar work (at one point he jammed a screwdriver in the neck of his guitar) and vox do bring Thurston Moore to mind.² But Natalie Logan's vocals, as well as her extra percussion, tug that in a different direction. Apparently the first time out with a new lineup, the band (anchored by Dennis Amos' drums and Graham Hancock's bass) was pretty fluid in the execution, which is vital for music that is more about the texture than singalong moments. Enjoyable stuff.³

Listen to a track from this set here.

I definitely came to this show excited to see Deloro again — the first time 'round they were very much an unknown quality to me, though with some intriguing familiar faces. While they set up, someone beside me in the crowd had asked me if I knew anything about the band and I gave a flip response along the lines of "imagine if Slint recorded a country album". Which was succinct and adequately reductionist for random semi-shouted conversation with strangers in a dark bar, but obviously a bit short on nuance. Still, as the band started playing at a slow simmer, if felt kinda right. The trio of vocalist/guitarists up front (Jennifer Castle, Paul Mortimer and Tony Romano) worked off each other as drummer David Clarke (a member of $100 alongside Mortimer) and bassist Dallas Wehrle (ex-Constantines) kept order.

The place was now packed and boiling, the band playing to a semi-attentive audience, even right up front. It was a "hey brah"-heavy crowd — about whom we'll hear more anon — treating this as background noise while busily getting their drink on. Some material managed to cut through — especially the superb "Drugs", as well as a pair with Jennifer Castle on lead vox. If there's a connection to the hurtingest kind of country music here, it's the the general sense of dread that the music trades in — the sense that things have been going wrong for a long while, and everything points to things going wrong up ahead. The music slowly built up to a shouty frenzy ("she said, 'take me as I am!'") and Paul Mortimer's closer had a bit of a redemptive vibe to send things out on a less-bleak note. Powerful stuff, and I was glad to have caught the band again, though I still hunger to hear them under slightly better conditions.

Listen to a track from this set here.

And then, The Shop was at about maximum crammage as Anagram took over. Launching straight into a schizophrenically locked groove, it took about the length of a song for the crowd to reach the hypnotized state that seems to take people over whenever they play. By the time band launched into "I've Been Wrong Before", bodies were bouncing around, and soon, it was pretty crazy.

Given singer Matt Mason's propensity to wander out among the crowd, there's always a fuzzy sense of where the band's space ends and the audiences' begins — and in the no-stage setup at Parts & Labour, it was even fuzzier than usual. The front rank of the crowd were pressing in past the monitors and the mosh-y people were getting really intense. People — by which I mean "dudes" — were pounding on the low ceiling when not bracing themselves against it to gain leverage as bodies bounced around.

When Mason wandered into the crowd, he was getting more than just bumped into, and the people pressing forward were knocking into the gear. From what I've seen of Anagram, it says something when the crowd is getting too much for the band. After "Evil", Mason inveighed against the crowd, "this is fun, but could people stop treating this like a fucking therapy session!"

Playing for nearly an hour, this was a marathon set by Anagram standards that allowed for not only an intense airing of the Majewski material but more as well. Not only did the band play go-to Cleavers cover "Fish", but also took a run through Leonard Cohen's "The Butcher".⁴ In one sense this shouldn't surprise, as Mason's songwriting, full of internal rhyme schemes, is less far away from folk cadences than you might expect. And lyrically, this one fits just fine into the Anagram worldview: "Well, I found a silver needle, I put it into my arm. It did some good, did some harm."

And then just a couple more to close it out, the quicker "Oh Well" followed by an extended run through the appropriate-to-finish-with "That's a Wrap". The set ended with Mason calling out individuals from the crowd: "You're an asshole."

Now, I come from outside of the punk/moshing culture, so admittedly some of the subtleties are lost on me, but I left the show thinking about the relationship between this band and their music and how crowds react to it. Is the crossing of a line from self-governed frenzy to assholish disruption a logical extension of the behaviour that band encourages? At some level this is music with a murky relationship between bad vibes and catharsis mediated through aggression and controlled chaos. Ask any suburban kid who tried making napalm in their back yard and you'll hear about the fine line between ecstatic release and getting burned. But it must be tough for a band that banks on a very particular kind of dynamic with the crowd to power their performances to depend on everyone — even the Friday-night "hey brah!" lunkheads — to understand the limits how far they can push things. Or each other.

But still, if you're not interested in the social experiment angle of an Anagram show — and not all of them are like this, by any means — you can still experience what's best of them in your own headspace with a copy of Majewski.

Listen to a track from this set here.

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¹ The album is titled in tribute to late poster artist and friend of the band, Michael Majewski.

² Skullz was a precision craftsman, with one rack of effects for his guitar (which was then, I believe, run through a keyboard) and another for his vocals.

³ I've already seen this band in further action and I can report that they're getting into their groove even more than when I saw 'em here. I do recommend checking them out.

⁴ "The Butcher" is now available with "Fish" on a 7" from the Telephone Explosion label.

Recording: Deloro

Artist: Deloro

Song: Drugs

Recorded at The Shop @ Parts and Labour, June 11, 2010.

Deloro - Drugs

My notes for this gig can be found here.

Gig: Deloro

Deloro (Tropics)

The Shop @ Parts & Labour. Friday, June 11, 2010.

At the conclusion of the Robyn Hitchcock show, made my way west down Queen a spell, over to Parkdale. I figured I should hit Parts & Labour in plenty time to catch The Goodnight Loving, slated to be first up at 11:30.

As I paid my cover and stepped in, there's maybe twenty-ish people around, and I soak in the feel of the empty space. Tim is playing in the background as I grab a drink at the bar — and to the good they'd knocked 50¢ off the inflated prices they'd been charging the previous weekend. Your tongue, your transfer, your hand, your answer. People hang around in clumps, the largest of which is over by the bubble hockey table. If being afraid is a crime, we'll hang side by side. I take my place in the back, away from the loudmouths, grabbing a spot on one of the benches on the long wall. Watching people straggle in, looking for any familiar faces. Am I the only one here today?

The Shop, it should be noted, is not a venue where things get going early. Come midnight, I'm sitting around, wondering if I oughtta've come down, looking at my watch and thinking it was unlikely I'd missed the first act — but where were they? About twenty past, Tropics come in, carrying gear and start setting up. This'd be the band's second set of the night, Slim noted — heading over here, it would turn out, to fill in for the original openers who were held up at the border. Well, at least we got something going on.

Now, I've seen the band three or four times, and I think I more or less captured it right last time 'round where I freely threw the word "abrasive" around. The duo, with Simone TB on drums and Slim Twig singing and playing guitar, have a rough-edged line in rock'n'roll clamour, playing quick songs filled with yowl and thrum. Slim uses pedals — including some manner of loop station — to extend and prolong his racket. One song, for example, segued into the next with about a minute of looped guitar grindings. In this room, with the quick set-up and basic sound system, the sound was a little thin and not tweaked to add much to the bottom end, giving it a bit less of a punch than I've heard from them in the past. There were a couple songs I recognized, and one that was introduced as a new one. As has happened in the past, I don't usually head out to hear Tropics, but I'm glad to catch 'em every once in a while. A special nod should be directed at the band for filling in in a pinch, too. Community spirited!

Listen to a track from this set here.

That community vibe was carried on for the headliner's set. Information about Deloro is somewhat scant, but it turns out they're something of a supergroup — on a modest, local scale. It was looking over the personnel of this band that had brought me out for this one — the lineup including Jennifer Castle (a.k.a. Castlemusic), Paul Mortimer and David Clarke (of $100), Dallas Wehrle (of — or ex-? — Constantines) and Tony Romano.

Only the last name was unfamiliar to me and required some digging around. Romano, it turns out, is best known for his work as a visual artist — although some of his work does have a rock'n'roll flair to it, so this other angle shouldn't take us by surprise. It does, however, make him a bit of a wildcard in the musical mix. On the whole, given that list of members, one might guess that the band might be rootsy/folky, but though you hear echoes of that here and there, this was a more robust affair.

The band had a casual sort of approach to start their set. What I had thought was just the band noodling around while soundchecking eased, sans announcement, into the first song. Wehrle, seated, was not only playing his bass, but also a set of bass pedals, backing what was generally a three-guitar attack. Mortimer and Romano mostly split the lead vocal duties, though Castle took the lead on a couple. Paul Mortimer, with his vocal (and presumably songwriting) contributions, was the real revelation here. When you get used to seeing someone playing sideman in a band you can forget that this isn't the sum of them as a musician, so it's good to have projects like this to get a better measure of talents not as often seen.

There was an annoying audience for this one — a lot of people were just out to hang around and talk, some of whom were standing right up front. Vexing, as this was stuff worth listening to — the band was well-rehearsed, and there was some well-executed guitar interplay, and even some good vocal arrangements as well. There was a burnt-out post-bender edge to some of the songs, including the top-notch "Drugs", complete with harmonica from Castle. "No Fun" (not a cover) was another winner, with carefully modulated dynamics giving an impression of restrained fury that could break loose at any time. And, in fact, that sort of burst out with the last song of the set, where Romano brought a bit of a post-rock lurch and yelp to a careening, tempo-shifting finale. All the band needs now is an anthemic sing-along comedown song.

But hopefully there will be more to come. The band had nine songs, enough material for a thirty-five minute set — not bad for a unit that allegedly hadn't played for a year. All of these artists have other things on their plate, but we should hope that they find time for some more shows together.

Listen to a couple tracks from this set here and here.

Recording: Deloro

Artist: Deloro

Song: No Fun

Recorded at The Shop @ Parts & Labour, June 11, 2010.

Deloro - No Fun

Review to follow. Update: My review of this show is now posted here. This is not a cover. The band is a supergroup of sorts, featuring Jennifer Castle, Paul Mortimer, David Clarke, Tony Romano and Dallas Wehrle.