Recording: Everything All The Time

Artist: Everything All The Time

Song: Getting Higher

Recorded at El Mocambo, December 17, 2010.

Everything All The Time - Getting Higher

My notes for this set can be found here.

Gig: No Shame & The Singing Lamb Present A Warm & Fuzzy Non-Denominational Holiday Party (Night Two)

No Shame & The Singing Lamb Present A Warm & Fuzzy Non-Denominational Holiday Party (Night Two) (feat. The Magic / Everything All The Time / THOMAS / The Winks)

The El Mocambo. Friday, December 17, 2010.

Besides having well-chosen acts, it generally feels good to go to a No Shame show. As is generally the case, when I showed up for this one, Lauren Schreiber was working the door, issuing warm greetings and collecting canned goods. And also marking hands with a customized stamp reading "W T E M" to celebrate the night's bands. "W", in this case, denoting The Winks, visiting from Montréal. I came in not knowing anything about the band, but I got a notion of what would be coming when I saw the slightly eclectic instrumentation (the band featured cello and mandolin but no guitar) and the arch look (saucy modern-day flappers).

And indeed, as the first song unfurled with skreeling stings against Todd Macdonald's plinking mandolin, the term "dramatic" crossed my mind. Perhaps a little too self-consciously so, even — which might well put it in a certain sort of Montrealish vibe. Parts of the set felt like expository excerpts from a musical rather than pop songs, more based on a shifting multi-part dynamics than singalong hooks. Which is to say, a bit out of my sweet spot.

Fortunately, the artsy sense of pagentry was carried beyond the music, so I was at least entertained by the band's performance. Vocalist/cellist Tyr Jami kept busy, whether leading some co-ordinated on-stage moves or jumping down to prowl the empty area in front of the stage. In fact, a cover of "Waiting For My Man" ended up with both Jami and her co-vocalist slumped over "dead" on the floor. The Ken Kesey-inspired closer "Wakonda" did draw me in, so there was some value here, even if I found most of the music to be only fitfully engaging.

Listen to a track from this set here.

On this night THOMAS was just the titular Thomas Gill, though he brought his band with him in laptop form. Of a set filled with new songs, Gill commented, "they're christmas-y... but they're actually also the kind of songs my band is going to start playing." With that he launched into "Jesus Was Born", with just his spindly voice and nimble guitar, and indeed it fit into the Christian lite-rock vein that he's been veering toward lately. Mid-song, he triggered his laptop, which added a smooth backing track behind him, drums and ethereal synths and the unmistakable voice of Felicity Williams.

After that, he put down his guitar and just sang, giving a karaoke air to the set, but playing some interesting stuff like "The Kingdom". At the very least, it was cool to see something that was very much a work-in-progress, as Gill averred to having knocked out some of the tracks that morning. I had described THOMAS' songs to A. as being like those mellow Jesus songs that you always skip past on Prince albums, and this was proving me dead on.

It was kinda a weird scene, with the increasingly loud crowd yapping while noise from the "Jingle Bell Rock" party bled through the ceiling from the upper room, all gradually creeping their way over the music from the stage. Undeterred, Gill beckoned to non-present bandmates as the laptop played their parts. Giving some hints of where his sound was coming from, he did a cover of "Earth: The Story So Far", from Prefab Sprout's spiritually-inclined Let's Change the World with Music album. And as for where it's headed to, there were more prominent beats on the 'gospel-house' track "When I Thought I Wouldn't Make It".

The crowd was getting thicker and no more interested in what was going on in stage, and Gill remained self-contained and unconcerned. And myself, it's not that I didn't like the music — I've managed to overcome my initial reluctance and become intrigued by what Gill's doing¹ — and not that this wasn't an entertaining/weird scenario, but it did feel like more of a sideshow en route to the heart of the night.

That would be sets by two bands that I had come to lump together in my mind — not just for their music, but also the way I reacted to their 80's revivalist sounds the first time I heard them. For both bands I'd started with an anti-nostalgic suspicion, but eventually succumbed to the groovy fun of it all.

What with vocalist Alanna Stuart's other band blowing up pretty well, there hadn't been much from Everything All The Time lately. Additional seasoning wasn't needed to enhance Stuart's already potent stage magnetism² — her presence simply demands attention. As the band finished getting ready, she invited the crowd to get closer, and unlike the previous acts the area in front of the stage was soon filled in. With the lights now illuminating the spinning disco ball, there was an instant party vibe.

The band offers Video Hits-worthy synth rock anchored by Stuart's fabulous pipes. Like the last time I saw 'em, the band started off with a slow one that took its time to build up, while "Getting Higher" delivered more of an immediate punch. It was a pretty similar setlist to what I'd seen last time, though there was the addition of "New House", a brand new one at the slower end of the band's spectrum making its debut. That was followed by the Whitney Houston-isms of "Telephone Conversation", and then the final blast of "Start.Stop", with Stuart, fully fired up, grabbing a drumstick to smash a cymbal. At set's end, the room was definitely warmer than it had been going in.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Another point of similarity between EATT and The Magic is how many members each band has keeping busy in other projects, making it worthwhile to grab a chance to see 'em playing together when the opportunity arises. Though they'd been around, it'd actually been almost a year since I'd seen The Magic playing. They also eased into their set, with "Never Lock the Door" which starts off slightly morose but builds into an upbeat falsetto rocker, and then chased that with a mid-tempo "newish song".

There was no horn section on this night, just the core five-piece centred around Geordie Gordon (vox/keyb) and his brother Evan (keyb/keyb bass) plus Sylvie Smith (keyb/vox). There might have been a bit of rust on the band's part, and it was only after after "No Sound" that the band (as well as the crowd) started moving, Gordon asking, "did members of the Toronto Dance Academy just join us at the front of the stage?"

There wasn't quite the same energy as I remember from the heights of the last time I'd seen 'em, but not every night can have the electric lurch of a New Years' Eve. And even if Gordon wasn't quite hitting the top notes, it was still good fun. Plus, there were a couple of new-ish songs that I hadn't heard before, including a solid slower one (possibly called "Slipping Away" ). As always, the Smith-led "Call Me Up" was a highlight, after which Gordon commented, "we're finally getting warmed up!"

MIDI problems stopped things for a couple minutes, but the band kept the momentum going with drummer Aaron Curtis and guitarist Jordan Howard driving "5th Business", a rocking good bit of new wave tastiness. That energy carried over to "Mr. Hollywood", meaning that the closing segment definitely made up for the less vigourous first few songs, and keeping The Magic's rep as a party-rockin' good time intact.

Listen to a track from this set here.

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¹ Given how Gill's countenance ranges somewhere between serenity and bemused detachment, I remain curious as to how much this a musical, as opposed to spiritual enterprise. "This song is total bullshit," he cheerfully commented while introducing the last one, and though its mode of expression was a little cheesy ("When we say 'Merry Christmas', we really mean 'I love you'".) the message is pretty much the same as the other songs.

² It's rather interesting and instructive to see the different, more self-contained, body language that Stuart brings to the stage here as opposed to Bonjay. Still magnetic, but with an icy, internalized edge.

Recording: Everything All the Time

Artist: Everything All the Time

Song: Take Stock

Recorded at The Horseshoe, January 30, 2010.

Everything All the Time - Take Stock

My notes for this set can be found here.

Gig: Everything All The Time

Everything All The Time (Lioness / Rich Aucoin)

The Horseshoe. Saturday, January 30, 2010.

On a frigid Saturday night, I tried warming myself up with the strange flaming sculptures in Nathan Phillips Square, but to no avail. Needing something generating a more powerful heat, I walked down the street to this dance-y evening at the 'Shoe, another smartly-concocted No Shame event. Once again, Lauren Schreiber had gotten a nice crowd out — and an early one, too, with more bodies on hand than you might normally see when the first act started.¹ That might be because it was, as one of the performers would later put it, almost like a triple-headliner kind of show — in fact, it was mildly unusual in that the night's sets went from longest to shortest.

You could tell that something interesting was coming with Rich Aucoin², who, as I arrived, was busily hanging a blanket across the front of the stage-right area. Soon, balloons were being passed around to members of the crowd to be blown up and deposited behind the screen. When everything was ready to go, Aucoin started his set by calling everyone closer to the stage, and forming into a big circle around him on the floor. Now, artists do this all the time, but this was done with such persuasive "we're all in this show together" earnestness that he indeed soon had an impressively-sized group around him. Aucoin was fully committed to creating an interactive experience: "at some points during the show, expressing yourself through song and dance isn't enough and confetti is the only way to get your point across. So if you'd like to step forward, I will distribute these packets of to anyone who wants to express themselves through confetti."

Beyond the props were the video projections, with the songs designed to sync up, of all things, with scenes from Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, cut with stock footage and with pop-up sing-along lyrics. None of these extras would matter much if the songs didn't measure up, but Aucoin brought a pleasing batch of well-delivered DOR confections. With "here's how to sing the chorus of this one" intros and groove-pleasing centres, the songs stretched out like dancefloor-friendly 12" mixes, most stretching out to six or seven minutes.³ Aucoin's voice brought Win Butler to mind a little, nowhere more than on the anthemic "It". All the way along, he was helped along by the rhythm section, backstopped by Taylor Knox (of The Golden Dogs, plus his own band) on drums, that brought live energy to what could have been a stiffer kind of sequencer rock. On the final song, all of those balloons were sent out to the crowd and were soon ping-ponging back and forth in imitation of the brownian motion below them on the dancefloor. If there's any knock to be made on this stuff, it's that with it so tightly integrated to the backing tracks and the videos, it might feel less fresh a second time around, but Aucoin has undoubtedly come up with something seeing once.⁴

Listen to a track from this set here.

In picking this gig, perhaps the biggest appeal of the night for me was a chance to catch up with Lioness, who I hadn't seen since October '08, when they were releasing their self-titled EP. The trio is fronted by Vanessa Fischer (ex-No Dynamics) along with the ex-controller.controller rhythm section of Jeff Scheven and Ronnie Morris. The band's sound is an aggressively soulful death disco laced with bass-heavy maximalist reverberations that work like subliminal dancefloor invocations. Or as Fischer put it, on coming out after the arms-raising optimism of the previous set, "sorry, we're a little darker — it's in our hearts".

The early peak was an ace version of "You're My Heart", featuring Joseph Shabason (of the night's headliners) on saxophone, but the rest of the material was right up there as well. The set included a "really new song" that shows the band extending themselves towards a slightly more subtle place, slower and with less bass and more keybs played with pulsing intensity. Another new one, "Fire Walk With You", featured Shabason's sax matched to a "Personal Jesus"-indebted rhythm stomp. The band went forth into the night after closing with "The Night", bringing the forty minute set to a satisfying close. Good stuff, and it sounds like the band is working on new material that'll dispel any rumours that they're mere one-dimensional hi-hat rocking one-trick-ponies.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Although I had heard the name Everything All the Time being tossed around, I hadn't made any effort to seek them out before seeing some nice pieces online in the leadup to this show. As promised, the six-piece appeared on stage in a flying V formation, with no less than four keyboards radiating outward from Kieran Adams' drum kit. And in the centre of it all, striding onto the stage with fierce confidence, was vocalist Alanna Stuart. The band's stock-in-trade is soulful 80's-style dance pop — if these tunes were sent through a timewarp to a typical episode of Video Hits, they'd fit in without anyone batting an eye.

As with fellow local revivalists The Magic, this kind of music sometimes makes me feel vaguely suspicious, setting off all kinds of associations with the vapid mersh music of my youth. Because I worked hard to get past all this stuff, now I have to work a little to be able to just enjoy the pure pop pleasures of a song like "Telephone Conversation", which sounds like it mighta been a chart topper for Whitney Houston in some alternate universe. Or to not be looking for the irony in a statement like "that was our tribute to Boney M," as Stuart said after "Those Eyes". But, both of those are fine songs, and the charismatic presence that Stuart brings to the stage sells the band extremely well. As I was getting onto the streetcar after the show, the women behind me were also discussing her virtues: "She can dance without looking silly, she knows what to do with her hands," one said, adding, "and she's got a good voice." So, yeah — good songs, an entertaining time and you can dance to it, so go and check 'em out.

Listen to a track from this set here.

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¹ There is also a sort of built-in crowd that just seems to go to the 'Shoe by default, to hang out there regardless of who's playing. For a good while, I was standing behind this knot of vaguely biker-y middle-aged dudes pounding back the Buds, holding down a patch of space near the front of the crowd — like just in case all this dance-rock folderol was a put-on and maybe Blue Cheer would be making a surprise appearance or something.

² For those like me with a partial recall for names, I will note that Rich Aucoin is not to be confused with his older brother Paul, leader of The Hylozoists and seen on the stage with many other local bands — including this one, where he was playing bass.

³ Only a stab at Daft Punk's "Human After All" clocked in at under four minutes.

⁴ Or, apparently, more than once. A comment from Rich, below, brings up the fact that he's thinking two steps ahead of me here, and is making new "mixes and videos every month so that it's a different show for the folks who come back to see it again [...] trying to do everything i can to make it a new experience each time." So you can see (and hear) something different when he makes his way back into town again over the next couple months. I would especially draw your attention to his show with Japanther at the Whippersnapper Gallery on March 11th — I'm guessing that this might be one of the last shows put on there before that space shuts down.