Gig: Wavelength FIFTEEN - Night 3

Wavelength FIFTEEN – Night 3 (feat. Bart / Tenderness / New Fries / Fresh Snow / Mozart's Sister / Look Vibrant / Cellphone)

The Garrison, Sunday, February 15, 2015.

The three nights of this year's Wavelength festival were each loosely themed around the notions of "past", "present" and "future" and it was the third and final night of those that brought the most satisfaction. Focused squarely on emerging bands that are doing great work right now, this is the sort of show that could send people home with a new favourite band they'd be eager to see again. With an extended 4 a.m. last call, it was also a long night with bands on stage from 8:30 'til nearly three in the morning.

Getting things started, Bart packed a lot of music into less than a half-hour on stage. Led by Chris Shannon (ex-Elwins) and Nathan Vanderwielen (ex-Ruby Coast), the pair switched quickly from parallel dual vocal leads and doubled guitar lines to dartingly-interlocking bursts on both. They were backed by Hooded Fang's Lane Halley on guitar as well as Biblical's rhythm section (Andrew Scott and Jay Anderson). With the high vocals, shifting time signatures and fiddly guitar parts, there was definitely a prog rock thing at play here — but (as of yet, anyway) don't expect any side-long suites detailing Middle-earth battles. So far, their album cover style would probably be more pop-art than Roger Dean, reflecting their quick pop-structured songbursts — maybe let's call 'em "jukebox prog" for now. It's that spirit that sees four songs crammed into the twelve minutes of their début Bart by Bart 7". Heady stuff.

Listen to a track from this set here.

With only Steve Reaume's pixelated geometric abstractions lighting the stage, Chrissy Reichert (who performs as Tenderness) played a set focused on the new material that will be making up the project's sophomore album. There's a lot of variation within the cluttered bricolage of her dancefloor-friendly aesthetic, ranging from touches of hip-hop to galloping dabke beats to a gorgeous slo-jam that sounds like the last dance on the last night at church camp. I am admittedly a little partisan when it comes to the Reichert's work, so take it with a grain of salt, perhaps, when I say that this was the night's headliner-quality set.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Up on the big stage, New Fries played a more focused set than when I last saw 'em on New Year's Eve, but that doesn't mean it was necessarily more straightahead, as there were still a series of gestures that seemed designed to destabilize the standard rock-show dynamic. Once again there was a bit of bait-and-switch at the outset, with Ryan Carley's weird fugue-y keyboard lead-in providing accompaniment for some jibbering crooning from bassist Tim Fagan.

Once Anni Spadafora (guit/vox) and Jenny Gitman (drums) kicked in, it lurched back into rock'n'roll mode as the band reeled off the tunes from their Fresh Face Forward (plus a new one!) in a fairly brisk manner. During closer "Plexiglass" (which received a freeze-frame two-chord breakdown that was longer than the song part of the song) a mysterious pale figure in a white gown emerged on stage and assumed a Jesus-y pose before slumping forward. It's art when deliberate gestures are offered without obvious answers, and punk as hell when a band is presenting music with their own coded massages on their own terms.¹

Listen to a track from this set here.

Notwithstanding a special night of some live film accompaniment and suchlike, Fresh Snow have been keeping a lower profile since last summer's WL Island show. A split single (with Reel Cod labelmates Mimico) added a cover of "Mony Mony" to their repertoire, and word is that a new EP is in the can and being readied for release. The results of that time away from the stage were apparent in a set that featured almost entirely new material — perhaps considered enough of a novelty that the band presented it in a pretty frills-free manner, sans masks or any of the other dramatic devices they're known for. (Well, there was a fair amount of dry ice.) That left the focus on the music, and it sounds like there's a lot to look forward to as we wait on the band's next release.

Listen to a track from this set here.

I will confess that I initially approached Caila Thompson-Hannant's solo project Mozart's Sister with some probably-unwarranted baggage after having read that she had been a member of Shapes and Sizes — a band that I remember being utterly turned off by at a gig back in '07. That said, the first time I saw this project I was — if not overwhelmingly convinced — able to see that she's on to something in this incarnation. Dance-pop doesn't tend to do much for me, but seeing a second performance managed to push me towards begrudging acknowledgement of what Thompson-Hannant is up to.

It was also a chance to situate her on a spectrum of broadly-similar acts at the festival: next to the previous night's Lowell set, this looked like the work of a musical genus; next to the evening's earlier Tenderness performance, it felt a little tame. Thompson-Hannant's stage manner (complete with dance moves) is engaging and about half the material registered with me, so I'd say the performance netted out somewhere above the meh zone, even if this isn't something I'd go out of my way to see a third time.

Listen to a track from this set here.

That was the programmatic peak of the night, and not unreasonably a lot of the crowd headed home, leaving a lot more elbow room for Montréal's Look Vibrant, a young quartet radiating bouncy energy on stage. The band looked maniacally happy to be performing, and they got the crowd (about half of which seemed to be friends who came along up the 401) jittering along. Their hypercaffeinated tunes came across a bit like listening to a Todd Rundgren tape while mashing down the fast forward button, and while I suppose it was fun, it didn't register as my kind of fun. I wager I'll be more into the next wave of bands that some of these lads will end up in a couple years down the road.

Sending the night off with a roar, Cellphone took the stage at about twenty past two to an even more thinned out crowd. That didn't phase the band, who turned in a solid performance that was one of the best-sounding sets I've heard from them in a while. In the DIY spaces I've mostly seen 'em in, minimal PA scenarios tend to hide the vox and synth behind a wall of guit/bass/drums, but here there was a bit more balance that really showed off their unique thrash/new wave fusion. They seemed to be in the mood to play, and after announcing their last song a couple times they ended up playing on. Hopefully I will run into them in such circumstances again. Well, maybe not quite at three in the morning.

Listen to a track from this set here.

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¹ The set's other moment of punk rock instability came when a noted local musician (with a bit of a confrontational bent) made his way up to the front to tell the horde of photographers (who'd been swarming the front of the stage for the duration of the set) to get their damn cameras out of the way and let people watch the show. Clearly not recognized as someone who had probably played more Wavelengths than some of photographers had attended, he was treated with derisive scorn, and there was a brief moment of weird tension.

Currente calamo: NXNE 2014 (Thursday)

NXNE 2014 (Thursday, June 19, 2014)

While these shows are fresh in my mind I want to get some quick notes down. In the fullness of time there might be a more complete accounting of the night that'll include more details and additional recordings.

There's no limit to the ways that you could conceptualize and organize a music festival. But for the moment, let's look at two alternatives. On the one hand, you could look at all the wonderful bands in the world and try and gather some of them in to wherever you are — and then adorn that agglomeration of talent with some locals, who would then have a chance to bask in the visitors' glow. Another way would be to start from the richness that's abundant where you are, shine a spotlight on it, and ask a few fellow-travellers from other places to join in and share in that.

NXNE seems to be moving increasingly towards that first model, crafting some sort of rock'n'roll Luminato with big-tent events as the spectacle to pull in a broader public — all to create a one-off extravaganza of musical wonderment. But the folks closer to the grassroots in the local music community — bands, promoters, writers, fans — are suspicious of that approach, seeing it as something of a circus that shows up once a year and then leaves, instead preferring a festival that would act as a culmination of the multifaceted musical richness in our city, a way of showing people who are less focused on the music scenes that there's something special going on here, week in and week out.

I think it's the increasing tension between those two different worldviews that led to such open enmity this year between NXNE and its discontents. All the more so given that the festival's m.o. seemed to be shifting to a like-it-or-lump-it/y'all-are-mere-pawns approach toward a lot of people who work really hard during the other fifty-one weeks of the year to make this a "music city" in ways that no industry-approved panel would think of.

Wavelength, even in its current "professional" incarnation, has a track record of working in that bottom-up vein. Its annual anniversary festivals and summer ALL CAPS extravaganzas feel like they're a summation of a lot of grassroots effort instead of a top-down diktat on what next season's styles are going to be. But their ecumenical pragmatism has them willing to partner with all sorts of entities, so it's no surprise to see them hosting a NXNE showcase.

But in a serendipitous chance for comparison, it just happened that WL was simultaneously hosting another show on this same night, at Calgary's Sled Island festival. Now, I haven't been, but from artists and fans alike I've heard nothing but great things about the festival, a lot of it revolving around its community-spirited ethos. (In a marked departure from the NXNE model, I am told that "branding" opportunities are rigourously eschewed, and that no venues were temporarily renamed after American beer companies.)

For me, one of the biggest questions in the back of my mind is: why is SXSW such a tantalizing model for NXNE's organizers?¹ Does everything have to be an overstuffed corporate shitshow? There is an alternative.

8 p.m.: Juan Wauters @ The Garrison

Dropped into The Garrison for an appetizer before my musical main course. I was checking out Juan Wauters more out of schedule/geographical convenience than on his merits as a member of (the now possibly-defunct) The Beets, who I'd relegated to the fun-but-inessential bin. He certainly brought his visual flair along from his other project, carefully assembling an elaborate, multi-panelled collaged backdrop (American Flag, illuminated wrestler, etc.) behind him before playing. As the set started, i was worried that this was going to be straight-up anti-folk, overstuffed with contrived naivete.

As it turned out, Wauters did grow on me. It's such a fine line, but as the set proceeded the songs seemed less Moldy Peaches and more Jonathan Richman. The gimmick-y backdrops and so on might catch people's eyes, but they also mean it takes a little longer to get to the heart of things — but I think in the end there was something of merit there.

Listen to a track from this set here.

9 p.m.: ZONES @ The Great Hall

And then, back into The Great Hall for a second night in a row. After the previous night's awkward times things felt a bit more comfortable right off the bat. Perhaps just seeing General Chaos' swirling lights put me into Wavelength mode, but even if it was on the quiet side for the first half of the night, there was just a less alien/alienating atmosphere.

I was surprised to note that that the giant white spaceship-evoking PA's from the (now defunct?) BLK BOX in the basement had been brought up at some point since the end of the previous night's show. A bold move, and one that must have caused some headaches for the sound tech who had to figure out an entirely new sound system on the fly — one evidently capable of pushing out massive amounts of bass.

That rendered opening act ZONES into something of a soupy haze, but that's actually not too far off the mark from what Derek McKeon is aiming for with this project. Joined by Kat Murie, there was a pleasing drifting, loopy quality here — and a sense that musical textures at at least as important as any rhythmic or melodic elements, though these are, at heart warped psych-pop songs. McKeon already seems eager to move beyond the sound he developed on his rather tasty Real Time tape, so it'll be worth keeping an eye out to see where this project is heading. (possible answer: deep space via the heart of a tropical jungle.)

Listen to a track from this set here.

10 p.m.: Twist @ The Great Hall

Twist, another duo who performed next, actually employed a similar set of tools — guitars, yes, but also drum machines and rhythm tracks — but here they were employed in a much more straightforward direction in the service of pop tunes. Originating as a bedroom project by the BB Guns' Laura Hermiston, this trades her band's rock velocity for a cleaner sound. I don't think this is all the way there as a live entity yet — on stage it was sound a little too spare and mechanical and Hermiston doesn't bring the easy charm she exhibits on stage with the BB Guns — but there's some fabulous tunes here, and in the end, that helps to get this over. Recordings are on the way, and the best is yet to come from this project.

11 p.m.: White Poppy @ The Great Hall

Vancouver's White Poppy (they bandonym of solo performer Crystal Dorval) pulled things back away from the popsong structures found on her more-recent recorded material, presenting a set-long suite of nearly-ambient textures. Ocean waves peaked and fell behind the music, occasionally disappearing for awhile and then returning as Dorval mixed together treated guitar, ebow, and keys to complete her series of dreamscapes, eventually working up into a thrumming rhythm before the calming waves returned. I was not familiar with her stuff at all, so this counted as the festival's first big discovery for me.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Midnight: Fresh Snow @ The Great Hall

It was impressive that Dorval had held the room's attention, even as the crowd was quickly in the process of doubling and redoubling for the night's headliners. It would be a triumphant night for locals Fresh Snow, having just been named to the longlist for this year's Polaris Prize — no mean feat for an instrumental band that had first released their album on tape on the small (but rather well-curated) Reel Cod Records.

But now there was a sense of celebration — if not inevitability — as the band took the stage in their expanded form, with Laura C. Bates on violin and a three-piece horn section.²

Showing a dramatic sense (as well as a commitment to noise/drone forms) the set began quite simply with the band taking their place one-by-one and building up the volume before crashing into a song. From there, the band was pretty much at the peak of their powers, with the audience up front jumping along. Although they tend to hide their faces behind masks on stage, they do have a dramatic sense of showmanship, with the set here ending with the horns and violin leaving the stage and continuing to play as they wound their way through the crowd to the exit at the back of the room. I've seen the band a fair number of times, so the power of their performance was no surprise to me, but it seemed to be a pointed announcement to anyone else that that longlist acknowledgement was no accident.

Listen to a track from this set here.

1 a.m.: Tim Hecker @ The Great Hall

After that visual feast, the switch was (literally!) flipped as Montréal's Tim Hecker took the stage in his customary total darkness. The room was pretty full now and it took the crowd a few minutes to settle into the idea of this, to just listen as his ambient dronescapes were lowered like a blanket over the room.

On realizing that there wasn't going to be anything to see here — and no point in trying to take any pictures — I also decided to just focus on the sounds. I was on on the balcony, and I'll confess that I simply found me a little empty space and lay down. As it happened, I was around nearly up at the front, and those giant stacks were almost underneath me — and now their low-range power was being harnessed. In fact, it felt like I was getting a lower-back massage courtesy of Hecker's low-end vibrating the balcony floor below me.

Given that his last couple times in town had been in some acoustically-lovely church spaces, I was worried that the sometimes-unforgiving confines of The Great Hall would be less compelling, but everything really came together here, and it sounded rather excellent. Mix in the darkness, and conditions were ripe to evoke a sort of hypnagogic drift that forestalled most analysis (my notes at one point simply say, "whoa.") Quite excellent.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Still to come: petitions, "WHY NXNE SUCKS", and backyard vibes.

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¹ One insider shared with me their theory that SXSW is such a powerful model for local industry types largely because the annual trip to Austin is essentially their Spring Break, and to attempt to replicate the experience here is an effort to recreate their happy place. In which case, they added, what we need is more of these folks heading to Sled Island, to Iceland Airwaves, etc, etc.

² I made out Karen Ng and Nick Bulligan, but perhaps the internet can fill me in on who the trombonist was?

Currente calamo: Wavelength FOURTEEN Festival (Night 4)

FOURTEEN: The Wavelength 14th Anniversary Festival

While it's all fresh in my mind, a few notes from this year's WL Fest. Longer, more comprehensive reviews will follow down the road a piece in some far, theoretical future.

Wavelength's annual February festival was a window to the change and continuity from the evolving institution, whose adolescent years are seeing it shift from volunteer collective to professional non-profit organization. The months following last summer's final ALL CAPS! festival saw some long-time organizers stepping back from the group while co-founder Jonny Dovercourt (thanks to a grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation) remains to steer the ship in a full-time capacity.

The extra resources mean that the festival was a smooth-running affair, though at a few points I mised the rough-around-the edges scrappy spirit of the series' DIY days. (Where have you gone, Doc Pickles? Wavelength nation turns its lonely eyes to you, ooh-woo-woo.) But this was still an essential weekend of presenting some of the city's best emerging talent to a larger audience.

Night 4 — Sunday, February 16, 2014

The Garrison — feat. Cousins / Greys / The Wet Secrets / Lido Pimienta / Elaquent

The Venue & the vibe: Home sweet home! The Garrison — the last stopping point for Wavelength while it was a weekly series — still feels like the proper place for the festival to wind up. Like the other nights of the festival, this got started on time and moved with such quick efficiency, there was hardly any time to wade to the back of the room, grab a drink and say hello to whoever you ran into before the next band was ready to go. If there was anything to criticize about this show, it might be that instead of giving a full-on clash of musical styles, it felt a bit more like the "other stuff" got shoved to the start to be gotten out of the way before the part with rock bands started. But some of the best moments came early on, natch.

The show:

Guelph-based hip-hop instrumentalist Elaquent got the night started and probably deserved a bigger crowd for his chilled-out Dilla-esque grooves. Not too demonstrative on stage, Elaquent was largely content to close his eyes and nod to the beats, but there was a lotta inneresting stuff going on here. Quick beatscapes segued into one another showing of a range of textures, though it was mostly on the mellow side. A prolific producer with a stacked bandcamp page, this wasn't he most dynamic set of the night, presentation-wise, but certainly contained some of the deepest grooves.

Listen to a segment of this set here.

There's generally no complaints about a lack of energy when Lido Pimienta takes the stage, and this set would prove to be a memorable addition to her penchant for creating a bit of spectacle. Taking a shot at over-the-top Olympic rah-rah patriotism, Pimienta (alongside art-crew Tough Guy Mountain) covered the stage in Maple Leaf paraphernalia (because nothing shows devotion to your country like a trip to the dollar store) before starting the set with an "O K-K-K Canada" rendition of the national anthem. Trying to get across the messages in her Spanish-language songs, her outspoken and in-your-face outbursts on stage never feel didactic — and in the end, it's her talents as a musician that make her one to watch. (And for those who didn't seem to comprehend the critique in play here, Pimienta expanded in a tumblr post.)

Listen to a song from this set here.

the fact that the festival brought in artists from Alberta and Nova Scotia shows the ambitious reach of Wavelength nation. Edmonton's The Wet Secrets represented the west, taking the stage in matching marching band uniforms and looking like they would have been right at home as the band in a 60's frat party in a direct-to-video Animal House knockoff. Not taking themselves too seriously, they proceeded to create a frothy party atmosphere, filled with tales of the nightlife and knife fights in the City of Champions. With a pair of horn-playing backing vocalists enhancing the guitar-less bass/drums/keybs lineup, the focus was on the garage-y groove here. It's hard to argue with an easy visual hook like this and the band were certainly got the crowd worked up, implying there may well be some substance behind the gimmick.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Returning to a local stage after a few months' layoff, grungecore noise-rockers Greys were quickly bouncing around like the last popcorn kernels in the pot frustrated at their inability to explode. They also got a respectable moshpit going in the crowd as they previewed a few new songs from their forthcoming album. Loud, bracing stuff.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Closing out the festival was Halifax guit/drums duo Cousins, and it was interesting to observe how their non-stop road regimen has built them quite a devoted following. On the surface, Aaron Mangle (guitar) and Leigh Dotey (drums) aren't doing anything fancy or inventive — yet they present their minimalist take on classic rock with such convention that it manages to transcend itself in some sneaky way. Well, that's the spark that constantly reanimates rock'n'roll right there. When you see it, you don't doubt it — you just try and pull it into you.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Bonus! Check out some more photos from the festival over at the MFS Facebook page.

Currente calamo: Wavelength THIRTEEN Festival (Part II)

THIRTEEN: The Wavelength 13th Anniversary Festival (Part II)

While it's all fresh in my mind, a few notes from this year's WL Fest. Notes from the first two nights of the festival can be found here. Longer, more comprehensive reviews will follow down the road a piece.

With four night of fairly diverse sounds on offer, it's good that Wavelength offers some integrating factors to pull the whole thing together. First and foremost of those is Doc Pickles, the series' long-running MC, who hosted all four nights. Although he would modestly claim, in his introductions, to be "setting the bar low" for the bands to follow him, there's a craft and a method to his discourse. Daring to fling associational logic into a cookie-cutter world, there's always a wry humour at play — and, more importantly, a sense of a shared existential awkwardness to be confronted and overcome. Step forward: you are part of this.

Another fundamental WL experience tying things together are the swirling General Chaos visuals, provided by Steve Lindsey. Hand-crafted and carefully selected to enhance the mood of each band, there's a warm analog feeling to the visuals — and if you watch Lindsey's customized projectors spin (and occasionally fail) you can get a sense of what an elaborate juggling act it is. When you come in and see that living painting twisting behind the stage, you know where you are.

Night 3 — Saturday, February 16, 2013

The Great Hall — feat. Bernice/ Doom Squad / Sarah Neufeld / Evening Hymns/ Do Make Say Think)

The Venue: Although it's increasingly becoming a go-to spot for midsize shows, The Great Hall is somewhat divisive among concert-goers. The large, open ceiling imparts a sense of space that you don't get at similarly-sized venues, but it does also affect the sonics. Which is to say, there's probably more variability here than in most venues — move a few steps away from a spot where everything sounds great and you can suddenly be in a murky dead zone. That said, the Great Hall is unfairly maligned in a few quarters — compared to a couple years ago, there's been a fair amount of effort put in to making bands sound good. It also has a rep for somewhat erratic rules — drink prices change from night to night (and from one bar to another!) and sometimes you're allowed to go lounge on the balcony and sometimes not — and when the place gets really packed, the floor can be uncomfortably jammed. Also: the bathrooms are inadequate (and frequently rather dodgy by night's end), one feature that really needs to be updated in this heritage landmark.

Wavelength's night at the Great Hall corresponded with a sudden (and somewhat surprising) snowfall, making surface travel almost impossible. (I ended up walking down from Ossington Station.) That meant the room was a little slow to fill, and for the first part of the evening, there were the powerfully-appealing smells from the pop-up dumpling stand wafting through the room. Balloon creatures — making an encore appearance from last summer's ALL CAPS show — bobbed and floated overhead.

The show: I was sad to have missed the start of Bernice — for me, this was one of the more-anticipated sets at the festival. A vehicle for Robin Dann's songwriting talents, shows were fairly thin on the ground as Dann decamped to England shortly after the 2011 release of what was that. It's an enchanting album, but to a neutral observer the most vivid element might be Thom Gill's smooth production — making it tempting to conclude that he's the man behind the curtain.

Now back on this side of the Atlantic, seeing Dann on stage put her personality front and centre and firmly established that she's the animating force here. Just like her songs, Dann presented a somewhat shy but playful presence — as well as a wonderful voice. She was supported in that department by Felicity Williams, local MVP trophy winner in the backing vocals category, and generally a guarantee that the band on stage is one you should pay attention to.¹ They were flanked by Colin Fisher (on mellow wah-wah guitar) and Thom Gill (on keybs and electronics). Gill was actually running a bit of interference here, adding some textured blips and gurgles that lifted the sound from retro softrock to something more subtly contemporary.

But it was the songs and voices that made this a winner. A lot of the set was new material, and it sounded like good stuff. That bodes well for the future of this project, and I'm definitely still eager to hear more from this unit.

Listen to a song from this set here.

When I caught Doom Squad in a church a few months ago, it felt like a somewhat disjunctive spot for the band, given their pagan vibes. The band's music comes with a sense of ritual — the very old rituals of sex and death, where you can enjoy the dancing if you don't peek too closely at what's happening on the altar. It didn't feel like they were totally connecting with the crowd here, although I get the impression that anything less than deep in a forest on a moonlit night is a second-best way to see the band. Their own set of joy-dirges was supplemented by a reinvention of The Doors' "Riders on The Storm" that fit right into their aesthetic while revealing new affinities. It's quite possible that this is the band at the festival that will become most bragged about in a I-saw-them-when sort of way by the very people who were mostly busy ignoring them.

Listen to a song from this set here.

That semi-interested crowd would be a bit of a factor throughout the night. Any time a WL show is headlined by a band with its own non-overlapping fanbase, there's going to be a contingent who come out to treat it as a show by "their" band, with a bunch of other bands they have to suffer through. However, this is as much a feature as a bug on nights like this. Although Wavelength is a celebration of an established community, it's also a proselytizing front to ameliorate people's taste. Which is to say: when a horde of Rock Guys come to see their band, some small number are going to be illuminated about some kind of music they hadn't really cared about before — and they're maybe the most important people at the show.

The downside is a lot of them are going to be less-than-rapt for the music they know nothing about — a slightly awkward context for a solo violin set. That Sarah Neufeld held the crowd as much as she did is a testament to her on-stage presence. Her name value might help as well — "member of Arcade Fire" is a good way to get people to pay attention.² I'd not checked out her solo material, but I'd heard some mention of loop-based violin composition, so I had shades of, say, Final Fantasy in my mind going in. The first part of the set, however, turned out to be straight-up violin, with no technological props. With Neufeld stomping along on stage, there was a lot of energy in the songs, the music ranging from Celtic-y reels to hints of Bach-style elegance.

The most intriguing material, though, came at the close, when she was joined by unannounced special guests Colin Stetson (on bass sax) and The Magic's Geordie Gordon on keybs. Stetson's contribution here was reminiscent of his own solo work: basically a low droning soundfield to add gravity below Neufeld's ascendant figures. Gordon's synth basically fulfilled the same function — at times the two merged into one another — and that gave a thick fog as Neufeld also added some wordless vocalisations. This was definitely intriguing stuff.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Those same chatterers were mostly content to continue their conversations as Evening Hymns took the stage — problematic as at the start it was just Jonas Bonnetta and Sylvie Smith leading off with a hushed "Arrows". Behind them was a circular screen with an image that I took to be a full moon — though as the music began, there was slow movement on the screen and I realized it was a shot of trees. Jared Raab's projections would mostly stay in the forest, shifting along with the songs — and soon the duo on stage would expand into a full band.

Evening Hymns is always Bonnetta, usually Smith, and otherwise whichever friends are at hand. Here we had some members of The Wooden Sky as well as Shaun Brodie and Mika Posen. Bonnetta commented that they'd be "playing all the classics", and standing on the big stage with the arch rising over his head — and Gavin Gardiner tearing out guitar solos — this felt more like the Opera House in '09 than last summer's album release spectacular. By the end, as the group closed with "Mtn. Song", the visuals were rapidly spinning behind them.

That's all to say this was a retrospective moment for a band now at the cusp of transition and renewal. With Bonnetta publicly retiring some of his more emotionally weighty songs from last year's Spectral Dusk, there's going to be space in the setlist to fill. I'm actually hoping he follows through with hints of a step sideways into "ambient drone material" — that sort of stuff would be perfect at an intimate, sit-down Wavelength night.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Although it was getting late — it was now past one a.m. — there was still a full house waiting for Do Make Say Think. Coming back from a mini-hiatus, this band was also in the mood for a journey through their back catalogue. Just as when I had last seen 'em, the band were in their "original five" configuration, playing without the horns and strings and guests that expand their songs from widescreen to Imax. And though there were a few spots where I could hear the horn section in my head punching the songs into the stratosphere, this was still plenty big, even in this alignment.

With double drummers at the back and multi-tasking musicians up front, there was a lot going on. Ohad Benchetrit, Justin Small and Charles Spearin would each juggle guitars and bass with horns and keyboards, often with the latter at the beginnings of songs before cracking things up for the guitar-rockin' conclusions. Small (who, as always, was the main speaking voice of the band between songs) talked about the importance of the "rock'n'roll nap" before such a late set. He also apologized that none of the band's new material was ready to be played yet, but they made up for that with some deep cuts, including & Yet & Yet closer "Anything for Now" — which they had never done live before — and going all the way back to their debut for "If I Only…". Playing for nearly and hour and a half, I wasn't expecting a set nearly that long, but it was most welcome, even if it meant a late end to the night.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Night 4 — Sunday, February 17, 2013

The Garrison — feat. Cell Memory & Castle If / Legato Vipers / Henri Fabergé & the Adorables / The Magic / Cookie Duster / Dusted

The Venue: Back at the site of the final phase of Wavelength's weekly incarnation, The Garrison feels like home. All the more so, given how ever since its opening, it's been evolving and getting that "lived-in" vibe. Now as much a taco-totin' local hang-out as a place to see a show, the incremental changes to the room — the wall of seats, the new bar at the back — have re-shaped it into a more comfortable space.

The Show: With six bands on the bill, things got started only minutes after the doors opened, with Cell Memory & Castle If taking the stage as early-arrivers were showing up. Though remaining cloaked in mystery, I knew a bit about the band from when I saw them playing in December. Here, though, the duo that I had encountered there were rounded out by a drummer, and that definitely gave more propulsion to the music. Although that shouldn't be mistaken for an undue concern with forward drive — the mode here was sheer motorik drone, and the songs built tension from holding still as much as possible while racing along nowhere Faust. Insistent synth patterns burbled underneath floating clouds of guitar (there was some e-bow action here) — this is the sort of stuff I dig a lot. Jess Forrest's vocals were buried underneath it all, half-comprehensible phrases rendered more mysterious for being delivered in German. That was a propos for this highly expressionist music — I almost expected to see Mabuse lurking back in the shadows somewhere.

In twenty minutes, the band only tackled two long songs. I would have gladly heard more, as this was maybe my favourite set of the festival. Although the band doesn't seem to be eager to share too information about themselves, they are present online, so keep an eye out for future shows.

Listen to a song from this set here.

There was a full one-eighty after that, with the night switching over to full-on party mode. You might not know the members of Legato Vipers by name, but this is a crew of some of the best players in the Guelph/Toronto axis. You might recognize 'em if you've seen, say, Del Bel, Bry Webb, Skeletones Four or Biblical lately. Or, in this case, you might not have noticed them at all, as for this set they were accompanied by The Harlettes, who performed live burlesque routines to the band's surf-rock originals. Using the power of a smile (as well as leaving something to the imagination) the performers each brought their winning personalities (and, um, spinning pasty tassels) for an empowered, sexy spin on the old-fashioned sleaze. This was enormously fun. Oh, right: there was music, too. It was pretty good.

Listen to a song from this set here.

No band could ever contain Henry Fletcher (or, shall we say, his alter ego Henri Fabergé). Even when The Adorables were in full force, there was never really a sense that was going to proceed in the usual manner. There was an album, but after the collective burst that that emerged from dissipated, there were only murmurs. A lot of the players on that went to to renown in their own projects, while Henri Fabergé would emerge in multimedia spectacles dedicated to profiling the details of his fake autobiography.

And here he was, putting the band back together. For most of those assembled on stage, this looked like a gleeful opportunity to have a fun time — in particular, it looked like Laura Barrett and Maylee Todd were having their own private sock hop — but it was a more world-weary Fabergé that came out in his leiderhosen, Mardi Gras chain around his neck and trumpet and canteen near at hand. He sang his songs of unrequited love (and suggested onanistic solutions to same) as the group sing-along spectacle exploded behind him. Eventually, of course, he'd rip off his shirt and dive into the crowd as the band called out, "fuck you, Henri!" — this is just how these things go.

The crazy-quilt of contributors was not a purist representation of the 2006 Adorables line-up (if such a thing could exist anyway). Besides older hands like Dana Snell and Andy Scott I spotted Robin Hatch on keybs and The Wuar Wuars (who are often seen dancing at Maloo shows). The music was a similar hodgepodge, with songs from the Adorables album mixed with more recent pageant pieces. But the sum total was quite exhilarating and rather a success. Word is that there's a new transmedia spectacle in process, so keep an eye out.

Listen to a song from this set here.

That's exactly the sort of spontaneous party that one would expect to break out when The Magic play — but this time out, they couldn't quite match that level of anarchic glee. Although this is a band that can generate a get-your-dance-on spectacle when they want to (such as this summer's album release party that arrived as a full-on Midnight Special tribute) there are signs that the band may be taking tentative steps towards "maturing". There's certainly a deeper appreciation of songcraft from frontman Geordie Gordon, and hints that he wants to produce something a bit more resonant than disco-fied anthems. The band itself has also been in flux — co-vocalist Sylvie Smith, for one, though back in the fold for this show has been busy touring with Evening Hymns and away from the band for awhile. Hitting on both those themes, Andrew Collins (of Skeletones Four) was playing keybs, and injecting some darker tones.

That's not to say that the band is suddenly dour or anything — Geordie Gordon emerged in a cape, after all, over his western shirt. And the songs still have an ebullient spirit. So even if this wasn't the band at their ragged-gold-standard best, it was a fun time, and they remain a band I'd go see pretty much any time.³

Listen to a song from this set here.

The night's star power would come from Cookie Duster's headlining set. Though billed as their live debut, my understanding is that the new/old project from Brendan Canning did actually play a handful of gigs in its original incarnation, before his attention was sidetracked by the success of Broken Social Scene. Rebooting itself with last summer's When Flying Was Easy, they were a six-piece here, with supplemental star power in the form of Change of Heart's Rob Higgins on bass and Matt Murphy on guitar.

Perhaps befitting that old/new dynamic, the band did feel a little out-of-time, as if they were drawing from a set of influences completely out of step with anything else out there right now. There were some hints of early 90's funk rock in there — not, like, at Bootsauce levels or anything — though Big Audio Dynamite came to mind a bit. That was leavened with a spiky power-pop sensibility, and some of the songs wouldn't have sounded completely out-of-place on his Something for All of Us... solo-via-BSS effort. Cutting against that, the best curveballs came with Jeen O'Brien's vocal contributions.

Given that everyone at hand is an old pro, this went pretty smoothly for a first gig. My sensibility, mind you, lies a bit in the other direction — so I wouldn't mind at all if, once this has gelled as a live thing, the band set to scuffing up these songs a little bit more. In any case, one gets the impression that having these musicians bouncing ideas off each other could push this from feeling old/new into something new/new.

Listen to a song from this set here.

The night closed out with a set from "secret guests" Dusted, who had (in a bit of almost-perfect symmetry) played at the pre-festival in-store show a few nights before. Although the band is based on a solid idea — gussying up some of Brian Borcherdt's solo songs into something more sonically adventurous than the regular singer-songwriter fare — I must confess that I didn't particularly "get" the project the first time I saw it live. Backed by Leon Taheny on drums and keybs, Borcherdt's laments (and guitar tone) are swathed in layers of reverb — and if that's pushed too far it can consign everything to pool of sonic mush.

Subsequent samplings — including this set — have kept the ratios correct, and now I see why a lot of folks got excited last year for their Total Dust album. With a fragile smile (but looking like he could be knocked over with a feather), Borcherdt evinces the same weary vulnerability that he essays in his songs, while Taheny adds more subtle textures than could be expected from someone playing two instruments at once. Even after ducking into the backstage area to find a replacement guitar, this was a fine sounding set, its echoing weariness a proper sort of nightcap for the festival.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Overall, a really great festival — you should start planning your next Family Day around FOURTEEN. And Wavelength isn't just a once-a-year thing — besides the upcoming ALL CAPS excursion, the next few WL nights (March 21, March 29, April 16) are already listed.

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¹ Williams can be seen on stage with Hobson's Choice, THOMAS and Bahamas, and probably umpteen more bands.

² Though for my money, it's far more interesting to think of her as a member of Bell Orchestre and, more recently, The Luyas.

³ I'll certainly be there when they'll be appearing beside Hooded Fang at The Bicycles' album release party, coming up on April 4, 2013 at Lula Lounge.

Gig: SIANspheric

SIANspheric (Ringo Deathstarr)

The Garrison. Thursday, June 30, 2011.

As always, I'm a fool for thinking that a rock'n'roll show would start on time, but the fact that even the doors for this one were forty-five minutes after the listed time rankled a bit. Even with that later start, it was pretty empty in the Garrison's backroom as a DJ plied their trade. It was encouraging to see General Chaos visual were on the scene, providing their trademark swirling visuals — a perfect backdrop for the hazy guitar textures on tap.

There was also an impressive heap of Marshall amps on stage, plus a bass cabinet covered by a rising sun flag — a visual signal that Ringo Deathstarr were equipped to bring the volume. The first thing to know about the Austin-based three-piece is that they are worthy of a far less goofy moniker. The second is that their sound is closely indebted to a narrow slice of British guitar rock extending roughly from Spacemen 3 to shoegaze. Although at this point they hadn't quite grown past putting new wine in old bottles, they played with a charming vigour, and were clearly embraced by a crowd that was too young to have seen this stuff in person the first couple times around.

Opening with ear-bleeding feedback whitenoise, "Tambourine Girl" alternated slow surging rumbles with jaunty pop hooks, the yearning in guitarist Elliott Frazier's barely-comprehensible lyrics coming to focus in the "Touch me touch me touch you there" chorus. "So High", with its back-and-forth vox between Frazier and Alex Gehring, showed the band at their catchiest. Gehring spent most of the set on her three-stringed bass, but switched over to guitar from time to time. There was also a lot of heavily-processed synthy backing tracks underlying the guits.

Touring on their debut full-length Colour Trip¹, the band played as many songs from their pre-album singles². There was something to like about pretty much all the tunes, but also a few places that drew too much attention to themselves, such as "Some Kind of Sad" which went beyond being an homage to the Jesus and Mary Chain and right into sounding like a thinly-veiled rewrite. The baggy dance beats of "In Love" worked better in this regard, recalling Primal Scream without aping them too much.

And while the band did a good job of moving from song to song, the tasty "Summertime" was undercut at the end when it just drifted into guitar-tuning. But otherwise, they built some momentum toward the end of the set seguing about six songs together in a non-stop barrage while the projections melded on the wall behind them over a slide of earthrise as seen from the moon. They were joined at the end by some of the members of SIANspheric — Sonic Unyon, their longtime label has released RD's albums, and there was obvious affection between the bands.

Listen to a couple tracks from this set here.

That sense of respect-your-elders that Ringo Deathstarr showed the nominal headliners was not so obvious among their audience, about half of whom split before SIANspheric took the stage, skewing the average age in the crowd up by about a decade. Although that did keep the audience age in line with that of the performers.

Although I was certainly aware of the Hamilton group back in their late-90's heyday, they were one of the groups of Sonic Unyon's Rock Hits era that I was never really into. At the time it wouldn't have made any sense to me, but now their woozy, ambient/shoegaze leanings are the sort of thing I can appreciate much more. Though never breaking up, there have been some sabbaticals and lineup changes in their discontinuous history, and I was glad to have a chance to see this newly-reactivated group in action.

Still a four-piece in their current incarnation, bass and drums provide a framework to the guitars, with vocalist Sean Ramsay employing a knee-high rack of effects while Ryan Ferguson (also of Electroluminescent) also threw in some analog synth. There were a more modest number of amps for this set, but the stage was by no means spare, and they still had the tools to blast out the volume as required.

The set began with a tasty saturated blast of guitar hum that hit me in a good spot. The first songs on the setlist were "Bright Lights" and "Starfucker" — unfamiliar titles, presumably from the storehouse of music the band has been working on since releasing their last longplayer in 2001³. I'm not sure the one of those ended and the other began — there was basically a noise section that segued into a slower, psychedelic middle and then worked its way back up into noise.

"Jahm", another of the new songs, was a great success, if not the highlight of the set. It offered a gentle glide of guitar sliding behind just a hint of whispered vox buried way down. Certainly not constrained to verse/chorus type songs, the set generally offered contrasting spells of noisy shoegaze squall with quiet interludes like "No Space".

Building up to a final frenzy, they ended with the implosion of "All on Standby", Ferguson swinging his effects pedal around in the way most guitarists swing their axes while Ramsay spiked his guit to the stage floor a couple times, before falling to his knees to generate noise by twiddling knobs as the rhythm section headed off stage.

There's no firm announcement yet on any of their new material seeing release, but it sounds like good stuff. There's a general propensity to pay attention to the new in the face of longstanding, patient bands like SIANspheric, but here's hoping that they'll get their due whenever the new material does emerge.

Listen to a track from this set here.

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¹ That "u" in "colour" is quite possibly a bit of a giveaway to the band's not-so-latent anglophilia.

² These would be subsequently be compiled on the Sparkler release.

³ There was, however, a 7" single released in 2006 and an EP in '03, as well as a couple archival releases along the way.

Gig: BBQ

BBQ (TV Ghost / The Hoa Hoa's)

The Garrison. Saturday, June 25, 2011.

A Mark Pesci-promoted Saturday night at The Garrison, and a bit of an odd bill where it wasn't intuitive that any of the acts belonged together. And, truth be told, I was there as much as anything to see The Hoa Hoa's, who were tabbed as early openers. Besides some fans and friends, though, it was quite empty in the room — it looked like the headliner's fans weren't going to come out early to experience something different.

Truth be told though, I prefer an attentive skeleton crew to a room full of people who are indifferent to the band on stage, and as turned out, the band was sounding rather good in the room. They were focusing mainly on their then-newer material — a couple chestnuts like "Postcards" and "Vinyl Richie" were played, but the bulk of the set was comprised of material that would later emerge on their final EP. There were even a couple songs that are (for now, at least) as-yet unreleased, one apiece from from guitarists Lee Brochu and Richie Gibson. Brochu's was one I'd heard before, but Gibson's slower, introspective song was maybe brand new.

The band ran into some trouble when Calvin Brown's drum stool collapsed under him. He got through "All the Time" standing up, and managed to jury-rig some adjustments after that to get through the set, including the big implosion of "Blue Gumball" to finish.

As it would turn out, there'd only be a few more Hoa Hoa's shows after this, so I'm glad I went out of my way to see them. Handy rule of thumb: you'll never know how long your favourite bands will last, so never take 'em for granted — go and see them play when you have the chance!

Listen to a song from this set here.

Coming in, I didn't know anything about TV Ghost, a quartet out of Lafayette, Indiana. They were touring their Mass Dream album, and on songs like "Wired Trap" my initial impression was "spazzy, but howl-y". Further research would indicate that they have, on record, a more austere sound — on stage, that was backgrounded to a no-wave shiver down running down one's spine, invoking a sort of gloomy gravitas. It's similar territory to what Ell V Gore are doing here in T.O.

On stage, it was more of a highwire act, with the antics supplied by guitarist/vocalist Tim Gick — tall, lanky, pompadoured. He was a bit of an entertainer, more than willing to step up on his monitor to get right close to the crowd and wail on his guitar. Given the gusto with which he was playing, when he was turned around to face the drummer and slowly shuffling away backwards, I was mildly worried he might step back right off the front of the stage. That was averted, however, once he was down on his back, rolling around.

The rest of the musicians were more stay-in-place types, but there was a lot to watch anyway. At the end of "Phantasm" (a song that would emerge this year on a single), Gick was down wandering on the floor in front of the stage. He then leaned back against it and rolled backwards onto the stage, ending up on his feet, effortlessly playing the whole time. A bit later, he'd kick a cable loose from his amp, probably fatally damaging a patchcord in the process. The band kept it going while he swapped things up. One gets the impression that equipment damage and broken collarbones aren't unheard of in this band.

For the finale, while Gick was on his back, flailing around on the floor in front of the stage, keyboardist Jimmy Frezza was clinging onto the ends of his keyboard with both hands, playing it by biting down on the keys. No great surprise that the band was offering a live DVD for sale on the merch table.

Musically, it was bracing stuff, but there wasn't much there for anyone looking for choruses or hooks — you have to be on board with the idea that this works based on the different sort of atmospheres that the band brings, live and in the studio.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Mark Sultan has played in the Montréal garage punk scene for more than a decade in a half, both as a member of bands like Spaceshits and Les Sexareenos and in his later incarnation as BBQ, where he plays both solo shows and in an on-and-off partnership with King Khan. Here he was playing all on his own, with just his guitar and a couple foot-drums, a pretty unassuming guy in a newsboy hat.

His drum-thumping line-checking segued straight into jaggedly pumping rock'n'roll, though the first song's lyrics were mostly about getting more guitar in the monitor. The very idea of a "song" was sorta up for dispute here, as the set was often long bursts of songfragments (some lasting well under a minute) seguing directly into each other, sometimes only barely differentiated by key and tempo changes. Sultan's guitar was all chunka chunka chunka crude rhythms with the clattering percussion rushing along to keep up. It's a deliberately pared-down backdrop for his soulful voice, though that was often deliberately scuffed up as well.

There was an edge of in-the-moment contingency at play where the music could go from practised primitivism to simply falling apart in seconds, with songs sometimes lurching to a stop midway through and with a couple stretches of botched changes — "sorry to waste your precious time," Sultan commented after one of the vacations from tunefulness.

The music invoked Hasil Adkins' atavism as much as Ramones as much as Sam Cooke, so there is a range hidden in the wall of clatter. It felt something like a lo-fi attempt to recreate all of the Animal House soundtrack as one medley, despite not having listened to it for a decade or two — like Otis Day and the Knights after a long bender.

The songs were mostly based around simple lyrical sentiments — topics essayed included "I can't get you out of my mind", "I just can't wait", "I'll be loving you", "I can't go on" and "I want to be the only one". But there was some postmodern meta-commentary interspersed among those sentiments. After Sultan sung he'd "pray you die", it was quickly followed by the spoken aside, "I meant that in a very loving way".

One could "read" the sudden shifts of the musical landscape here as a deconstructive method as well, I suppose. But as it went on, it seemed more and more like undifferentiated mush to me. That said, though I was finding this less interesting than the other acts of the night, there was a big crowd for this, packed in tight up close and ready to dance. So maybe I was just overthinking the situation.

Listen to a couple songs from this set here.