Recording: Dany Laj And The Looks

Artist: Dany Laj And The Looks

Songs: Annie + Small Town Miner

Recorded at The Horseshoe Tavern, September 6, 2019.

Dany Laj And The Looks - Annie

Dany Laj And The Looks - Small Town Miner

Celebrating their ace new platter Everything New is New Again, Dany Laj and Jeanette Dowling enlisted some local friends to present a special expanded lineup of their group. With Mike Duffield filling the rotating drummer's seat for a couple legs of this tour, it made sense to pull in his Beams partner Anna Mernieks to add some extra guitar, as well as her Ace of Wands bandmate Lee Rose on violin and keybs. That served to beef up the Rockpile/Rumour vibes in this set, giving Laj a fuller, more soulful palette for his articulate working class anthems (Laj's Kirkland Lake upbringing is directly referenced in the set-closing "Small Town Miner"). Filled with amiable swagger, the band blasted through a series of older tunes before presenting the new tracks with power-pop precision. Joyful and self-affirming, the whole thing was delivered with the sly grin of a road-warrior crew revelling in their craft.

Recording: Goosebump

Artist: Goosebump

Songs: Piano Room (feat. Lee Rose) + She Don't Say Goodbye (feat. Ruhee Dewji + Jesse Locke)

Recorded at Lula Lounge, July 26, 2018.

Goosebump - Piano Room

Goosebump - She Don't Say Goodbye

Launching their new album under their new name (and with a new-ish keyboard player in the fold), it's easy to pitch these former Germaphobes as casting off in a new direction. But underneath that highly-marketable veneer of newness, there are plenty of continuities at hand here. Besides preserving the peanut-butter-and-chocolate songwriting stylings of Paul Erlichman and Neil Rankin that are at the band's heart, there were some more specific connections to past strands here, such as how the new Goosebump platter gives us finished versions of several songs that made their first rough-draft appearances in the Germaphobes-era "Heat Shuts Off Overnight" musical theatre one-off.

Meanwhile, as befits the special-occasion nature of an album-release show, the group brought out several guest performers to augment their sound, including Ace of Wands' Lee Rose on violin (allowing the group to tackle "Piano Room", which isn't normally in the live rotation) and Ruhee Dewji on sax and Jesse Locke on percussion to fuel the set's funky finale as heard here.

[Goosebump are playing tonight (September 16th) at Burdock, alongside Future States and L CON.]