Saturday, December 5, 2015

Recording: Les Mouches

Artist: Les Mouches

Songs: Carload of Whatever + Winter = Dead Time*

Recorded at Double Double Land, November 30, 2015.

Les Mouches - Carload of Whatever

Les Mouches - Winter = Dead Time

Les Mouches is rather an odd band, with spindly, delicate finger-picked guitar figures suddenly giving way to panic attack noise outbursts and melodramatic pop confessions exploding into emotive shouts. All three of its members would go on to create bodies of fascinating music, but it's Owen Pallett's subsequent emergence as some manner of pop star that made the band an ongoing curiosity beyond the circle of Torontopia/Blocks Music Club enthusiasts. That interest has been stoked again with Warren Hildebrand (of Foxes in Fiction) re-issuing the band's You're Worth More To Me Than 1​,​000 Christians on his Orchid Tapes label. (Like all Orchid Tapes releases, you can grab it over at the Orchid Tapes bandcamp on a "name your price" basis.)

For a band that never toured (and barely played outside Toronto) it might make sense that the "release party" for the reissue came at this "secret" Orchid Tapes showcase at the rather-intimate Double Double Land. The fact that they played a well-rehearsed full-length set (including previously-unheard material, like the latter song here) might be a sign this wasn't meant as a one-off. And though Rob Gordon and Matt Smith are still working together as Pallet's backing unit on his solo material, the group seems pretty casual about the very idea of their re-emergence to dig out these youthful skeletons in their closets, so who's to say when there'll be another chance to see this material being performed?

* Thanks to OP for passing along the title to this one.

2 comments: