Sunday Playlist #8

Sunday Playlist #8: Just a restless feeling by my side

Amy Millan - Bury This

Vetiver - Wishing Well

Jon-Rae Fletcher - Big Talker

Pink Mountaintops - Outside Love

Casey Mecija - Barking At Your Door

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You can always click the tags below to see what I originally wrote about the shows these songs came from.

Recording: Amy Millan

Artist: Amy Millan

Song: Bury This

Recorded at the Mod Club, October 14, 2009.

Amy Millan - Bury This

My notes for this set can be found here.

Gig: Amy Millan

Amy Millan / Bahamas

The Mod Club. Wednesday, October 14, 2009.

I was a bit sad that other engagements kept me from going to see Amy Millan at the Harbourfront in July — her previous turn there in the summer of '06 was a fondly-remembered show. So it was pleasing that a club gig came along to make up for it. Thus found myself in a pleasantly full Mod Club on a Wednesday night.

Looking back over the crowd, H. adroitly commented, "these are the people who don't go to gigs every week." It was also a more female-skewing crowd than I'm used to, clumps of women out together and the occasional glazed-eyed guys with that dragged-along look — sorta the inverse of most gigs. Which, from a behavioural standpoint, is totally fine by me: even if there were more people around me singing along during the main set, there was a paucity of belligerent doofuses.¹

Opening things up was Bahamas, current nom de geurre of Afie Jurvanen, mostly familiar these past few years as a sideman to a who's who of the local rock scene, including a substantial stint in Feist's touring band. Last time I'd seen him up front was a while back — August 2005, with his old crew Paso Mino, opening for Jason Collett on a night they were also serving as his backing band — and, strangely enough, in this same venue. To be honest, my opinion at the time was that as a frontman he made a good touring guitarist, and besides seeing him now-and-again in other people's bands, I hadn't given much thought to his own stuff 'til some good notices started appearing for his Pink Strat alb.²

Playing solo (though apparently these days he's usually backed by a drummer), Jurvanen had his mellow on — loose and chatty in a slightly blazed-out "niiiiiice" kind of way as he played a forty-minute set of classical singer-songwriter hurtin'-on-the-inside, poppy-on-the outside songs. His lyrical sense is sorta maudlin, but in a self-knowing way that allows him to undercut it with humour, which also came out in his amusing chatty commentary between songs. He was appreciative, surveying the quietly respectful, female-heavy crowd: "Normally I play at these roadhouses at Dundas and Ossington, where all these skinny jeans hang out, just drinking their Jägerbombs and shit... this is nice!" It was, on the whole, a winning set, even if a bit goofy, demonstrating that Jurvanen has progressed a fair chunk in his songwriting and presentation — obviously he's picked up a thing or two from the people he's been working with.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Having given a few spins through Masters of the Burial, Amy Millan's new album, I was left with a pleasant but indistinct impression — as if afterwards I realized I'd enjoyed something, but I was rather fuzzy on the details. I was curious to see if some live energy would sharpen my impressions any. The band entered onto a stage decorated with roses heaped across a keyboard and littered across the floor, opening with "Some Day", a gospel bluegrass mourning song, and a dedication to Doug Campbell, before easing into "Old Perfume", complete with dual trombone accompaniment. The band's sound was, unsurprisingly, warm and rootsy — more acoustic than electric. There was a drum kit on the stage, but it sat unused for most songs, one band member or another rotating back there as necessary. It was pretty much an all-star band, the same crew that'd worked on her album, including Dan Whiteley (masterful mandolin and guit), Christine Bougie (lap steel, some drums), Darcey Yates (bass) and Doug Tielli (banjo, guit, keyb).

Millan seemed to be rising to her opener's challenge, boosting her onstage banter and throwing in several amusing monologues in between songs, sometimes even overshadowing them. A story about her grandmother's infidelities illustrated "Lost Compass" and brought the song's conclusion ("love is shady") into relief, and yet the story was still the more interesting part. I must confess that at a couple points Gene Siskel's maxim³ crossed my mind — were these songs, in fact, better than the banter in between them? In terms of the vibe of the whole night, the music felt, at a couple points, almost extraneous. But those were transitory feelings, and in the end the music mostly paid its freight as well. There were several good performances here including particularly strong readings of "Baby I", "Bury This" and "Towers".

Unsurprisingly, the crowd went up in a roar when Feist popped out for some backing vox on "Bruised Ghosts" to close out the set, hamming it up on stage, and grinding up to Millan with a rose in between her teeth. A high-energy burst of excitement to end the main set. After, the crowd was soothed with a solo mandolin instrumental number by Dan Whiteley, filled with fast pickin' and lightning runs, before Millan and band re-emerged and played "Skinny Boy", the song that the crowd had been shouting out the most by name. The night ended on "Day to Day", perhaps Masters' outstanding track, just voice and a spare drum beat supplied by Evan Cranley. So that's a lot of ground covered: sixteen songs and a fair bit of banter, and all packed into sixty-five minutes. Perhaps ultimately, my reaction to the show was similar to how I felt about the album — enjoyable in a non-specific, not-overwhelming way.

Listen to a track from this set here.

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¹ The flipside of that, though, is that in this kind of crowd I feel like there's a greater chance that I'm the obstacle blocking someone else's view of the show.

² For the record, the titular guitar was not in evidence on this night.

³ "I always ask myself, 'Is the movie that I am watching as interesting as a documentary of the same actors having lunch together?'".

Gig: Broken Social Scene

Broken Social Scene / Rattlesnake Choir

Harbourfront Centre. July 11, 2009.

As I left the love vibe of Afrofest and climbed on the subway to get down to Harbourfront, I had this vague worry that I was leaving Woodstock to go to Altamont — to what would surely be an overcrowded, pushy cauldron of gatecrashers. Best to get there super early, then, and get a seat. Even if that meant standing for the length of the show, having a demarked bit of space would hopefully at least make things tolerable. Got to Union and walked down, and while I was making my way over on the boardwalk, I could hear that music playing. It was soundcheck, and there was a semi-full house already as I found a spot and settled in. J. found me a few minutes later as we listened to the band run through "Fire Eye'd Boy" and an couple more songs. Caught sight of Feist and Amy Millan amongst the whole crowd, the sense building that was going to be the full Broken Social Scene experience.

Then there was some time to kill. I talked about my Woodstock/Altamont theory and we discussed Lester bangs at Altamont while we watched the young crowd, seemingly fresh from the pages of Vice magazine, fill in the last remaining seats and begin to congregate in the aisles. In terms of time fillers, there was also an opening act, local crew Rattlesnake Choir, who played a competent set of perfectly fungible country-rock. "Didn't the Flying Burrito Brothers play first at Altamont?" asked J.¹ I wasn't terribly excited by the act — not so much that I was going to stand up to watch — so instead I figured this might be the last best opportunity to get to the bathroom. Made my way through the crowd, by now pretty thick outside the seating area, and blinked my eyes a couple times when I thought I saw the Angels brandishing their weighted pool cues. Made it there and back without incident, not feeling so eager to have to do that twice. Meanwhile, Rattlesnake Choir were still playing. By and large, there was nothing wrong with them, and they'd probably sound fine in their native environment down in the Dakota. But at this show, in front of this crowd, if didn't sit right, and I was sorta looking at my watch, thinking of that curfew and how every minute this lot played meant one less for BSS.

Oh — did I mention the cameras? There were at least three big camera rigs on site, including a pair on the stage and one at the back of the seating area, plus guys all over with movie cameras. Turns out the event was being filmed by Bruce McDonald, who came out to speak to the crowd briefly. My mind was immediately flashing on the scene with Drew and Canning with McDonald in the editing room, going through the footage frame-by-frame to find where you could first spot the guy pulling the gun.

Anyways, just before nine, the waiting was over, and Broken Social Scene took the stage. Leading off with an instrumental, everything suddenly felt okay. After "Fire Eye'd Boy", Kevin said, "we got all your hometown heroes here tonight!" As Feist came on stage and the crowd shrieked with girlish glee, the band broke into "Shoreline".² A couple solo numbers from Kevin and Brendan's solo/BSS albs followed.

Meanwhile, the non-annoying people that'd been sitting in front of us bailed, and the space was filled by a less-welcome crew of young dudes, sniggering at each other, lighting cigarettes, and yapping away between pouring shots from their concealed liquor bottle. They fell into that class of people who didn't give much consideration to those around them — if everyone in the place is standing up in the seats, does it really seem like a wise idea to sit on the back of a seat and lean back right up to the person standing there? This was the less fun part of the show, leaving J. muttering under his breath that he was going to unleash his inner Altamont on the young suburbanites.

But that notwithstanding, the show was getting on in cracking fashion. Divided into three acts, the middle segment was devoted to songs from members whose success has mostly led them away from the BSS circle. We got a new one from Amy Millan, which sounded nice, but was a little sedate for this situation, followed by a duet between Kevin and Feist, who mashed up the former's "Safety Bricks" with the latter's "Past In Present", plus some "I Feel It All" tacked on at the end. This was followed by Emily Haines fronting a slowed-down and BSS-ed up version of "Gimme Sympathy", which was very well done. Then, in a nice nod to the '04 Harbourfront show, Jason Collett did "I'll Bring the Sun", merging into a snippet of GBV's "Glad Girls" at the end.³ The middle part ended with Andrew Whiteman (joined by Apostle of Hustle's Dean Stone on drums) leading the band in a raucous take of "Soul Unwind" that used the horn section to good effect.

Listen to this version of "Gimme Sympathy" here.

The final act mixed old and new material, with "Almost Crimes" and an amazing "Anthems For a 17 Year Old Girl" bookending "New Country"⁴ and a new song known around the internet as "MTV Jam", presumably because of a video clip in circulation with them performing it on MTV — although I vividly recall the song from the BSS jam at Jason Collett's Dakota residency in December '07. Kevin seemed impressed with the speed at which the band had got through the setlist, and lapsed, for the only time during the show, into his new-age Primal Scream guru persona: "Everyone say 'I'm Sorry'!" He instructed the crowd. "Everyone say 'I Still Fuckin' Love You!'" For a brief second it seemed like the band was going to do the setlist and that's it, which confused me — I'd expected the band to fill every second up to that curfew. But normality soon re-asserted itself, and the band launched into a fiery version of "Pacific Theme", and seemingly everyone climbed up to stand on their seats. A couple more songs and that was it, again — except for an uptempo jaunt through "Major Label Debut".

Getting out wasn't terribly bad — people had started trickling away after 10:30 and after a small, dense knot of people in the standing area it was pretty navigable. Certainly one to remember, it felt like a summation of everything that's come so far. It'll be interesting to see when so many of the clan are assembled on one stage again, but at least it does seem like there's still some viable forward momentum in the old Scene yet. And while there were some moments where I was feeling less-than-charitable towards my fellow concert-goers, no-one ended up stabbed, so success on many levels.

Listen to another track from this gig here.

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¹ So as to not besmirch his rep as a rock'n'roll historian, I must note that J. subsequently corrected himself by noting that Santana actually played first that day.

² Wherein she made one slight alteration to the lyrics — instead of saying "If you try to steal the beat / the beat will steal you", she said "If you try to steal the scene / the scene will steal you". Or you could capitalize that to The Scene for some interesting self-referential fun.

³ To complete the tribute to that '04 show, I was kinda hoping Canning would wear a towel on his head again, but no luck there.

⁴ A song that dates back to the You Forgot It In People era, but was never recorded, and has been recently revived — perhaps this has been tackled at the band's recent recording sessions?