Gig: Wavelength 500 (night 5) (feat. Kids on TV, The Barcelona Pavilion, Mean Red Spiders, Neck, Boars plus Thomas, Owen Pallett and The Hidden Cameras)
The Garrison. Sunday, February 14, 2010.
The grand finale of the Wavelength 500 celebrations was the only pay-what-you-can, no tickets up front night of the bunch. And though I had my wristband to guarantee my entry, I figured there'd be an early rush, so I was waiting in line a bit before doors opened. With a busy night in the offing, I didn't want to be stuck waiting outside with the first act on stage, though I was mildly cynical that things would start on time. In fact, just as I was pronouncing that to the folks I was chatting with, Doc Pickles took the stage, right on the tick, to get things going. That's okay — no one like a Cassandra, right?
Pronouncing "we're gonna kick off the Olympiad of indie rock tonight", Duncan inaugurated a torch run, inveighing someone in the back to grab a bar candle to carry overhead to the stage, so it could be passed around the room.
And then we were into Boars, the night's first act. Although a relatively new band, the duo of Alex Durlak and Damian Valles have played their part in the Wavelength saga as members of volume rockers I Can Put My Arm Back On You Can't.1 The set started with a rising ambient wave that coasted for a couple minutes before a mean rock groove kicked in that worked up to a controlled — but not mannered — racket. With a table full of electronics to shape his sounds, Durlak sometimes sounded like Roger Miller and Martin Swope sharing one body. Meanwhile, Valles' pounding insistence kept the all-instrumental songs moving fairly fluidly under Durlak's brooding post-hardcore-ish guitar. Though not fast-moving, this was engaging live stuff, with a nice tension between the "played" and "shaped" guitar tones.
And then, as a sort of bookend to the weekly series, the next pair of bands were the same ones that had played at the very first Wavelength. "One of the reasons we started Wavelength was so people could go to Neck and Mean Red Spiders shows," explained Doc Pickles. His description of Neck2 as being "like Burt Bacharach fucking Deathtöngue"3 turned out to be somewhat apt, as the band did reveal a musical compromise of catchy and rough textures. There was a pop sensibility at play here, though one that acknowledged the historic import of Hüsker Dü's power-chord ethos. It made for a pleasant surprise, like discovering a time-capsule filled with unheard early 90's alt.rock classics. The short, melodic songs lasted no longer than required to make their point, and the band reeled off fifteen of them in their half hour. They were mostly powered by Dave Rodgers' slightly yelpy vox, though a couple were sung by Andrew McAllister.4 The band was well-rehearsed5 and seemed to generate quite a thrill from those who were there the last time around — not in the least Doc Pickles, who shouted off titles between songs and got to leap up to throw in some backing vox towards the end.
Listen to a track from this set here.
With a more continuous (though not uninterrupted) existence since that first Wavelength, Mean Red Spiders6 took to the stage, opening with the lengthier "Places You Call Home", the title cut from their '98 album which, just maybe, they performed at WL1. That led to a series of shorter songs like "iiieves cove" (with some abrasive sax) and "I Am The Sea" (the title track from their still-forthcoming new album). And though MRS have a repertoire of good songs, their live sets are more focused on their overall immersive sound — an aural bath of noise, as if the band had thought things through and realized there's no problem that couldn't be solved with an additional layer of steel-wool guitar. And the music does seem to be rigourously thought through and carefully constructed. But though that might be an indication of staid fogeyism7 the band is not going gently into the night. In fact, the set was certifiably Loud (in the sense that the music physically shakes you up a bit), with the guitars all piling up like blankets on Lisa Nighswander's vocals.8 The set finished with a lengthy excursion through "Azimuth of Panama", the whole being a hazy stagger of a good time.9
Listen to a track from this set here.
Barcelona Pavilion presented an interesting shift in the tone of the night's celebrations. Unlike the previous two bands, whose ethos was reflected in the very creation of Wavelength, BP came partially out of the creative ferment that the series engendered. Bursting out of the early aughts' "Torontopian" spirit, the band arose out of pure DIY enthusiasm, fashioning themselves out of the elements at hand: a bass or two, beats played via iPod, and an interest in semiotics.
As Doc Pickles ambled through a monologue concerning the frequency of the vibrations of the stars and tomatoes growing in crystal pyramids ("I know that's awkward for all of you to think about," he comforted the crowd), he momentarily lost his train of thought and was interrupted by Steve Kado. "This is amazing," Duncan said, "it's like 2005." The crowd whooped and then, with sitcom precision, Kado and Maggie MacDonald replied, in unison, "it's more like 2003", as if this whole thing was running according to some strange script, or the performers were acting from some Torontopian muscle memory. This is, in fact, a difficult show to say anything substantive about, as there's a gigantic temptation to simply present a transcript of the band members' running banter. That banter, in fact, would take up no small percentage of the set's running time, but the very idea of a running meta-commentary of the show taking place was wholly compatible with everything else going on. In this case, singer/bassist/theorist Steve Kado10 missed no opportunity to reflect on the passage of time and his uneasy relationship to rock'n'roll nostalgia, noting, "this is the dinosaurs of rock outing... There is absolutely no development or improvement in any of our songs. We have not grown as musicians. Nothing has changed, except that we are now fat and old... Let's let the weepy theatrics start, then!"
And thus launched the set of rock as performance theatre, beginning with "Die Welt Ist Schlecht" and moving through pretty much everything in the band's brief catalogue. Other bassist Kat Gligorijevic's t-shirt read "Chaos reigns", but the band was relatively together — at least as much as they wanted to be — the music reflecting the creators' interest in the tensions between the 'amateur' versus the 'professional'. And, I suppose, between art and artlessness. Provoking the crowd is central to the band's raison d'être11, so it's no surprise that the centrepiece of the set was "How Are You People Going To Have Fun If None Of You People Ever Participate?" which is perhaps the band's most subtly nuanced provocation — does participation mean "shut and and dance", or are they telling you to stop watching, leave the venue and go start your own band?12
Amongst all the other self-reflective elements in the set was the sense from the stage that this was merely a lark, a revisitation of something that has been done, and is done with. In lieu of an encore — MacDonald asking, "do we even have any songs left?" — they simply played someone' else's song on the iPod, while MacDonald danced and sang along and Kado packed up his bass. And what did it all mean? It was quite fun, but to me — who hadn't been there the first time around — it wasn't the highly-charged emotional experience it looked to be for some.
Listen to a track from this set here.
Not counting secret special guests, the last band to play the Sunday night stage at Wavelength was Kids on TV, well-loved in these quarters. Easing into their set, the band started off with the slightly more sedate "We Are the New Keith Cole" before kicking into "Dazzler", and that basically broke the ice and got a good chunk of the crowd dancing. It certainly looked like some people who had no idea who KoTV were were starting to get into them. As always, the band put on a visually exciting show, with the ever-energetic Wolf bringing along a new supply of masks.
KoTV were a nice choice to end the "formal" portion of the night, as these indie-culture stalwarts represent a lot of what is good about Wavelength. And, in their ever-forward style, the band chose not to use this a chance to look back at the stuff they were playing last time they were at WL, back in '05, instead focusing on their newer material. This included the excellent "Dazzler" and "Poison", as well as the still very new "City of Night", perhaps the most new-wave-y thing they've done13, now complete with its own visual backing and sounding more confidently fleshed out than when last heard. Only with the last couple songs did they look back, ending on "Breakdance Hunx", complete with Maggie MacDonald taking the stage to drop a verse. As always, a real blast, and after a long night, revivifying stuff.
Getting set up while last call at the bar went out, Thomas took the stage for some after-hours jams. After the high-energy of Kids on TV, this was a quick and sudden slowdown, and at this point in the night, I was probably looking for something to keep my energy up. With the titular Thomas Gill — now also a sideman with Owen Pallett — trading vox with Felicity Williams, the band covered a Kim Burrell track, "Love is What You Do". With the God-y vibe and the very smooth delivery, it evoked those lite-rock bands that you sometimes flip by on the evangelical television shows — at one point I half expected a 1-800 number for a prayer line to flash in front of me. All the mellowness and flutes and whatnot also brought to mind, say, "Always" by Atlantic Starr. Really not my thing — this is a quiet storm that I'd probably rather stay inside and avoid.
It did set me to thinking though, about how this music fits in the little indie-rock bubble we were celebrating. If Wavelength was set up to give bands like Neck and Mean Red Spiders a place to play, that was partially because other avenues of getting music to people were clogged up by music that sounded a lot like what Thomas was playing here. On the other hand — and this is where it gets kinda interesting — to the extent that Wavelength was successful and helped move the aesthetic goalposts, as it were, then what Thomas is playing could be seen as a challenge to that new prevailing orthodoxy. Admittedly, I was finding that mulling this over in my head was more interesting than the music.
Meanwhile, Doc Pickles called up the whole Wavelength crew to the stage for an SNL moment/group hug. As is usually the case for Owen Pallett's very cool but complicated equipment, there were a lot of patch cords to plug in and so forth, so there were a few more moments before Pallett, now playing in his new duo format, was ready to go. Backed by Thomas Gill on drums and guitar, the pair played a short set of mostly Heartland material, starting with "Keep The Dog Quiet" and "The Great Elsewhere". After a nod to the past with "Many Lives → 49 MP", Pallett tipped his hand, noting "there's actually a secret secret guest waiting backstage, so bear with it." He called up Steve Kado to throw some guest vox down on "Independence is No Solution", a crowd pleaser that I'm guessing Pallett learned from Kado, who covered the song in his guise as The Blankett. True to form, Kado lent the song a more rough-hewn edge than it sounds with Pallett playing it on his own, but it certainly felt like a fitting pairing on this night.
And then, speaking of rough but right, Pallett said, "for the first time since 2003, we're going to have the Hidden Cameras play with the lineup from that beautiful era that brought us all together." And so, in lieu of an encore, a family reunion of sorts, with a large number of current and past members of The Hidden Cameras taking the stage.15
Once everything was ready to go, the mass of people on stage launched into a ragged version of "I Believe in the Good of Life". There were indeed quite a few alumni of the '03 version of the Cameras — I noted Magali Meagher, Lex Vaughn, and Gentleman Reg up there, plus some friends like Kevin Drew. And soon, folks from the audience were getting pulled up on to the stage to dance, crowding it still further and adding a hint of chaos to the music. The vocals were unbalanced, and things were getting unplugged here and there, and I'm guessing the band couldn't hear what they were playing very well, but it was pretty fantastic nonetheless. And I could think of no better song to sum it all up.
With the staff eager to clear out the room, just time for one last outro from Doc Pickles, once more telling the members of the crowd that it was their turn to start a band and get themselves on stage16, and wound his way around to close with the cautionary, "but don't worry... for the next decade, you'll have Jian Ghomeshi," before hopping off the stage. He happened to land right next to where I was standing, and noted brightly, to the general vicinity, "What a way to go out!"
1 Beyond playing music, Durlak is also an asset to local music fans through his proprietorship of Standard Form publishing, purveyors of many of the finest CD packages around — a blessing to those who still enjoy having a well-hewn physical thing to contain their music.
2 Neck were/are also known as Christiana, essentially changing their name along with a lineup shift in 1999. Although the players for this reunion show (featuring Jonny Dovercourt on bass) corresponds to the Christiana-era lineup, they were generally referred to by all involved as Neck. You can sort this out further on the band's chronologically divided myspace pages, referred to as 'neckchristiana' and 'christiananeck'
3 Though a cover of "Let's Run Over Lionel Richie With a Tank" was not included, sadly.
4 Extending the past to the present day, McAllister and Christiana drummer Paul Boddum now ply their trade in the group Soft Copy, who have just put out the well-reviewed Vicious Modernism and are said to be well-worth checking out, and those wanting to do so will have a chance on April 9th at Teranga.
5 And in a sure sign that these guys are older, more together types, they brought to the stage a crisply-printed setlist pulled from a laser printer — not just some fragments of titles scrawled on the back of a random scrap of paper. With luck, the organizational advantages of maturity will keep us in the game against the scrappy youths nipping at our heels.
6 I tried to consider their historical import the last time I saw 'em.
7 During the set, guitarist Greg Chambers said, "someone has to pick up the torch and start a new Wavelength. Keep it young — forget about us old guys and start again."
8 Within the band's deliberately murky mix, the sax was perhaps a bit too much on top of everything else, cutting cleanly like a scalpel while all the other sonic elements worked more like a lead pipe wrapped in velvet.
9 MRS are always worth checking out, and look to have a show coming up on April 2nd at Rivoli.
10 Kado, previously omnipresent at local independent culture events, is now located in California doing grad work in the visual arts. In his time here, he was both a powerful instigator on the local scene — helping, for instance, to found the Blocks Record Club — while at the same time acting as an gadfly of self-criticism towards performers and audiences alike.
11 "Well, I noticed none of you guys were dancing all that hard either. And I know why — it's 'cause you're old now. Or you're too young to remember why this would have been fun before."
12 If my reaction to all of this were to be rendered as a New Yorker-style cartoon, it would show me standing in the crowd, head tilted, with a caption like, "Well, I think I'm participating —— but am I participating enough?"
13 Although the musical vibe here follows logically from the "original mix" of "Poison" (check it out on the Friends in Bellwoods 2 comp), which differers from the Siquemu remix that forms the basis of the live version, so maybe "City of Night", too, will also gain an extra dancefloor backbeat in time.
14 Because, frankly, busting out CCM tunes to the Garrison crowd is a sort of subtly audacious move.
15 Helping to kill time as everyone got set up, Dave Meslin, always one to dream of the fate of democracy, managed to get a pitch in for the Better Ballots initiative, citing his hopes that it could "do the same thing for politics that Wavelength did for music" — and replace the same old top 40 mentality with something fresher and more representative.
16 Which, I must confess, I have not done. But if there are any other practitioners of musical laienmalerei out there interested in working out some of the implications of the Vulgar Boatmen and Tom T. Hall, do drop me a line, and we can get prepared to entertain Doc Pickles at Wavelength 1000, which he promised would be held in SkyDome.
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