(Toronto) Ah yes, an early Saturday night show at the Mod Club. There is something weird about going to a concert when it is still light out and it’s too early to be drunk.
First up was Toronto band Boys Who Say No. I liked them. They have a kind of quirky shouting, talking and singing over strong riffs. Kind of like Los Campesinos!. As I was watching them I thought that they kind of sounded like the Lovely Feathers, then they announced that they were playing a show with them on June 6th at Lees. Makes sense.
Up next were Oh No Forest Fires. Now I know my mother told me not to judge a book by its cover, but I am going to anyway. So Oh No Forest Fires takes the stage and I see three dudes, wearing crappy jeans and plaid shirts, you know, the typical slacker rocker indy outfit. No problem. But over on the corner of the stage on guitar is a fourth dude who I can only describe as Ian Ziering-esk. Brock Swanek took the stage wearing a freshly pressed white V-neck T-shirt, a fake-n-bake tan, new white Italian sneakers, fancy jeans and a faux-hawk-mullet hair don’t. It looked like he was on his way to meet his girfriends parents for the fist time. I didn’t get it.
Musically, I’m not that into Oh No Forest Fires. Not yet at least. I’m sure they are all fine musicians and others seem to like them, but on this night I was so distracted by the glare off of Brocks’ shirt and shoes, I couldn’t focus on the music. Visually, the band had no coherency. Visual coherency is important.
You would think that at some point the other three members of the band would be like:
“Hey, dude, do you have to get a manicure, shave, and whiten your teeth before every show? And why do you smell like a pina colada?”
OK, I made the pina colada thing up, I didn’t get that close, but if I had I am pretty sure that Brock would have been all coconuts.
On another superficial note, lead singer Rajiv Thavanathan has a lovely head of thick black bushy hair. If I could grow it like him, I would. Now I must admit that I did find some pictures from an Oh No Forest Fires show that happened at the Horseshoe earlier this year where Brock looks much more respectful. HERE too. Maybe the Mod Club show was a one off for the guy?
The last band of the early evening was Five Blank Pages. This was billed as their last show ever. I thought that they might just be saying that as a publicity stunt to get more people out, but when all the band members parents and grandparents started rolling in half an hour before their set, I knew that the ‘last show’ claim must have been legit. We didn’t stick around, there was an hour of daylight to get out and enjoy.