Andrew Vincent writes funny, sincere songs that we as Canucks can relate to. Take for instance his song Canadian Dream. Every time I hear it I think of my friends back in New Brunswick, my days at University and moving to a new city. Andrew was playing in Montreal as part of a Kelp Records and Mint Records showcase.
When I arrived at Petit Campus, Andrew was on stage with his ukulele and was being backed up by Joh Bartlett on drums. Even in the quietness of his songs, they still managed to rock and get me tapping my toes. Lyrically, Andrew just seems to be able to connect with his audience. For example, his song, Going Out Tonight can conjur up memories of getting drunk with buddies and just hanging out on a Friday night. I posted Canadian Dream at the end of this post. You owe it to yourself to give it a whirl.
In preparing this review, I emailed Joh Bartlett at Kelp requesting an MP3 from Andrew Vincent to post with this entry. Here is the response I got back:
I’m out @ hockey, but AV if you’re at a computer, can you send this??
Yes, indeed. THAT is the Canadian Dream. Good work Jon.
After Andrews’ set I was ready to jet to another venue when I ran into Yvette Ray, the publicist for Mint Records. She sends us periodic updates about new Mint releases and tour dates from time to time. I also believe that she is the only band representative to contact us here at the Panic Manual and tell us to pull an MP3 from our site. I think she is over it now since she offered to buy me a drink. She convinced me to stick around and check out The Pack A.D., who were closing out the night at Petit Campus. Before this night I was familiar with the music of The Pack A.D. and I wouldn’t have said that I was a big fan.
As soon as The Pack A.D. took the stage, I knew that this was going to be a different show. The drummer Maya Miller yelled something like “We’re drunk, and it sounds awful, but screw it, we’re going to play anyway”, and with that she proceeded to beat the shit out of her drum kit while Becky Black beat the shit out of her guitar.
The show that The Pack A.D. put on for the 30-40 of us in attendance was amazing. Maybe this is typical of their show, I don’t know, but it was pretty cool. I don’t know what songs they played, but it was loud and there was lots of feedback. Becky whaled on her guitar and screamed into the microphone, song after song after song. At one point half way through a particularly loud song, she stopped playing, lifted her guitar off her shoulder and hurled it across the stage. She then calmly walked back, picked up her second guitar and finished the song. Yeah.
Their performance demanded the attention of everybody in the room. It was as if I was driving past a car wreck, and couldn’t look away. For a two piece it rocked.
Thanks to Jon, Andrew and Yette for the MP3’s