Toronto – Lets get straight to the reviews. Friday night concerts at the Guvernment are always early shows. Why? cos the clubbers get in from the 905 at around 10 pm and that’s where the money is. So Friday night’s La Roux show was an early one, with La Roux taking the stage at 9 and Toronto’s own Diamond Rings taking the stage at 8. How do I feel about early shows? On weekdays, I love it. On weekends, I don’t know..at least you can do something after.
Opening act was Diamond Rings. You might of heard of him before as he had a fairly popular video this summer for his song “All Yr Songs”, you can check it out here. The main force behind Diamond Rings is John O, also the lead singer of the Toronto band D’Urbervilles. The music between the two acts are significantly different. I was fairly impressed with the one man act, John O sounds like a more emotive Paul Banks, and his 80s inspired pop music sound was good. The hooks were insanely catchy and all the music just went well together. The half hour set consisted of songs off an upcoming EP (I guess) and also featured guest appearances by Katie Stelmanis and Gentleman Reg. For an opening act, it was really good.
La Roux came on at about 9:10. This raised some alarms, because well, we all knew she had to be outta there by 11. Equipped with a drummer (playing some sort of electronic drum kit), keyboard/laptop dj person, and a backing female vocalist, La Roux quickly launched into some song (forgot what it was). Boy, the hair. It’s quite the coif. It was probably 20 centimeters high and I am wondering how much hair product is required to keep that thing up during the show. Then I’m reminded of that scene from Something About Mary. Haha.
Anyways, the concert was ridiculously short, maybe 35 minutes. Perhaps this was because Elly Jackson was sick (she had cancelled a few shows prior to this show due to illness). Perhaps it was cos of the guvernment. I don’t know. For the time she was on stage, Elly Jackson gave it her all, dancing and doing proper call and responses with the crowd. The setlist was what you would expect, which is a lot of songs off the self titled debut album. She didn’t play Armoured Love, which is a song I like a lot. Set closer Bulletproof got the highest response and the crowd (not sold out) was quite enthused about the show, but ultimately, the shortness of it probably left a stale taste in most people’s mouth. I also thought there might have been too much pre-recorded sound. Maybe it was because of the illness. Either way, to go all the way to the guvernment and only get a 35 minute show (even if it was pretty good) can only come off as mildly disappointing.