Toronto – Do you remember the Fast and the Furious? Sure you do. Don’t tell me you didn’t shit your pants the first time you saw the trailer and saw that civic go underneath that truck. You did. Here’s a refresher:
What a Limp Bizkit song. Epic. The movie is about a dude named Brian O Connor trying to break into the world of illegal street racing, and get into Vin Diesel’s group cos they are really popular in that circle. So the analogy I’m trying to make is I’m Brian O Connor, the Toronto indie scene is the ‘world of illegal street racing’ and the people who run the shows are Vin Diesel. Somehow I’ve stumbled upon their world and despite knowing very little about the music or people, I keep on getting invited to attend these cool shows (aka street races). Thursday nights was one of these occasions, as I was invited to the secret Woodhands album preview show at the Smiling Buddha. I guess for this analogy to really be complete, I would need No Shame promoter Lauren to say some of these quotes:
“I live my life a quarter mile at a time. Nothing else matters: not the mortgage, not the store, not my team and all their bullshit. For those ten seconds or less(or the duration of the show), I’m free. “
“You can have any brew you want… as long as it’s a Corona. “
“I never narc’d on nobody! I never narc’d on nobody!”
Okay, the last one doesn’t make any sense. The whole analogy doesn’t make any sense…or it might make compete sense. Think about it.
Woodhands played this show to promote their new album Remorsecapade, which might have tbe best album cover of all time:
A robot shooting horses! genius. I have never seen Woodhands before, but I have heard great things about their live shows. For example, Jen from Narratives swears by them. So I guess I had high expectations of the show. Woodhands is a two person band, with Paul Banwatt on the drums and Dan Werb on the keytar as well as a bunch of other electronical gadgets.
Now before we get to the review, let me preface this by saying before this concert, I attended the LG Filmfest Awards show (to be review by Mark), which was open bar, also, JD Salinger died earlier in the day and I decided to honor him by drinking RYE and coke. A lot of rye and coke. So I was slightly out of my elements at the Woodhands show.
Amidst a cloud of smoke and streaming lazers, Woodhands pretty much synth rocked the crowd for their entire set. I felt like I was in a 80s music video. The keytar was awesome, there was definitely a lot of energy in their set, although I feel like the narrowness of the Smiling Buddha bar hindered Dan from doing some crazy stuff, like jumping. Some people were actually almost dancing, but there probably wasn’t really enough room for that. The set consisted mainly of material was off the new album, but Maylee Todd was brought on stage to perform the song Dancer. I can’t really compare and contrast the new material to the old material, but I would probably classify it as ‘similar’. The band handed out Woodhands towels afterwards for the sweaty crowd. It’s a nice tought, if it was R Kelly, he would have pissed on us.
A good time was had by all, with such an energetic show, it’s almost impossible to not have a good time. I always, ALWAYS like light shows too. I’m like a six year old, lots of lights and colors easily distract me.
For a more sober account of the show that doesn’t reference some random movie, Frank from Chromewaves also attended the show. Narratives will also have a review up soon too I believe.
I am too lazy to type out their tour dates, so I took a screenshot from their myspace page:
Go check them out.