Toronto – See that there right above? That is a sitar being deftly played by Elephant Stone frontman Rishi Dhir and it was the perfect way to start off this night. As they took to the stage, Dhir (formerly of Montreal’s The High Dials) and his bandmates started things off with an Indian tinged intrumental before moving into some ’60s inspired, seriously melodic psych rock. They were pretty impressive. The highlight of their set for me was definitely “Strangers,” a seriously catchy song that got stuck in my head for a while afterwards. Is Little Steven playing this on his show? He should be.
After an interlude where frontman Anton Newcombe played DJ from that balcony/booth thing they have at The Phoenix (a weird mix that included a lot of bass-heavy electronic stuff with some bluegrass and Archie Bell tunes thrown in), Brian Jonestown Massacre took to the stage and pretty much blew the minds of everyone in the crowd.
This show marked the return to the fold of guitarist Matt Hollywood, who, along with the always entertaining percussionist Joel Gion, helped to hold things down on stage, making up for Newcombe’s general shunning of the spotlight. Standing to the far left of the stage, Newcombe basically just sang his songs and played his guitar, his hair covering his face as he stood sort of sideways facing the band. And that’s all he really needed to do. The band was tight and impressive. They played pretty much any song a fan would want to hear. Newcombe didn’t really say much throughout the evening, although he did note later in the show that, “Tim Horton’s is fucking rad”(or words to that effect) … I guess Elephant Stone are showing them the ropes on how to tour Canada or something.