Toronto – I really like The Great Hall as a venue. It’s a large space with high ceilings and there are seats upstairs. I wonder why this isn’t used as a concert venue more often. Given the hype that was Best Coast, I was surprised at the rather sparse crowd at the Great Hall when I arrived to see Women, the act preceding the LA pop band.
First of all, in todays world of search engines, naming your band Women, is not the smartest idea. The band took the stage shortly after 10 pm. WOMEN are a four piece band from Calgary who are associated with Chad VanGaalen and had a very positive review from Pitchfork for their self debut album, released in 2008. Their sophomore effort, named Public Strain is coming out this year, although I am unaware of when it is released.
I’ve resorted to taking notes for festivals, since I often forget the day after. So my notes for WOMEN were
“Guitarist looks like _____”
So one of the guitarists, I believed it was Christopher Reimer reminded me of this dude at a local bar I used to go to. I wasn’t a particular fan of this person, and I think the feeling was mutual. I think he didn’t like me cos every time we’d have a chat, I’d ask him if he had a job yet. I think he was one of those guys who went from job to job so that was why I asked. I guess it’s a bit rude to constantly question someone’s employment status, but whatever. I’m not sure why I didn’t like the dude, I think maybe it was because I thought he was a delusional person thinking he was living a hard rock n roll lifestyle when really it was a sad mixture of alcoholism, irresponsibility and wasted potential. Who knows. Anyways, that was one of my notes.
The other note was
“Takes me to places in my head”
I don’t really know what this means, but I spent a lot of the time at the show thinking about other things. WOMEN has some long guitar licks mixed with some good synthesizer beats and it could be quite hypnotizing at times. It’s a lot of noise. Lead singer Patrick Flegal often delivers his lyrics while staring blankly into the crowd, which I guess resulted in me staring blankly at the stage and thus, started thinking about other stuff, like “what shows can I pitch to aux.tv” or “what are the Raptors going to do with Hedo Turkoglu” or “why didn’t I buy any bacon this week”. I guess some music just hit the right combinations to make you think. Either that or I was bored, but I liked what I heard so it was probably the former.
All in all, I think it was a decent show. The music for me became good background music, I think the vocals could have been louder.
Women – Black Rice: Play Now
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