Another year, another Canadian Music Week. Another chance to wander around the city seeing bands. I will admit, however, that there wasn’t a whole lot that jumped out at me in this year’s lineup. And with the handful of bands I was looking forward to seeing playing later in the week, my first night out was devoted to pure discovery. As is to be expected at these sort of things, there were some hits, but also some misses.
I started my evening off with a fantastic instore set by Angel Olsen at Sonic Boom … but CMW had nothing to do with that so we will speak no more of it. From there I moved on to Central to check out The Gold Coast’s Lyon Apprentice. I figure if a band comes all the way from Australia just to play a set at a small bar behind Honest Ed’s, they deserve some kind of an audience. The band’s CMW bio described them as similar to Local Natives, Daughter, and Bon Iver, but truth be told, they’re more like the Australian answer to City and Colour. That’s not really a dig at them … well, not entirely, anyways. The band were good at what they do, had good charisma onstage, and there’s certainly a market for this sort of stuff, but like Dallas Green’s project, there was a bit of a blandness about it. Pleasant sounding, but not overly memorable.
Next on the agenda was the Wavelength/M For Montreal showcase at The Garrison. The theme for the evening was bands whose names start with “M,” which is as good a theme as any I suppose. Starting things off were space rock/krautrock band Moonwood. Formerly the solo project of Arachnidiscs‘ Jakob Rehlinger, the project has morphed into a full band devoted to bringing the Hawkwind-esque jams. Their set consisted of two songs, which for tonight at least, were entitled “Oliva Chow For Mayor” and “Rob Ford Not For Mayor.” A fully satisfying set. For further reading (and a few laughs), the band has complied further reviews of their set from various media sources with their own commentary added.
Following that was Mannerisms, a local band that are proudly flying the jazz fusion flag. As they started their set, I noted the presence of an interesting looking bass onstage known as “The Rail.” One look at that and you know that something proggy is coming your way. Sadly, their keyboard player was not wearing a cape and so a full on prog odyssey was not in the cards for this evening. In fact, the band, while definitely showing off their chops, were somewhat restrained. They weren’t of the “all solos all the time” school of thought, rather focusing on keeping a certain vibe going.