In the immortal words of Cheap Trick, “talk is cheap and those rumours ain’t nice.” So in the interest of dispelling any rumours right off the bat, I will let it be known that Dream Police is, in fact, not a Cheap Trick cover band. I know, I’m sad too. Those of you disappointed in that fact can take some comfort in knowing that, if you’re so inclined, such a band does also exist. Hopefully, you can also take some comfort in knowing that Dream Police is a project featuring Nick Chiericozzi and Mark Perro, two members of new York’s The Men, who in my humble opinion are one of the finest rock and roll outfits going these days. While Dream Police shares some musical DNA with The Men, Chiericozzi and Perro differentiate it from their main gig by going deeper into fuzzed out, electronic textures. Their debut album, Hypnotized, is aptly named, as the group delves into krautrock and psychedelic influences that can border on the hypnotic at times.
For their debut Toronto performance, the band played to a rather sparse crowd, as the first snowfall of the year had obviously scared a lot of folks away from coming out for the evening. Dream Police put on an intense yet brief set, impressively not just going through the motions despite the fact that there were only a handful of people in attendance. It makes sense – why worry about the people who didn’t come out when you can focus on those who did?
There was actually a larger crowd downstairs for some other bands. I don’t really know what was going on downstairs, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that those of us upstairs caught the better show and that the group gathered downstairs to (presumably) see their friends’ band play should have come upstairs to check this out instead. Their friends would get over it … eventually.