Following the afternoon’s show, Wavelength still had a pretty full night ahead for the evening’s big rock show, one that would prove to be a bit too full for me since I didn’t make it through to the last band of the night, but one which was pretty satisfying nonetheless.
Versa started the night off with a set of proggy, post rock-ish instrumentals that featured saxophone for a good part of the set and seemed to be at least partly if not totally improvised. A prominent feature of their show was that the music was accompanied by live painting projected on a screen behind the band. I’m assuming prints of the paintings that resulted from each individual composition were made available after the show, but who knows.
Up next was Partner, whose first number had a bit of a Weezer vibe about it. The second song was about smoking hash, which led me to suspect that maybe Rivers Cuomo and company were something of an influence on the Sackville, NB based band because, y’know, Weezer also had that song about smoking hash. This is not to say that Weezer is an overwhelming influence on the band, but Partner certainly have a penchant for poppy melodies and chunky riffs that were reminiscent of a lot of ’90s guitar rock in general – Veruca Salt and much of the Halifax scene from back in the day were also brought to mind during their set. The band had a charming, funny stage presence and songs that covered such topics as getting high, having cool girlfriends, and Ellen Page, as well as one song that used sports as a metaphor for a relationship. “This is sports weekend in Toronto, right?” joked singer/guitarist Josée Caron in reference to all of the NBA All Star festivities that were also going on around town.
Up next were Beliefs, who seem to have reconfigured the lineup a bit since the last time I had seen them. Josh Korody and Jesse Crowe led the band through a solid set of shoegaze played to a packed to capacity house, proving themselves to be one of the best bands around town these days. After they finished, exhaustion was starting to set in for me and so I beat a hasty retreat and headed home even though I’m sure Soupcans and Duchess Says also offered up some excellent sets. My loss, I suppose.