Canadian Music Week

CMW Review: Plants & Animals, Mar 12, Lee’s Palace

Posted on March 14, 2010 by Mark in Canadian Music Week, Concerts | 2 Comments

Panic Manual (Plants & Animals Lee's Palace March 12 2010)

Toronto – Montreal-based Plants & Animals played an energetic show at Lee’s Palace last Friday to a packed audience. In 2008, they released Parc Avenue, a lush sounding album with plenty of orchestral padding. Their upcoming album La La Land is scheduled to release in April. The show consisted of a mix of both new and old material; giving their fans a taste of what’s to come, and also spinning out sing-along friendly hits like Faerie Dance and Bye Bye Bye.

What’s so interesting about seeing Plants & Animals live is just how different it is from the album experience.  Until seeing them live, I wasn’t aware that the band consisted of a mere three members. When you listen to Parc Avenue, you hear backup vocals, strings, and brass. It’s easy to assume that you’re dealing with a huge Arcade Fire sized outfit. But Plants & Animals is a brainchild that resides in the minds of two east-coasters and a French Canadian.

With just the three of them, the live show certainly doesn’t have that lush sound heard in the album. However, what they lack in padding they more than make up for in energy. These three musicians definitely have a special live synergy. The entire band was dripping with sweat within 20 minutes of their relatively short CMW set. One concert first for me was seeing lead singer Warren Spicer replace a broken string on his guitar in between songs. I guess he really liked playing that particular guitar.

I waited in line for the better part of an hour and made it into Lee’s with mere minutes to spare before Plants & Animals played their first chord. It was well worth the wait and this show is on my highlight reel for CMW this year. I’d be curious to see what they would sound like if you were to combine their raw live energy with their entourage of beautiful backing vocals and brass.

CMW Review: Coalesce, Harvey Milk, The Atlas Moth, March 11, Annex WreckRoom

Posted on March 13, 2010 by Paul in Canadian Music Week, Concerts | 2 Comments

panic manual harvey milk

Toronto – Metal and hardcore are not things we write about too often here on The Panic Manual, but as I may have mentioned before, I do like the heavy stuff from time to time, so for my purposes ,Canadian Music Week became Canadian Metal Week on this night.

First up was The Atlas Moth, a band out of Chicago who really impressed me.  They had a densely layered,epic, doomy sound featuring three guitars, multiple vocalists, and touches of synth.  I heard touches of Neurosis and even Pink Floyd in their sound.  Their set seemed like it was over too soon and way too short, but that may have had something to do with the fact that all their songs were pretty long.  I would definitely be interested in seeing them again.

Harvey Milk are an interesting band.  Named after the politician from the ’70s, they’re currently touring behind their self titled album, which was actually recorded back in the early ’90s but has only recently been remastered and released for the first time.  The first couple songs were really doing it for me, but by the third song, they really hit their groove.  They played a bunch of new unreleased songs a new unreleased song (or maybe two?)  from an upcoming album , which was full of slow, bluesy riffs.  Frontman Creston Spears had a row of what I believe were shots of whiskey lined up onstage ,which probably accounts for his vocal style, which could certainly be described as whiskey soaked.  They also have what I believe is the best t-shirt design ever.

panic manual coalesce

Coalesce put on a pretty intense show.  The recently reunited band are touring behind their latest (and first in 10 years) album OX, although they only had a handful for sale because they figured everyone would have downloaded it anyways.  It’s ok though, I’m sure they sold a few t-shirts (even though the designs weren’t as daft as those Harvey Milk were selling).  They were gracious enough to take a few song requests shouted out by fans, saying that since they hadn’t been here in 10 years, they would play what the crowd wanted to hear.  I was a little bummed that they didn’t play anything from their album of Led Zeppelin covers, but not at all surprised … although hearing “Black Dog” would have been pretty sweet.

CMW Review: Adebisi Shank, March 10, Rancho Relaxo

Posted on March 11, 2010 by Paul in Canadian Music Week, Concerts, Everything | Leave a comment

panic manual adebisi shank

Toronto – Despite it being an enjoyable show, I beat a hasty retreat from The Bonfire Ball at Lee’s Palace to check out Adebisi Shank, who initially caught my interest from their name alone.  The Irish Band derives their name from Simon Adebisi, an imposing character from HBO’s awesome prison show Oz and a man who is certainly very handy with a shank.  It is my firm belief that more bands should name themselves after characters from Oz.  A couple that come to mind are Cyril O’Reilly And The Sock Puppets or The Schillinger Escape Plan.  Those are yours for free if you want them , band that currently has no name.  The Panic Manual offers them up as a public service

Factoring in travel time between venues, I only caught a couple songs by them at the end of their set, but what I heard, I liked.  They had a jerky, math rocky sort of sound, maybe a bit like Don Caballero, but more frantic.  Also, their bassist wore a scarf/mask kind of thing to cover his face and head, which is kind of cool.

Adebisi Shank are also playing tonight (March 11) at The Hideout at 12:00.  Be there or be shanked. 

CMW Review: The Bonfire Ball featuring Jason Collett, Zeus and Bahamas, March 10, Lee’s Palace

Posted on March 11, 2010 by Paul in Canadian Music Week, Concerts, Everything | 3 Comments

Toronto – So for the longest time I wasn’t even sure I was getting into this show.  For whatever reason, the wait to get into Lee’s Palace was ridiculously long and slow.  The good thing about this was meeting new people and bonding over the general craziness of it all while wondering whether we should cut out and try to get into the Vivian Girls or Fucked Up shows that were alos happening tonight.  But I stuck it out and finally made it to the front of the line.  The wait made the show itself all that much sweeter. 

Once I was inside, the Collett/Bahamas/Zeus supergroup was well into their set.  The venue was packed and performers seemed to be having as much fun onstage as we had watching them.  And the band was fantastic, switching between each other’s songs with ease.  Each individual songwriter had a style that blended well with each other.  This is not surprising, seeing as Zeus is Collett’s backing band, and Afie Jurvanen (aka Bahamas) used to be a member of the band.   The overall sound was reminiscent of various ’60s and ’70s sounds without really being derivative or unoriginal.   I read elsewhere that they did a Kylie Minogue cover for their encore, but I didn’t see that as I left to check out another show.  Too bad, that would’ve been pretty cool to see.

 I have seen Collett, Bahamas. and Zeus perform seperately in the past and they were undoubtedly good, but somehow tonight, by joining forces, they became even greater than the sum of their parts … like a Canadian indie rock version of Voltron.

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