Concerts

Concert Review: Mates of State, Suckers, September 28, The Phoenix

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Ricky in Concerts | Leave a comment

If great careers are defined by consistent production over a lengthy period of time (as it is in most professional sports), then husband and wife group Mates of States would be a forerunner for what defines a great career. Since forming in 1997, Mates of State have been keeping up an incredible work rate, having released seven quality (if not kind of similar) albums in that time. Mountaintops, the band’s seventh album, was recently released off Barsuk Records and features more of what we’ve come to know from Mates of States – short and sweet pop songs that fill your heart with all kinds of warmth. On Wednesday night at the Phoenix, band took to the stage to introduce their new songs to the city of Toronto.

For a band that has produced so many albums and quality singles over the years, the relatively small crowd (~ 50% capacity) that attended the concert was a surprise to me and all involved. Decorated in a floral manner, the stage’s bright color accurately reflected the happy mood of band and the crowd for the entire show. Armed with an extra guitarist and multi-instrumentalist, Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel took center stage with their respective synth and drum sets and delivered a nearly ninety minutes hit filled set that spanned most of the band’s discography (including their covers album).

I wasn’t terribly surprised at how well the new material (such as Maracas and Palomino) meshed with their older stuff material but it’s always nice to see a crowd respond as positively to the newer songs as to the older ones. If there’s an award for consistent sound, you could make a good case for Mates of State to take that one home. The small but loyal crowd ate up all the tracks and me and Paul both were surprised at the amount of people who were singing along to every one of the songs played. Kori and Jason both played their songs with enthusiasm, which is nice since they’ve probably played tracks like Get Better a few thousand times by now. An entirely pleasant time for an entirely pleasant band.

Mates of State – Maracas by orchardmktg

If you have read our blog consistently for awhile now, you will know that I was a large fan of Wild Smile, the debut record from Brooklyn act Suckers. So you will imagine my disappointment last year when I missed out on a large portion of the bands opening set last year due to an extremely early (7:30!!!) set time. This time around, I made sure to catch the groups opening slot on Wednesday.

Equipment problems delayed the start of the set, but the group was still able to play a half an hour show that was heavily impressive. I did not notice this last time, but it seemed every member of the band played at least two instruments. Most impressive was the drummer, who somehow managed to play with the drums with one hand and the keyboards with the other at the same time. Just thinking about that gives me a headache.

The band played a slew of songs from their debut album and maybe one or two new tracks. Highlights include Martha (which the band introduced as Samantha, an inside joke of sorts), A Mind I Knew and the epic set closer It Gets Your Body Movin’. One of my favorite tracks off the album, It Gets Your Body Movin’ was a great choice to end off the set and introduce the people coming into the Phoenix to the band. Featuring a gospel-esque singalong chorus, a trumpet AND a whistling solo, the song just hits you hard in a live environment and it would be hard for even the casual concert goer to not get swept up in it all. Hopefully a few of the people did, for Suckers is a pretty impressive band.

Suckers – Black Sheep (RAC Mix) by RAC

Concert Review: Peter Hook and the Light, September 24, Phoenix Concert Theatre

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Allison in Concerts | Leave a comment

I have to write a few disclaimers before I dive into this review, as I feel it may arouse some impassioned opinions. First, as conflicted as I feel about some band members embarking on tours without others, it’s within all of the songwriters’ rights to tour such material without other members (particularly when one of its key members is dead). Second, it’s not up to me to decide whether a tour should or shouldn’t happen. I can only report on what my thoughts were.

Let me preface this with Panic Manual’s love of Joy Division, albeit in varying degrees, through various phases of our lives. I would say for me, finding this band had more to do with timing in impressionable adolescence. The music was poetic, dark, and rebellious, but on top of everything else there was a dreary upbringing, unhappy marriage, and of course the dramatic finish of a suicide. One needs grand things to explore in youth…be it Star Wars or Joy Division, and this is probably the closest I ever got towards music fanaticism, having collected every album, boxed set, poster, book, vinyl, and t-shirt that I could afford.

That said, I haven’t actively listened to them since I was in 12th Grade. Art is funny that way–the stuff you discover in high school sticks with you forever in spite of abandonment. Your formative years can make a book, album, or film feel like your life is hinging on its consumption. I would imagine that I’m no exception here–being a teenager is all about brooding poetry, after all.

So…onto my thoughts about the show. This past year, Peter Hook has been touring the posthumously-released Closer (my favorite of the two official albums), and he continues on the success of those shows by performing Unknown Pleasures with The Light, which includes his son on bass. The backing band certainly sounded louder and more stadium-rocky than anything I had remembered…that in itself is fine, seeing as a tour should be supporting a new and different ambition towards past material to make it a worthwhile endeavor. I just felt like Hook was scream-singing most of the lyrics, struggling to keep up with the breakneck punk tempo of the songs (however at age 55, we should all be so lucky to be pulling off rock shows passably at any level).

And what was up with those aggressive ceiling and audience points?

On the one hand, I had to admire Mr. Hook’s enthusiasm for rocking out with his cock out. On the other, I couldn’t help but wonder if a different approach to the material might have given us more to enjoy and think about. I’m hard-pressed to suggest what that approach might be (acoustic??), but it just seemed as if the album was turning into a parody of a prototypical ‘punk’ sound when so much of what made Joy Division appealing in the first place was its hollow percussional scarcity.

Some of the songs went off better than others. Shadowplay, Transmission, and Dead Souls, which made me wonder whether I might have felt differently about an instrumental version of the tour because it would have stayed true to Mr. Hook’s true talents. To me, the poetic lyrics are really the foundation of the group’s appeal–something I really felt was missing from New Order. New Order of course had other strengths in electronic music.

I would suspect that given Peter Hook’s interviews about how he thinks anyone who disapproves of these shows should fuck off, he won’t care much about what I have to say. Perhaps you don’t either, but at the end of the day I expected something better from the man who created one of the best singles of 1997.

Concert Review: A Hawk And A Hacksaw, Dark Dark Dark, September 22, The Rivoli

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Paul in Concerts | Leave a comment

Toronto – Lately, there’s been a fair number of Elephant Six alumni making their way through our town – Olivia Tremor Control and Music Tapes a little over a week ago, Jeff Mangum’s sold out show back in August at Trinity St. Paul’s, and now former Neutral Milk Hotel drummer Jeremy Barnes’ current band A Hawk And A Hacksaw. 

Touring behind their latest album Cervantine, the New Mexico band played a mostly instrumental set of their heavily Balkan folk-influenced tunes.  Accordion and Violin abounded, along with a smattering of trumpet at times, some of it with a mariachi flavour.   Mixing in a few weird, moody numbers with a bunch of more upbeat tunes that got many in the crowd dancing (though technically not the right kind of dancing for this sort of music), they put on a fully entertaining show.

Openers Dark Dark Dark also put on a pretty good show, but set a much different mood than did the headliners.  Their kind of sombre tunes have been described as “chamber folk” by some and on this night were described as “introspective party jams” by singer Nona Marie Invie.  I remember that phrase because she said it twice.  After repeating herself, she continued, “That’s pretty funny, right?  It’s my first joke in Toronto.”  Well … no. Nona, it’s not actually all that funny.  At most it’s worth a chuckle.  But seeing as how the crowd was getting pretty chatty at that point, I can assume that she was doing this in an attempt to get the talkers to pay attention to her band.  If so, I’ll forgive the repetition of an aonly slightly witty quip.  They had a fairly rich sound, also full of accordians as well as lots of piano and banjo.  I had seen the band once before at the Roskilde Festival, and I have to admit, I was somewhat less impressed this time.  Perhaps it was the fact that they didn’t have a cello player with them this time around as I found that added a little extra gravitas or something to their sound.  Still, all in all, a pretty solid show.   

A Hawk and a Hacksaw, “Espanola Kolo” by NoiseNarcs

Concert Review: Tahiti 80, September 22, Horseshoe Tavern

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Allison in Concerts | Leave a comment

tahiti 80 concert poster

Xavier Boyer, Médéric Gontier, Sylvain Marchand, Pedro Resende, Raphaël Léger & Julien Barbagallo are otherwise known as tahiti 80, one of the most seductive live acts I’ve had the pleasure to see this year. They also have a following that I would describe as “intimate and loyal”, possibly the most attractive fanbase an independent artist can ever achieve.

Around since the late 90’s, tahiti 80 is one of those band names you often hear, but may confuse with numerous others. I myself thought that I might be going to see Air Cuba that night, but then I’m famously known for mixing-up band names. Perhaps it’s better I had no significant prior knowledge about tahiti 80 walking into Thursday’s show, because what I found was that rare instance of a group that embraces the live experience.

Their studio recordings sound comparatively sterile–this was probably the most active dance floor I’ve ever seen at the Horseshoe, and although I was content to watch from the sidelines under the air conditioning vent sitting down, I certainly appreciated the enthusiasm that their hardcore fans brought to the set. I’ve always wondered if the grind of being a professional musician ever wears them down to a nub once they realize the same crowd sizes are cropping up in the depths of their career as there were towards the beginning, but I think in this case the crowd’s obvious brimming cup of love for everything tahiti 80 more than makes up for that. I’ve been to stadium-size shows that had none of the heart that this performance did, so size doesn’t always matter.

There are several reasons this was such a great show that you don’t see with every band.

SETLIST
I wish I had a copy of the setlist, because you can tell these guys are incredibly seasoned performers based on the even mix of new and old. The only thing I might have changed was the incredibly energetic choices up until the first songs of the encore that seemed to cause a jarring effect when the encore started off so slowly.

This is a copy of their revised setlist after their Thursday show (written on a styrofoam plate, no less)

New tahiti 80 setlist

  • I.S.A.A.C.
  • Gate 33 (based on Xavier Boyer’s colourful encounter with a “crazy lady” at an airport
  • Better Days Will Come
  • Easy
  • Anton(?)
  • Big Day
  • 1,000 Times
  • Defender
  • Darlin’
  • Heartbeat
  • Crack-up

This was probably the first instance in which the band was happy to take requests from the audience as well.

CHARISMA
Boyer is really the ultimate European front man, willing to take pains to tell stories and introduce each member of his band with lurid explanations of who they are. You can pretty much tell he’s the nicest guy in the world.

DOING WHAT THEY LOVE
One of the things that has always struck me about the better performances I’ve seen over the past year is that you can genuinely sense who is living to create and perform music and who is punching in the time card as another day at the office. These guys are living to create and perform, and they love doing so, grinning and rocking out at every beat. I can only hope that they are making a decent living doing this. Live, they are probably 10x more charming than their other fellow countrymen that have hit it big in North America (Phoenix, Air).

4 out of 5

4 out of 5

Tahiti 80 – Darlin’ (Adam & Eve Song) by La Chunga Publishing

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