Toronto – Holy Fuck is not your typical electronic band. Unlike the plethora of digital ensembles equipped with laptops and pre-programmed backing tracks, Holy Fuck set themselves apart by using a 35mm film synchronizer and toy keyboards to produce their analog noises.
Say what you want about bands with expletives in their name: they’re all about shock, they won’t be able to reach the mainstream, or they’re just offensive. Holy Fuck is the perfect name for this band. While watching the show I kept thinking:
“Holy fuck, there are reels of film flying out of that keyboard contraption!”
“Holy fuck they don’t have a laptop!”
“Holy fuck are they using a toy gun to make that noise?”
Yes, it’s that kind of show and if you’re a fan of their albums then you must see them live. Their act on stage looks fantastically precise and intricate while the sound they produce is so raw, experimental, and psychedelic.
The set featured songs from their junior album Latin. Infectious Latin America grabbed the loyal audience as Red Lights, Stilettos and my new favourite Stay Lit made them say holy fuck again. A lot of their songs sound like they could be the soundtrack for a chase scene in an action movie, very fast-paced rhythms with driving beats. To me their music resembles a mix of Ratatat (Stay Lit sounds like it could be one of their songs) and Caribou (both having a very layered, original sound).
Holy Fuck was the brainchild of obscure sound machine creator Brian Borcherdt. Alongside Brian is keyboardist Graham Walsh, Drummer Matt Shultz and Bassist Matt Mcquaid. The combination of conventional instruments with layers of non-instrumental noises creates music that sounds bigger than the quartette, an electronic orchestra if you will.
The only disappointment at this show was that it was only about half full. I suppose electronic music doesn’t appeal to everyone and that Holy Fuck pales in comparison to Justin Bieber. Regardless, I would recommend seeing this band live before listening to the album and I’ll leave you with a cool mini documentary that I came across by City Sonic.
Toronto – WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Just one day after I wrote about not wooing at shows, I found myself doing it excessively at the Queen Elizabeth Theater. The difference however, was everyone in the audience was also doing it. Still, kinda hypocritical. Anyways, James was in town Thursday night to play to a sold out show at Queen Elizabeth Theatre. They were here to promote their double releases this year – The Morning After and the Night Before but lets not kid ourselves here. Everyone in the crowd (most nearing 40 or over) was here for the hits. To say James delivered in spades would be an understatement.
At 9:15. The lights went out, except for a singular spot light pointing to an entrance near the end of the crowd. Whadyya know? It’s Tim Booth and Larry Gott, kicking off the show in a spectacular fashion – an acoustic version of Sit Down. Watch my video here, and excuse my singing:
It’s such a brilliant start. I would imagine that 80% of this crowd was here for the Phoenix show a few years ago and they, like me, made a mental note about how Sit Down was not played at that show. So what happens? James starts off with that song, and walks through the crowd. Fantastic.
It’s hard to describe what it feels like to be at a James show except that if you are a fan, or even a casual music fan, it would be hard to not get caught up in the tidal wave of enthusiasm that goes through the crowd and ultimately reflects back on the band. Tim Booth does his usual Tim Booth dance and is a master on stage, often engaging the crowd, leading us on, guiding us on a journey through out the night. Sure he does it every night, but you never get a sense that it’s a routine. There’s a certain amount of humility and genuine honesty that James has that makes them seem like such a personal band, despite making pretty standard (but completely awesome) pop music.
The one obvious highlight for me was that they played Tomorrow, a song they decided to skip the last time around. It’s easily one of my favorite songs of all time and has been for well over a decade. So needless to say, when you hear a favorite song of yours live for the first time ever, it gets pretty freakin epic.
Obviously, the middle stages of the set featured some new tracks off the double album, including Porcupine, Dust Motes and It’s Hot. I don’t think everyone in the audience was familiar with these songs and reacted accordingly, which may have frustrated Tim Booth a little. He tried his best to get the crowd dancing, but while a lot of them where, there were more who didn’t. Perhaps it was the seated arrangement. It’s always a bit odd to dance in a seated venue, but maybe that’s just me.
Following Dust Motes, the band went into overdrive – a steady flow of hits followed – 5-0, Stutter, Say Something, Laid and the set closer Sound. Laid featured an onstage invitation and was as awesome as you expect it to be:
A rapturous ovation lead to the band returning for a planned encore of Out to Get You and Sometimes, the latter resulting in a massive sing a long. A second encore did not occur. I was kind of expecting them to come back out to sing Come Home but the Queen Elizabeth Theatre people quickly turned the lights on and played background music. Maybe they wanted to go home. I dunno, I don’t think anyone else did.
In conclusion, it was an epic night and this was my favorite show of the year so far. The great thing is, I get to see them twice more this year in England. 2010 has been good to me.
Set list (stolen from wearejames.com)
———————
SIT DOWN
RING THE BELLS
SEVEN
DREAM THRUM
PORCUPINE
TELL HERE I SAID SO
IT’S HOT
GETTING AWAY WITH IT
TOMORROW
JAM J
DUST MOTES
5-0
STUTTER
CRAZY
SAY SOMETHING
LAID
SOUND
———————
OUT TO GET YOU
SOMETIMES
Toronto – The Mod Club was home to two of 2010’s most critically acclaimed bands Tuesday night in the form of Brooklyn’s Suckers and Portland’s Menomena. I was primarily there for Suckers, a band off the French Kiss label that first captured my affection with their ep and then cemented my love for them with their excllent debut effort Wild Smile.
Seeing as how I have been going on and on about Suckers for the better part of this year, you would think I would have gone extra early to ensure I caught the entire show. NOPE. Trying to time it so I arrived just before they started, I misjudged their start time and as I entered, I can hear them playing. Horrified, I asked the door girl when they had started, I had missed either two or three songs. Sick. Which brings me to think, what are some of the worse things that can happen when approaching a concert venue? Here’s a list:
1. You forgot your ticket
2. The band is already playing
3. You have a pair of tickets, but your friend is late and your cell phone is dying and the band is about to go on
4. You don’t have a ticket, but your friend is nowhere to be found/inside and not answering phone + band is playing
5. The Nazis attack
When I did get in, I was immediately shocked at how packed the show was. Despite my love for this band, I haven’t seen much press for Suckers so it pleased me to see a large audience for them. Either that or Menomena has a bunch of keeners for fans.
The short half hour set was impressive and gave the fans a nice taste of what the Suckers are about: strong vocal harmonies layered over carefully arranged music. Lead singer Quinn Walker has a great voice and he wasn’t shy about using it, occasionally delivering vocals in pitches usually reserved for Mariah Carey (specially for the song Before Your Birthday Ends). Set ender It Gets Your Body Movin featured a horn section and an insanely talented whistling display. It’s a shame they were the openers, as I enjoyed the suckers live performance quite a bit. Hopefully next time they’ll play a proper/longer show.
I didn’t know much about Menomena before the show. I didn’t even know how to pronounce their name til Monday. If you are confused about it, it’s like the LL Cool J song
Something like a phenomena
Something like a phenomena
And then take off the p. Having looked up the band before their set, I found out that they were on the Barsuk label. Gary loves Barsuk labelled artists like a fat kid loves cake so I’ll hand it over to him for this portion.
Menomena pretty much had all the genres that I can think of covered. There’s a metal song, some sing alongs, one song with piano rift intro that sounded like Moby’s Porcelain, and yet another the piano is used as a counter to a bassoon that had a Peter and the Wolf kind of charm (I’d like to go home is the name?). It’s not that I don’t like their music. I think there’s a song called This will all End One Day that I found very good. Although it’s very uneven throughout the evening, the show was energetic.
Despite not hearing one single track of theirs before the show, I enjoyed Menomena, I thought they did a good job building up each track with layers of keyboard, guitar, trumpet or whatever it was they were using. Their tracks definitely varied in style, as one minute, you would think you were listening to a Chicago style lounge band and the next minute you were at a 80s new age disco hall. I found the large variety of musical styles engaging, but at the same time I was unable to fully delve into the show. Maybe I need consistency, I don’t know why.
Before we finish off this review, let us talk about concert etiquette. More specifically, let’s talk about wooooing. We get it, you are enjoying a show. You want to let it be known, so you wooo. Once a song is okay, but there is only one person allowed to do mulitiple wooooos Ina short period of time, and that’s this guy:
If you are not this guy, please be respectful. There are many people around you at a close range, the last thing they want to hear every 30 seconds is you high pitched impression of a high school cheerleader.
So overall, pleasant night at the Mod Club. I look forward to the next time the Suckers are in town.
So it’s that time of year again – time for Pop Montreal, now in it’s 9th year and still bringing you a fine selection of bands old and new. The Panic Manual will be there and as a service to those of you who will also be attending, here are the bands that I think are worth seeing. Perhaps you will agree.
Wednesday, Sept. 29
Menomena/Suckers/Tu Fawning @ Sala Rossa: Ricky’s a big fan of Suckers and I’ve heard a bit of buzz about Menomena.
Glen Matlock @ Divan Orange: The original bassist for the Sex Pistols will be playing tunes from his latest album Born Running. Who knows, maybe he’ll throw in a Sex Pistols or Rich Kids tune along the way.
Gigi French @ Quai des Brunes: This woman has been through 1000 musical identities before stopping at her current incarnation as a jazzy French pop singer. Her song Jardinier is kind of catchy. Check her out before she changes genres again.
Look At What The Light Did Now @ Ukranian Federation: Or if you’re in the mood to sit back and enjoy a film, why not check out Anthony Seck’s documentary about the making of Feist’s The Reminder?
Thursday, October 30
Karkwa @ Metropolis: If you’re an anglophone from outside Quebec, you’re probably wondering who the hell those guys were who won the Polaris Prize this year. Well, it’s these guys. Check them out to see if they’ve got the goods live.
SappyFest Suitcase @ Cagibi: So many great performers in this showcase presented by the Sackville, NB based Sappyfest, mostly of the solo singer/songwriter variety. Shotgun Jimmie, Dan Romano, Fred Squire and Snailhouse are all great.
The Hoa Hoa’s @ L’Abreuvoir: The Toronto band plays a sort of shoegazey, melodic brand of psych rock that draws from a wide range of influences spanning from the ’60s to the ’80s and ’90s and beyond. They’re part of a pretty interesting bill featuring among others Turbogeist (featuring the son of a Rolling Stone) and a band called USA Out Of Vietnam, who are worth seeing for their retro-protesty name alone and for the fact that they have no website or Myspace or anything. Perhaps they are luddites. Or time-travelling 1960s war protesters who don’t understand what this “internet” thing is all about.
Municipal Waste @ Club Soda: I can’t let a festival like this go by without checking out just a little bit of metal and these guys seem like just what the doctor ordered. The Richmond, Virginia based band’s form of retro-thrash has been dubbed “party metal,” their press photo has them all wearing bathrobes for some reason, and drummer Dave Witte is pretty much amazing. Joining them will be Detroit hardcore legends Negative Approach, who are also worth a looksee.
Bear In Heaven @ La Sala Rossa: An indie rock band from Brooklyn is not such a rare thing these days, but they’ve got a pretty interesting sound and they’re proof that bands haven’t run out of animal based names yet.
Van Dyke Parks/Clare and the Reasons @ Ukranian Federation: This guy has worked with Brian Wilson (and had his lyrics poo pooed by Mike Love, perhaps the douchiest of The Beach Boys), arranged for Joanna Newsom, and cowrote the songs for the Popeye movie (which is kind of an odd film, but totally worth watching). He’s a pop legend of sorts and well worth checking out.
Friday, Oct 1
Danielson/Deerhoof @ La Tulipe: Two bands that are definitely originals. Expect some interesting stuff sonically.
The xx @ Place des Arts: If you can show me photographic evidence of this band smiling at their show even once, I will totally buy you a beer.
Swans @ Le National: These guys are legends. Their new album, My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky is really good too. I expect this one to get pretty noisy. Get there early for opener Lily Fawn, who usually wears antlers when she performs. Strangely, she’ll also be opening for Fred Penner on Sunday. That shows she’s diverse.
Technical Kidman @ 3 Minots: For the name alone.
Saturday, Oct. 2
Marnie Stern @ Cabaret Juste Pour Rire: Marnie Stern is a ridiculously good guitar player. One might even say she shreds. And her songs are quite good too – quirky and noisy, yet kind of poppy too. Parlovr are on this bill as well and they put on a great show.
Atari Teenage Riot @ Foufounes Electriques: I haven’t listened to Alec Empire’s insanely over the top digital hardcore band in a long time but I recall liking their stuff quite a bit back in the day. Hopefully they play “Deutchland (Has Gotta Die).” Opening for them will be Montreal Nintendo Orkestar. They make music using two Nintendo DS units.
Light Fires @ Divan Orange: Gentleman Reg and Ohbijou’s James Bunton play electro-pop.
Solange: Sadly, what would have been one of the highlights is just not gonna happen. Beyonce’s less famous yet arguably more interesting sister has cancelled her appearance at Pop Montreal. Too bad.
Sunday, Oct. 3
Sacred Sunday @ Ukranian Federation: Yes, Patrick Watson and friends will be playing gospel music. This should prove to be interesting, especially since one of these friends is Klezmer/Hip Hop guy Socalled.
Immolation/Vader @ Foufounes Electriques: Or if your Sunday music tastes veer less toward the heavenly and more towards the blasphemous, check out some old school death metal.
