Concerts

Concert Review: The Acorn, June 11, Lee’s Palace

Posted on June 15, 2010 by sarahw in Concerts | 4 Comments

Another Canadian band, another nature-themed band name. The Acorn swung by Lee’s Palace Friday night to promote their new album. My favourite part about seeing bands I’m unfamiliar with live, is when I walk out of the show wanting to listen to all the songs again and again. This happened with The Acorn.

Firstly

A side note, between The National show I saw on Wednesday and The Acorn I’ve seen more plaid than at a John Deere convention. Real original guys.

Secondly

After the sea of plaid, the next thing that struck me about The Acorn is the dual percussionists, having two drummers always amazes me and they become very hypnotizing to watch. I was recently blown away by Caribou’s double drummer ensemble. I am not musically inclined whatsoever (like, at all) but I can imagine it difficult to coordinate two drummers. Without these two badass drummers The Acorn would be a little too sappy and folky for my liking, the percussion gives them some decent rock and roll cred.

Thirdly

Another cool part of this band is the presence of a banjo in most of the songs. My fellow concert goer (who also likened the frontman’s voice to Tom Petty, however, upon reflection I think they sound more likeBeirut minus all of the elaborate instruments) plays the banjo and has a serious penchant for this string instrument. The banjo really gives the slower songs a dreamy, romantic sound. For the encore The Acorn played Slippery When Wet from their new album, to me this was the highlight of the show and it reminded me a lot of Your Rocky Spine by Great Lake Swimmers (sigh, Tony Dekker). This song is just Rolf Klausener singing, backed only with the banjo and comes out sounding like a lullaby, indeed a great way to end the show. I now have this song on repeat, yeah, it’s sappy, folky and does not incorporate a badass drum beat…I still like it.

Lastly

The Acorn certainly didn’t blow me away with stage presence but I really enjoyed their unique indie folk sound and would gladly see them again live. In fact they are playing at the Guelph Hillside Festival next month…

The Acorn – Crossed Wires (Born Ruffians Remix) by Bella Union

NXNE Film Review: You Left Me Blue: The Handsome Ned Story [Chris Terry, Ross Edmunds]

Posted on June 14, 2010 by Paul in Everything, North By Northeast | Leave a comment

Toronto – Handsome Ned was a country/rockabilly musician who was the pinnacle of the Queen West music scene back in the mid-’80s.  Made up of a mix of concert footage, interviews with Ned and bandmates back in the day, and more current interviews of Ned’s contemporaries reminiscing about his career, You Left Me Blue is a detailed portait of an emerging artist and music scene as well as a window to the past – a look back at a world that seems vastly different than the current indie music scene.  It’s hard today to imagine a Toronto like the one seen in the film, where the independant music scene was virtually non-existant, made up of a close knit group of musicians with vastly different influences just trying to get a show anywhere.  We take for granted these days that on any given night there will be a good number of bands playing across the city.  This was not the case back then.

“We were fighting a system that suffered roots-type music, or music that had heart,” says reggae musician Mojah at one point, illustrating the uphill battle faced by musicians going somewhat off the beaten path.  Mojah’s “rastabilly” collaboration with Ned on “Johnny Too Bad” is one of the highlights of the film, despite the Hilarious House of Frightenstein type effects that appear briefly on the screen at one point.  I guess those were cutting edge effects back in the 80s.

The reverence for Ned held by so many of the musicians interviewed, from Blue Rodeo’s Greg Keelor to Steve Leckie of The Viletones, is clear.  All share a deep admiration for him and an appreciation for what he stood for.  Of course, dying young always helps to cement one’s status as a legend and unfortunately, Handsome Ned died of an overdose January 10, 1987.  This film is a fitting tribute to his legacy and worth seeing for anyone interested in the history of Toronto music.

You Left Me Blue: The Handsome Ned Story is playing June 18, 8:00 pm at The NFB Theatre.

Concert Review: The Futureheads, June 10th, Mod Club

Posted on June 11, 2010 by Ricky in Concerts, Everything, Music | Leave a comment

Toronto – The Futureheads were in town on Thursday night to promote their new album the Chaos, and they put on an awesome live show. After the FM light hearted pop of Athlete, and the moody (but spectacular) sounds of The Antlers and The National, nothing was more refreshing then when The Futureheads, upon taking the stage shortly after 8:45, asked the crowd “Are you ready to rock?”

The crowd was indeed ready to rock. So the band complied. What happened over the next 80 minutes was a show that moved along at a blistering pace that featured songs from all the Futurehead albums. It was a great rock show and the Futureheads have one of the best on-stage presence I have seen. Instead of going through it chronologically, I’ll just recall moments in the show that I found to be entertaining.

beer

First of all, the Futureheads were drinking Steamwhistle. Barry Hyde, the lead singer, when looking at the beer, asked ‘This is a good Canadian beer, yah?” to which the crowd yelled an emphatic yes. He then proceeded to open the beer bottle WITH A WATER BOTTLE. I was like ‘wtf?’. That was impressive. Later on in the night, someone bought the band Molson beer, to which the band was like ‘Molson?’ with a tone of displeasure.

fans

It was pretty apparent that the band just likes to have fun with the crowd. It was also clear that if you were in the front, the band was going to have some fun with you. At one point, Ross (the bassist) pointed to someone in the crowd during a conversation and said something like “I’m sure this perpetual screamer over here would like it”. Haha. Shortly afterwards, they talked to another audience in the crowd and told him he “had the straightest spine known to man” and that he had “good rock posture”. These kind of jokes happened throughout the night, and I’m pretty sure most fans had a smile on their face.

rock. and. roll

The Futureheads love to rock and roll. Barry Hyde used the guitar to machine gun the crowd and their post-rock punk meets 60s harmony sound was enough to start a mini mosh pit. The band even got the crowd to do what they called the ‘bouncey bounce’ for the tune Skip to the End, which consists of the people just bouncing straight up and down, to which Ross pointed to the guy with the straight spine and insisted it wasn’t a problem for him. Other songs that rocked the show included Man Ray, Area, Decent Days and Nights and Beginning of a Twist. New songs like I can Do That, Jupiter and Heartbeat Song got good reactions as well, in particular the Heartbeat song, which was introduced as a ‘John Hughes song where you fell in love fiver minutes ago’.

Hounds of Love

As I had previously eluded to, The Hounds of Love was a great moment in Oh, and it proved itself to be true on Thursday night, as the band split the concert hall into two sides for dueling Ohs to begin the Kate Bush cover. When Ross’s side won, he was so ecstatic for the victory he talked trash to Jaff for two straight minutes. The song itself to be a nice sing-a-long and even after the show was over, Ross was still thanking his side for picking up the victory. That’s some genuine fun.

Appreciation

When the Futureheads came back for an encore, they basically said ‘Alright, this has been a great gig, so from now on, we’ll just play requests from now on’. They then proceeded to play three requests before ending the night. What a great way to end a show.

All in all, a wonderful show full of energetic upbeat music and a great time was had by all. We also discovered pints at the Mod Club was cheaper then bottles.

The Futureheads – Heartbeat Song by Fuzzy Stereo

Concert Review: Kings of Convenience, June 8, Phoenix

Posted on June 11, 2010 by sarahw in Concerts | Leave a comment

Toronto – When the Kings of Convenience (KOC) show was cancelled in February due to Eirik’s case of the flu I was quite devasted, KOC are probably one of my favorite bands. This devastation was temporarily remedied when I saw Whitest Boy Alive at Coachella (Erlend Oye’s side project), they were very impressive to say the least which left me anticipating KOC’s June arrival even more!

KOC came out a little after 10:15 PM, it was just Erlend and Eirik with their acoustic guitars. They kicked off the set with an ultra slow jam, My Ship isn’t Pretty, the packed house literally stood there in awe of Eirik’s amazing voice – it gave me Goosebumps!

After the first song Erlend addressed the crowd to say that they play many “quiet” songs and that we need to be quiet during those but we can get rowdy during their “not so quiet” songs. He also went on to say that The Phoenix denied their request to shut down the bar (Bastards) so he politely asked the audience not to buy drinks, a strange request at a concert but I could literally hear the change jangling, the register open/close, the person in the back sneezing and at one point a phone ringing (the nerve).

The duo then played a delightful set that included Love is no Big Truth, I Don’t Know What I Can Save You From, Mrs. Cold, Boat Behind, interrupted only with hilarious banter between Erlend, Eirik and the audience. They are quite the comedic twosome, at one point Erlend was late getting to the piano for his piece and Eirik commented that he would have to bring that episode up at the next band meeting. Flight of the Conchords anyone? Hearing this in their Nordic accents made these quips even funnier.

Being such a big fan of KOC I was worried my expectations for them were too high, well, their melodic, soothing songs coupled with amazingly precise and coordinated guitar work truly do all of their albums justice.

When they neared the end of their set KOC invited the opening band, Franklin for Short, on stage and proceeded to sing two songs with them (Rule my World and I’d Rather Dance With You). The backup band added another dimension to their final songs and gave the songs a little more punch. Erlend encouraged the crowd to move closer “like at a rock concert” he also showed off the best gangly-awkward-Napoleon Dynamite-esque dance moves I’ve ever seen (I got a sneak peak at Coachella but he was on FIRE during this show). Very entertaining.

For the encore they played Little Kids and then ASKED the crowd what we wanted to hear, that has NEVER happened at any of the concerts I have attended (I’ve been to a few..). Obviously we all yelled for them to play Misread which was the perfect wrap-up to an impeccable show, they said it best in their song Homesick “Two soft voices blended in perfection…”.

Kings of Convenience – Boat Behind by eduardodv

« Previous   1 2 ... 412 413 414 415 416 417 418 419 420 421 ... 508 509   Next »