Concerts

Concert Review: Laura Marling, Feburary 9, Lee’s Palace

Posted on February 10, 2010 by Ricky in Concerts, Everything | 4 Comments

Toronto – I am trying to become a better blog writer. I look at other music blogs and I admire their penmanship and the incredible detail they go into describe the music they are promoting. With that in mind, I decided to take notes (on my iphone) at the Laura Marling show. I will share those notes in a moment, but lets introduce the person whose show I just went to.

Laura Marling is the current IT girl in terms of British folk music. If British Folk Music was a magazine, Laura Marling would be the centerfold, probably with an acoustic guitar, in a forest, with some leaves, and maybe a copy of some obscure novel by some rogue author. Guys with beards, dark framed glasses, newsboy hats and vintage second shop flannel shirts (not the ones from urban outfitters or club monaco) would buy these magazines at their local non franchise book shops (also girls with really short hair, striped leggings, diy purses and 20 buttons on their jackets), and it would be a pay what you can kind of deal. They then will discuss the various articles (philosophy, how to build your own garden, decreasing your carbon footprint) in these magazines while sipping fair trade coffees at their local coffee shop, which also doubles as someones kitchen. They will then hate on the apple airbook trotting, hype machine listening lacoste wearing hipster in the corner who is tweeting away, sending various urls to the latest internet meme + reading the latest issue of vice magazine.

That was a bit of a tangent there. Sorry. I first heard of Laura Marling when she was a guest vocalist on the excellent Rakes song “Suspicious Eyes”. Then she popped up again in the Mystery Jets song ‘Young Love’. The thing I noticed about both tracks was the magnificent voice. It was definitely very British, a bit posh, soft and had a hint of fragility to it. She released her first album Alas, I Cannot Swim to some fanfare, combining strong acoustic work and sweet melodies with mature lyrics far beyond her years. Her new album I Speak Because I Can is due out March 22, 2010, also known as the Saddest Day of 2010 for Ricky because that’s the day I return from SXSW. Sigh. On Tuesday night, Laura Marling returned to Toronto for the first time in over a year to promote the impending release of her new album.

On to the concert! It’s definitely different to take notes at a concert. I felt like such a reporter, kinda. Not really. But here are my notes off my iphone:

lovely bones
whistling
neil young heroin damage done
guy in crowd who yells

That’s it. I guess I have some improvements to make. Lets talk about those 4 points.

Lovely Bones – About halfway through the set, Laura introduced a new song she had written for a movie but was rejected. She then dared the crowd to guess what the movie was. Obviously immediately people yelled out Twilight and Avatar. Obviously wrong. She then went into the song, which was acoustic based and exceptionally dramatic. I think she does dramatic folk songs really well. Like, they would go well in a western movie or something. At the end of the song, some girl yells out with a really confident voice ‘Lovely Bones?’ Laura immediately said no… I found this funny because you can tell that this fan had so OBVIOUSLY paid attention to all the lyrics during the song, interpreted it and then try to match it with whatever current movie is out there, and came up with “the lovely bones”…and it was so wrong. I for one, could not even name a movie out right now besides Avatar.

Whistling – During one particular song, Laura noted that the song required some fiddles but the fiddle player was not present, so she was going to whistle that part instead. Let me tell you , this was the most impressive display of whistling I have ever seen. All the notes were hit and it was breathtaking to see so much talent in whistling. Makes me feel shame I can’t whistle at all. One of the show highlights

neil young heroin damage done – Laura played a cover song, and said it was a Neil Young song before realizing she was playing a cover song of Neil Young in Toronto. I don’t know any Neil Young songs other then the rocking in the free world song and the one he sang on the last episode of Conan. Any mention of Neil Young these days brings me to the episode of Jimmy Fallon where he impersonated Neil Young. I wrote ‘heroin damage done’ because I didn’t know the song, but I guess that was the chorus.

guy in crowd who yells – There’s always one or two. Throughout the night, there was this one guy who at first started yelling shyly at the stage, but at the end as he gained more and more confident, was treating Laura Marling like his bff. Obviously a big fan, he even referred to her as ‘Laura’ in one of his desperate shouts to get attention from the lady singer. I don’t know about you, maybe I’m old school, but I feel it’s kind of weird to address people on stage by their first names if you do not know them. When Laura Marling forgot the lyrics to Alas I Cannot Swim, he yelled out the first few words to the next line. Helpful, but weird.

Overall the show was pretty good, despite having a very casual approach to playing live, Laura Marling can hold a crowd with her music and voice alone. There was no one talking during most of her songs and she had genuine banter with the crowd (explaining why she doesn’t do encores). I left the show rather satisfied.

Here is the Singing Lamb’s review of the show and also Chromewaves.

Concert Review: Woodhands, Smiling Buddha, January 28

Posted on January 29, 2010 by Ricky in Concerts, Everything | 2 Comments

Woodhands Secret show

Toronto – Do you remember the Fast and the Furious? Sure you do. Don’t tell me you didn’t shit your pants the first time you saw the trailer and saw that civic go underneath that truck. You did. Here’s a refresher:

What a Limp Bizkit song. Epic. The movie is about a dude named Brian O Connor trying to break into the world of illegal street racing, and get into Vin Diesel’s group cos they are really popular in that circle. So the analogy I’m trying to make is I’m Brian O Connor, the Toronto indie scene is the ‘world of illegal street racing’ and the people who run the shows are Vin Diesel. Somehow I’ve stumbled upon their world and despite knowing very little about the music or people, I keep on getting invited to attend these cool shows (aka street races). Thursday nights was one of these occasions, as I was invited to the secret Woodhands album preview show at the Smiling Buddha. I guess for this analogy to really be complete, I would need No Shame promoter Lauren to say some of these quotes:

“I live my life a quarter mile at a time. Nothing else matters: not the mortgage, not the store, not my team and all their bullshit. For those ten seconds or less(or the duration of the show), I’m free. “

“You can have any brew you want… as long as it’s a Corona. “

“I never narc’d on nobody! I never narc’d on nobody!”

Okay, the last one doesn’t make any sense. The whole analogy doesn’t make any sense…or it might make compete sense. Think about it.

Woodhands played this show to promote their new album Remorsecapade, which might have tbe best album cover of all time:

A robot shooting horses! genius. I have never seen Woodhands before, but I have heard great things about their live shows. For example, Jen from Narratives swears by them. So I guess I had high expectations of the show. Woodhands is a two person band, with Paul Banwatt on the drums and Dan Werb on the keytar as well as a bunch of other electronical gadgets.

Now before we get to the review, let me preface this by saying before this concert, I attended the LG Filmfest Awards show (to be review by Mark), which was open bar, also, JD Salinger died earlier in the day and I decided to honor him by drinking RYE and coke. A lot of rye and coke. So I was slightly out of my elements at the Woodhands show.

Amidst a cloud of smoke and streaming lazers, Woodhands pretty much synth rocked the crowd for their entire set. I felt like I was in a 80s music video. The keytar was awesome, there was definitely a lot of energy in their set, although I feel like the narrowness of the Smiling Buddha bar hindered Dan from doing some crazy stuff, like jumping. Some people were actually almost dancing, but there probably wasn’t really enough room for that. The set consisted mainly of material was off the new album, but Maylee Todd was brought on stage to perform the song Dancer. I can’t really compare and contrast the new material to the old material, but I would probably classify it as ‘similar’. The band handed out Woodhands towels afterwards for the sweaty crowd. It’s a nice tought, if it was R Kelly, he would have pissed on us.

A good time was had by all, with such an energetic show, it’s almost impossible to not have a good time. I always, ALWAYS like light shows too. I’m like a six year old, lots of lights and colors easily distract me.

For a more sober account of the show that doesn’t reference some random movie, Frank from Chromewaves also attended the show. Narratives will also have a review up soon too I believe.

I am too lazy to type out their tour dates, so I took a screenshot from their myspace page:

Go check them out.

Concert Review: Wilderness of Manitoba, Ghost Bees, Casey Mecija

Posted on January 25, 2010 by Ricky in Concerts | 5 Comments

Toronto – My first show of the year was a No Shame showcase at the Garrison featuring Casey Mecija (of Obijou), Ghost Bees and the Wilderness of Manitoba. Aside from Wilderness of Manitoba, I don’t really know much about the other two acts. I think I saw Obijou perform in a tent at that Book in the Park thing before, but I think I only went because it was a nice day outside and I wanted to see what this whole ‘reading’ craze was all about.

Anyways, if you want cliff notes for this review, it can be summarized with this picture. It is regarding the crowd at the Garrison every single time I’ve been there:

Srsly. People at the Garrison, there are two rooms in the bar. One is a bar, people go there to drink and talk. The second is a concert room, people go there to LISTEN TO MUSIC. Have some respect, there’s a poor little girl out there with an acoustic guitar and a soft voice. It was incredibly frustrating to try to listen to Casey’s set since people just refused to stop talking. Even after moving up, I could still not get silence. Her in between song banter was lost on everyone except the people in the first row. What I did hear was some nice acoustic singer songwriter stuff.

Next up was Ghost Bees. Ghost Bees are an indie pop band featuring twin sisters named Romy and Sari from Halifax. Probably not this Romy:

I wonder if they were twins in that movie too. The Ghost Bee act was quite theatrical. Dressed up in somewhat gothy gear, the twins certainly had their following as there was more then a few people in the crowd dressed up in similar attire. Either that, or there was an Interview with the Vampire fan club party going on at the Garrison at the same time. I’m not sure. Playing a variety of instruments (steel drums, banjo, mandolin?, some weird stuff) the twins for a fleeting moment had the crowd mesmerized enough so that most of the people in the front were at least quiet. Later on in the set, they were joined by John O’Reagan and Katie Stelmanis, who both appear to come from the same Eyes Wide Shut party. Speaking of Eyes Wide Shut parties, does anyone remember that subplot from Gossip Girl last year, when Chuck found that secret sex club his dad was part of, found some girl, and then saw her get kidnapped by Carter and then the storyline just got forgotten? What happened to that girl? Anyways, the Ghost Bees set was very interesting, the twins kept on giving everyone else in the band (including each other) these long, furtive stares and then would nod their heads. It was quite distracting since they both had really big eyes (accentuated by their makeup). I would say, I would definitely see them again, since I kind of forgot what their music sounded like.

The Wilderness of Manitoba was the final act. They were also on really late. I’ll be honest and say I didn’t stay for the whole set. Now you might be like ‘dawg, you weak’, but I think I was still a little jet lagged at the time.From what I did hear, they have definitely been improving as a live band. Bluebirds sounded sharper then in previous times. The bowl made it’s reappearance, and once again, I got a complete kick out of it. I’m going to suggest that next time, they cook us pancakes while performing. I think that would be pretty much the coolest thing ever. I think the Wilderness of Manitoba played a few songs, one named after St. Petersburg, which as one of the members mentioned ‘used to be known as Leningrad’. I wonder if he’s a commy.

Overall, I enjoyed my night there. Despite the super annoying never ending chatter of the crowd, I still get a kick out of going to the Garrison because of the whole communal vibe from these local shows. I like that I can throw my jacket on the pool table and no one will steal it. Even if they did, I could just steal someone else’s, so I feel kinda safe.

Ps. I had excellent Mexican food before the show.

Concert Review: One Hundred Dollars, Lonesome Ace String Band, Horseshoe Tavern, Jan. 22, 2010

Posted on January 23, 2010 by Paul in Concerts, Everything | Leave a comment

Toronto – Even though I was pretty stoked about catching the last ever Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, I opted to go out and catch this show instead.  It turned out to be a pretty good call.  Besides, I’m sure all the best parts of Conan will make it onto Youtube or something anyways.

The Lonesome Ace Stringband is made up of guys who I’ve seen playing the regular Wednesday bluegrass nights at the Silver Dollar and they offered up what you would expect: old timey bluegrass tunes full of tons of picking and some high lonesome harmonies.  Their stage banter consisted of asking the audience question like “Any fans of old time gospel?” (to which the crowd responded surpisingly with loud cheering) or “Any fans of old time banjo tunes?” (to which I wanted to respond, “No, I only enjoy modern banjo tunes” but I didn’t)  One of them also threw out a sales pitch for their CD with a tongue in cheek attempt to convince us that CDs were better than mp3s and cooler than vinyl.  Hopefully they sold a few.

 One Hundred Dollars took to the stage as some intro music played and a smoke machine filled the room … kind of like the Chicago Bulls if they were a country band.  The Toronto band were playing a release show for their new 7” entitled My Father’s House,  so of course they played the title track midway through their set as well as a whole load of other songs, the highlights for me being “14 Hour Day, ” “Careless Love” and a cover of Little Feat’s “Willin.”   Singer Simone Schmidt has one hell of a powerful voice and the rest of the band (featuring several former members of Jon Rae and the River) were equally impressive, especially organist Jonathan Adjemian.

If you enjoy country-ish stuff that absolutely doesn’t suck, then One Hundred Dollars is the band for you.

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