Toronto – After playing some shit hole towns on their most recent tour, Interpol returned to Toronto on Thursday to play a sold out show at the Guvernment. Going into this concert, I wasn’t overly enthused about the show, as I was not the biggest fan of the Guvernment. I don’t even know why it’s spelled that way, unless Arnold Schwarzenegger spelled it. Man, I really miss Arnold movies, you can always count on a good ole “get daaaoowwwn” or a “get oooouttah heee-ahh” for any Arnold movie.

On to the show. Man oh man, the guv must of renovated or something since I was last here (for the Rapture) because, well, it’s freaking fantastic concert venue now. Before, the stage used to be in the corner, so the sightlines wasn’t that great and the stage felt a bit small. Now, the stage lines up the far edge of the wall, which must of taken away some capacity and the stage is nice and high and it improves the sight line dramatically. Very smart, it made the show feel semi-cozy (for a large show). Coupled with a nice sound system and a decent light show and I think you got the new best mid-size venue concert place in Toronto. The only crappy part was they only sold Coors light, canadian, heiny and coronas. What a crap selection. They only sold the midget version of heiny cans too. wat up wit dat? we aint midgets, dont sell us midget beers.

Let me say this, Interpol is probably the best dressed indie band out there. They all came out in like, suits. Carlos D looked like Neo from the Matrix, only if Neo was french, drank wine and ate cheese all day. The crowd was pretty receptive towards this bunch. One of the worries i had going into the show was that Interpol would just play most of the stuff off their upcoming LP and ignore their old stuff. However this was not the case, thru out the show Interpol played a good mix of new and old. The only complain I have about their set is that they didn’t play “The Specialist”, which is my favorite Interpol song. Overall, Interpol was the same as last time, more or less. I am thinking the fact they play with a slight disinterest only favors them once or twice. I mean, you see people go crazy for their music like CSS or British Sea Power and then you see Interpol standing around and just trying to look cool, it gets a bit old.

Interpol – 3.5/5

You can read my previous review. it was very similar, still good.

Here is a brief idea of what the show would look like

Review: 4/5

Toronto – In my wonderful world of code and numbers, CSS is known as Cascading Style Sheets, a crucial element of the internet that dictates how pages like the one you are seeing now will look on web browsers. However, in the cruel, sweet world of indie music, CSS is better known as Cansei de Ser Sexy, the Brazilian dance-rock consisting of a bunch of chicks and one dude. On a warm Monday night, this band played a sold out show at Lee’s Palace and I was in attendance.

The opening act sucked, it was some dude named Busdriver and not Bonde Do Role as promised, so the show started off on a down point. The other negative was that I was stupid enough to wear flip flops to a sold out show..a sold out dance rock show where people were bound to move in mysterious (and sometimes awkward) ways. That was not the smartest decision I have made lately, but really, its flip flop season, so who’s to blame?

The band came on around 11:30, to much applause. I was like wow..lots of people really like this band..cool. They brought out balloons and threw them everywhere, which meant ..this will be a fun show. Note to bands in the future: balloons are a good way to start off a show. I was pretty surprised to see their lead singer was Asian (later looked it up, she’s a mix). Man, this girl had energy. After the first show, she changed into a jumpsuit and for the rest of the night, she was dancing left and right, shoving the mic into the fans in the front row for them to sing, and crowd surfing. It was pretty awesome. The show itself was really high energy people were dancing left and right, and even on the ledges that line up the sides of Lees Palace.

They played a 35 minute set or so, then came out for a 3 song encore which ended up with their big hit (about a local band) called ‘lets make love and listen to death from above’. I wonder if they knew that the band its called death from above 1979, but then that’d throw off the rhyme completely I guess. Overall I think it was a really good show and everyone had fun, which is all you can ask for on a Monday night. My feet only got stepped on once too, so that was nice.

Rating: 4/5

PS. If you want a sample of what a CSS show is, go to http://www.fabchannel.com

they have a lot of concert vids.