Toronto – Saturday night. What to do? Well, I was intending on going to a pajama party, but my friend who was going to it failed to invite me, not wanting to be ‘that guy who goes to a party and brings another party’. so off i was, not really having a plan. Luckily, my other friend had won guest tickets for a show at the Horseshoe, by a band called ‘Two Hours Traffic‘. (he won it off Chromewaves, a site that has many giveaways). Being Chinese, I could not realistically turn down a free show.. thusI went, not having known anything about them. All I knew was what Dwayne and Wade had told me, which was ‘blah blah blah Joel Plaskett blah blah blah PEI blah blah blah CBC Radio 3’. Sounds interesting enough. The Maritimes seem to generate good tunes. Maybe thats what happens when theres nothing to do – you make good music. Thats probably why Sweden is so good at it, aside from designing easy to put together furniture, eating meatballs and drinking that drink they drink..theres really nothing to do there.

So who are these guys? Well, Joel Plaskett produced them and they are from the East Coast. That means one thing – good ole guitar rock. I expected a bunch of pastey ass white boys with longish hair and maybe a few plaid shirts. I was correct. They have a album coming out …last year… its called Little Jabs. I guess this band really flew off my radar. With a boring name like ‘Two Hours Traffic’, I can see why. Despite the name, these guys drew a large crowd. Half of which are probably from PEI (and related to each other) and half fans of the CBC. Quite the dichotomy. I actually had my CBC shirt on for the show, which is coincidental and also a bit odd, since I am a big advocate of not wearing band shirts at a show.

The show was quite energetic, the crowd was really into it. Most fans seem to know all the tunes which would indicate that, they too, have heard of the band. A lot of people yelled out ‘East Coast’. I did too. I wanted to yell out ‘Tupac 4 life! nigga what up!’ but that would probably not go over too well. The band played for about 45 minutes. Maybe an hour. Maybe not. I don’t remember. All I can say about Two Hour Traffic is this: it felt like a Canadian rock show, it sounded like a Canadian rock show and the crowd was that of a Canadian rock show. And sometimes, thats all you really need, is a slice of Canadiana. Follow that up with a nice bowl of pho and you got a good night at the Horseshoe.

Here is a link to Chromewaves review of the show, which probably makes more sense, is less offensive and actually contains relevant details about the band. Everyone has their ways, I guess.

Here is a song off their album Little Jabs. It is off the label Bumstead Productions, which is a label Wade may or may not look at this year in his yearlong article series on Canadian labels.

Growing up on the east coast, Eric’s Trip (1990 – 1996) is a bit of an institution. Julie Doiron (bass, guitar, vocals) was one of the original members of this Moncton based, Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr., influenced band. I remember seeing quite a few Eric’s Trip t-shirts when I was in high school but remained unaware of their east coast/Canadian cult status at the time. Yah, the cool kids definitely knew about Eric’s Trip. I did not. They also gained some serious points for being the first Canadian band signed to Sub Pop in the early 90’s.

Eric’s Trip is Julie Doirons’ backing band on “Woke Myself Up”. After my first listen I classified this CD as a pretty good wood, wires and whisky CD with a slightly lo-fi rock feel, especially on the track Don’t Wannabe/Liked By You. The rest of the CD is pretty standard singer songwriter tracks, but lyrically the songs are different. I feel like they were written by a 30 year old woman who is still attending high school. She has all the typical high school problems with love and friends, but she faces each of them with a ‘big deal, I’m still awesome’ attitude because she has experience under her belt.

One of the reasons I picked this up was because of her Polaris Music Prize nomination earlier this year. I don’t hear anything ground breaking on this CD that would have won her this prize, but it is still worth a listen.

I also picked it up because Julie lives in Sackville, NB. For those who don’t know, Sackville is the trucker hat a la 2001 of New Brunswick. It’s a cool spot. Sackville is a very important place in New Brunswick because to most people, the letters NB simply represent the province you need to drive through to get to Halifax (or PEI).

I love the song foundations, but then when someone pointed out that this album sounds like someone copied and pasted some live journal entries over the some riffs..it really did feel like that. So basically, the album was kinda disappointing. I can see where the Lily Allen comparisons come up, but this is far inferior and far less original. However, she’s only 19 or something, so I guess its a pretty good start regardless.