NXNE Review: Oberhofer, Of Montreal, Portugal The Man, June 16, Yonge Dundas Square

Posted on June 19, 2012 by Paul in Everything, North By Northeast | Leave a comment

Saturday night’s show at Yonge Dundas Square was definitely one of the most hyped of all of NXNE. While the two bands i was most interested in seeing were both ones i had seen just over a year ago, both Of Montreal and The Flaming Lips put on solid, entertaining shows, so it’s pretty hard to pass them up. I arrived early to check out Oberhofer, a band I had heard some hype on and was curious to check out. I don’t actually have much to say about Oberhofer’s set, so I’ll steal a page out of IKvsDK‘s playbook and just post what other people said on twitter. Let’s start with the man himself:

@IKvsDK Oberhofer is quite entertaining #nxne

OK, fair enough, the band played some decent, catchy indie rock, and I was somewhat entertained by frontman Brad Oberhofer’s stage antics and numerous “Woo’s” into the mic, but while they were good, I wasn’t overly impressed. I think this tweet says it best:

@leahbobet The Oberhofer set, we decide, is neither offensive nor exceptional. It’s a band. It’s there. #NXNE

After Oberhofer’s set, I was primed for Of Montreal’s trademark wackiness. It was a typically solid performance with colourful stagewear on the band’s part, people in pig masks crowd surfing, staged wrestling matches, and a guy who was briefly dressed as the god Pan I think. Fun times. I can only imagine what the guys preaching on the corner across the street made of the shenanigans. The party’s crashing us now, indeed.

Logically, the one-two punch of Of Montreal and The Flaming Lips back to back would have been a no brainer, but whoever scheduled this thing decided to slot Portugal The Man between those two made a bit of a miscalculation in my humble opinion. The Portland rockers started out promising enough, but that early promise shortly turned to “meh” as their set went on. Singer John Baldwin Gourley’s got a strong, bluesy voice, and the band was talented enough, but their set was a bit of a one note performance to me, much of it seeming a bit samey after awhile. I appreciated their cover of The Beatles’ “Helter Skelter,” but when they ended their set with the coda to “Hey Jude,” I found it to be veering on the edge of shameless crowd pandering. Two Beatles songs? Come on. While there was nothing wrong with their performance, they bored me a little bit. Then again, when sandwiched between two such colourful bands, it’s a little hard to really match that.

NXNE Review: Omegas, June 15, The Shop @ Parts And Labour

Posted on June 18, 2012 by Brent in Everything, North By Northeast | Leave a comment

What NXNE says: “Omegas are a Montreal based hardcore-punk band featuring an ex-member of Justice and, apparently, ‘are the lords of slam-skank.'”

What PM says: Holy shit! If the uptight yuppies and hipsters that dine upstairs knew what was happening in the basement they’d have called in the Mounties. Not knowing these guys in advance but being intrigued with their bio and it being on my walk home, I decided to check them out. Playing upwards of a dozen songs in about twenty-five minutes at a furious pace can kick the snot out of anyone, especially the dozen or more slamming at the front of the stage. Singer Hoagie frantically paced back and forth and asked more than once between songs, “Where are you turkeys from anyway?” He was surprised at their intensity as much as I was.

For the most part, they played in the dark while the string of lights above were pulled down and more than a few times I took a step back so as not to end up part of the fray. At one point he tossed his beer off the ceiling in front of me. I’m pretty sure it bounced off the face of one of the two poor suckers standing at the bar next to me and gave me a soaked team England jersey. Par for the course I guess. After all was done, I talked to a couple of the show’s casualties at the convenience store next door after the show and they let me know that “Omegas are the best Canadian hardcore band”. I apologize again for the picture but you understand why I chose not to get closer.

NXNE Review: The Disraelis, June 15, Silver Dollar

Posted on June 18, 2012 by Paul in Everything, North By Northeast | 2 Comments

It’s 3am on a Friday night. I’m on very little sleep. My feet are starting to hurt. So why the hell am I still up, beer in hand, watching yet another band, yet alone one I’ve seen before? Well, for one thing, because it’s not really a music festival if I don’t punish my body with too little sleep and too much of everything else. For another, because the band I was here to see is a pretty good one.

The Disraelis are no newcomers to the Toronto scene. They’ve been around for a good while, playing their brand of ’80s style postpunk with a dash of shoegaze around town at bars like The Silver Dollar and they do it well. Since the last time I had seen them, the band had undergone a bit of a lineup change, with two former members of The Hoa Hoa’s joining singer/bassist Cameron Ingles for this new iteration of the band (some former members have gone on to form the similarly ’80s-inspired band The Holiday Crowd). Anchored by Ingles’ killer basslines, the band laid down a solid, at times hypnotic groove that held the attention of the packed house at The Silver Dollar. On a final note, I’d like to make mention of the fact that Ingles was wearing what appeared to be a turtleneck t-shirt. I wasn’t really aware that such an item even existed.

NXNE Review: DIIV, June 15, Lee’s Palace

Posted on June 18, 2012 by Brent in Everything, North By Northeast | Leave a comment

Formerly known as Dive, indie poppers DIIV have recently changed their name “…out of respect for Dirk Ivens and the original Dive … We’ve not been contacted by Dirk Ivens or his lawyers, but the short of it is that I don’t really give a fuck what the band is called. I originated this project in a bedroom with no internet and didn’t know if it would ever leave the bedroom. “DIVE”,the word, was an element of what inspired the project in its genesis, but we’ve outgrown the name and its associations. The band is the same, the music is the same, the future will always be the same. A name is nothing.” So there you go. Respect.

DIIV are a foursome from Brooklyn created out of a solo project by frontman Zachary Cole Smith, who looks like he could be about 16 years old. This may make some sense, having the word “yearling” written on his guitar. He was wearing a light green long-sleeved,over-sized shirt with “Malibu” written on it which could have been purchased at either the Goodwill or Urban Outfitters and with his shaggy blond hair he could have been mistaken for Zack Morris’s cuter, more rebellious younger brother. But I digress.

Their music was a mix of shoegaze pop with obvious sounds of early ’80s British bands like The Cure and Echo and the Bunnymen. They’re young and new to the game but have already released three singles and will continue to grow with their first album “Oshin” scheduled for release on June 26th.

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