Concert Review: Dean Wareham, Dec. 8, Relentless Garage

Posted on December 9, 2010 by Paul in Concerts, Everything | Leave a comment

London –  Ah, nostalgia.  Within the span of this week alone, London will have played host to quite a few bands of a certain vintage – James, Suede, and of course, former Galaxie 500 singer Dean Wareham.  The Suede reunion show was of course a big nostalgic reunion show and James is still a going concern as far as putting new music out, but Wareham is an interesting case.  While he has consistently put out music since the Galaxie 500 days (first as Luna, and then with his wife as Dean and Britta), he’s currently on a tour playing all of his old band’s songs.  Except it’s not a reunion, more of a revisitation of his back catalogue.  Some may question the validity of playing these songs without his old bandmates, but it seems unlikely that a full reunion will happen and he is playing songs he wrote (and a bunch of covers … more on that later) so I have no problem with it.  After all, nobody made much of a fuss when Roger Waters did a tour of The Wall recently and nobody’s gonna say Paul McCartney shouldn’t play Beatles songs.  Still, it did seem a little weird when Britta Phillips sang a version of “Listen The Snow Is Falling,” a song sung on the original Galaxie 500 version by Naomi Yang.  Then again, it was a Yoko Ono cover so it’s not like Naomi has any special claim on that song.

Speaking of older music, openers Young Prisms are a young band, but they play a type of music heavily influenced by the shoegaze bands of the past.  While they may not necessarily be treading new ground, they still sounded pretty good, and looked like they were having fun up there.  Speaking of retro, they had their album available in 3 formats – CD, vinyl and cassette!  I was sorely tempted to buy that cassette.  Singer Stef Hodapp had a pretty good voice, but they need to find something for her to do during those long droney sections so she’s not just standing to the side of the stage drinking beer while they jam it out.  They too seemed pretty excited to see Dean Wareham, even though they probably weren’t all even born yet when Galaxie 500 started.

Wareham put on a pretty solid performance.  Although he seemed a bit reserved at first and just got down to the business of playing the songs right away, he did loosen up pretty quickly,telling two stories that began the same way (“I wrote this song after some friends and I took acid…”) and responding to a few shouted requests for Galaxie 500’s Rutles cover, “Cheese and Onions” by finally relenting during the encore.  “You said it three times.  That means I have to play it.  Like in that movie Candyman.”  He also dedicated a song to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, asking if anyone knew which jail he was in, then asking, “Is it nice there?”  I didn’t realize he was such a witty guy.  He closed things off with a cover of New Order’s “Ceremony” that certainly ended things on a high note.

Galaxie 500-Ceremony by dvgf

Concert Review: Suede, December 7th, O2 Arena

Posted on December 8, 2010 by Ricky in Concerts, Everything, Music | 8 Comments

London – What can you write about a concert featuring your favorite band singing 23 of your favorite songs and you are freaking close to the stage even though the show is at the cavernous O2 Arena (a place that has amusement park rides on the concourse). Suede at the O2 arena was amazing, it was as expected, my favorite show of the year and everything was amazing. Let’s start off with the set list:

This Hollywood Life
She
Trash
The Drowners
Animal Nitrate
We Are The Pigs
Pantomime Horse
By The Sea
Killing Of A Flashboy
Filmstar
Can’t Get Enough
Everything Will Flow
The Next Life
The Asphalt World
So Young
Metal Mickey
Heroine
The Wild Ones
New Generation
Beautiful Ones

Encore:
The Living Dead
To The Birds
Saturday Night

With the exceptions of Still Life and Europe is My Playground, everything I really wanted to hear was covered. It was an hour and forty five minutes of literally non stop singing action, as the Suede blazed from one song to another.

Let’s start from the beginning. I rarely ever go to arena shows. I have never even been to a show at the ACC, so imagine the look on the security guard’s face when I asked him if there was coat check. Haha. The O2 arena is set up nicely. There’s many restaurants everywhere for food. I kinda wish the ACC had that same setup. I got there at the end of the New Young Pony Club set, just enough time to hear The Bomb, which was all I really wanted to hear from them. We had lodged ourselves to the left of the stage not too far from the front, so the time in between the end of the NYPC set and the beginning of the Suede set was spent making sure no one got in front of us. The crowd was older as expected, but there were still a few younger kids in the crowd. Those kids have good taste.

At 9:15, the lights dimmed and a recording of Introducing the Band played over the soundsystem. The band soon emerged, dressed in all black and they launched into a vicious version of This Hollywood Life. Normally, I am not the biggest fan of that track, but tonight, it sounded so lively that you had no choice but to love it. As you would expect, the rest of the night was one big sing-a-long. Brett’s voice sounded great and he’s a great front man. Between his dancing, microphone twirling, call and response and dramatic singing, it made every song seems so much more epic. Songs like Pantomime Horse had an extra oomph to it, that had you thinking “yeah, there’s still some justine-damon resentment there”.

At 10:15, they played Asphalt World. So at 10:15pm on December 7th, 2010, I heard my favorite song ever live for the very first (and potentially last) time. I was a bit sad they cut it off after the four minute mark, but I didn’t expect them to play the whole ten minute version (or the Bernard version, I guess).

The 1-2 punch of New Generation and The Beautiful Ones was a great way to end off the initial set, as the former was a fist raising rauncher while the latterr inspired what might be the one of the greatest LA LA LA LA sessions of all time. You might make fun of Suede for all the Oooohhs they incorporate into their music, but at a show, those OOhhs are golden. GOLDEN.

All in all an amazing show. Paul went in a bit skeptical about the show and came out wanting to buy a t-shirt. For me, it’s something to be able to finally see a band you’ve loved for about twelve years. It’s something else to see them live and watch them kick ass. I’m not sure where Suede is going from here, but I’m hoping it’s a North America tour, since I can’t really afford to fly to England for these concerts all the time.

The Asphalt World by The London Suede

Concert Review: The Radio Dept, Dec. 5, Scala

Posted on December 7, 2010 by Paul in Concerts | 1 Comment

London – On principle, I am generally not  a fan of encores. They long ago stopped being a genuine surprise and/or expression of a band’s desire to keep playing and have since become more or less a cliche. The band goes through the charade of pretending to leave the stage and the audience pretty much always expects it to happen. This is why I’m secretly a little happy whenever a band doesn’t play an encore.

Still, sometimes circumstances can occur that make an encore seem like a genuinely special moment. Such a moment occurred during Radio Dept‘s Sunday night set at Scala. As the band left the stage, the crowd began to clap and stomp and cheer and do all the things that audiences do to bring a band back onstage.  But after a little while, the club piped in the prerecorded music that sends out a particular message: there will be no encore. Yet on this night, people did not just resign themselves to this fact and instead kept on clapping. And much to my surprise (and the band’s as well) they came back onstage and then proceeded to … well, to do nothing for a little bit.

“Sorry, we don’t usually do encores.”  they said as they figured out what to do. Problems with the drum machine combined with the fact that they really hadn’t planned on coming out again led to some scrambling around but eventually they worked out a drum-free rendition of “1995” that had much of the audience clapping along and left us all satisfied (except for the guy outside afterwards who was overheard to say he expected more of them. Relax, guy.  It was a good show).

The encore was the perfect ending to an equally impressive set of songs from their latest, Clinging To A Scheme, along with several older numbers … but not “Where Damage Isn’t Already Done.” In response to a shouted request for “Damage,” singer Johan Duncanson replied, “Sorry, we haven’t rehearsed that one,” before adding, “This one is almost as old.” They then launched into “Bus,” also off their debut album, Lesser Matters. Perhaps this was intended as some sort of consolation prize.

Overall, it was a good show. The band’s dreamy, shoegazey brand of indie pop came across quite well live. The songs tend to blend together but in a good wall of noise sort of way, achieving a mesmerising quality. Duncanson’s voice shone through pretty strongly and the whole band seemed like pretty laid back but solid performers, not saying too much in terms of stage banter.  Radio Dept. seemed happy to play before the fairly packed audience and were obviously somewhat surprised at the crowd calling for the aforementioned encore. “On a Sunday night too!” said Duncanson as they returned to the stage. I will admit that I was not overly familiar with Radio Dept’s stuff before this show, but they impressed me and they definitely restored my faith in the concept of the encore. They earned that encore.

Radio Dept. – Heaven’s On Fire by AnnaVictrola

Concert Review: Stornoway, El Mocambo, November 30

Posted on December 5, 2010 by Ricky in Concerts | Leave a comment

Toronto – British folk music is starting to take over. With the surging popularity of acts like Laura Marling and Mumford & Sons, its only fitting we see more and more bands from this genre. Enter Stornaway, a four piece folk act from england with an occasional strings and horn section. They were in town on Thursday to promote their new album Beachcomber’s Windowsill, which featured the hit single Zorbing.

The set started off with a violin solo by violinist Rahul Satija. The rest of the band took the stage shortly. The 4 piece band featured Brian Briggs on vocals, Rob Steadman on Drums and Jon Ouin and Oli Steadman on various instruments. The latter two’s usage of synths, banjos and various string instruments had me actually doubting my labeling of them as a folk band as they showed a lot more depth and layered with their sounds. Still, the band played a solid set of cleverly written songs that made you feel like you were in a tavern, in some village on a rolling hill somewhere in Britain. The English dominate crowd seemed to appreciate all the references to the old country. The band seemed genuinely pleased to be playing to such a large crowd after having played Columbus the previous night.

What really set the show apart was the encore. With the crowd already in the palm of his hands following the 1-2 set ending punch featuring the previously mentioned Zorbing , lead singer Brian Briggs took the stage for the encore and asked the crowd if he could play unplugged. Bringing back the string section, Stornoway played an incredible version of The End of the Movie. The unplugged guitars coupled with a string secton made the song sound absolutely incredible. It was so good that the couple standing beside us finally shut up and stopped talking during the song. An equally strong acappella version of We Are the Battery Human capped off what turned out to be a spectacular show.

Stornoway – The End Of The Movie by ballongino

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