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.

Toronto – Impromptu concerts are always fun. By impromptu, I mean, knowing about the show for awhile, not really deciding as to whether to going or not, and then finally deciding to go because 24, Prison Break and Heroes was all done for the year. Lucky for me, I found someone else as excited-but-not-excited-enough-to-get-advanced-tickets as me to drag along to the show, and on the streetcar, I bumped into another two meeps. What do you know, theres a party of four going to the show (if only we had one more…). The Rosebuds are a indie rock outfit from North Carolina. The main two members are the husband and wife, that do a majority of the vocals. There are some songs that definitely have some sourthern-esque influence . Here is the wiki article about them.

The Rosebuds came on about a quarter past eleven, I wasn’t paying attention to the stage when they came on..and much to my amusement, the lead singer was sitting down with a guitar! Instantly, I was intrigued. I couldn’t see why he was sitting since there were a bit of people in front of me. I was thinking..is he just lazy? Because if he was sitting down, at a rock show and doing it just cos he was lazy, he’d pretty much be my hero. ‘fuck you rockstars and your jumping around..im just gonna sit in this rocking chair and play the geee tar’.

After a song, I had come to the conclusion that he was not lazy, as he wanted to ‘tear the house down’. This lead me to two other conclusions: 1) He was a paraplegic or 2) He had no legs. Either way, As I thought about it, I began to feel really happy for this guy. I was like ..dude, this guy is pretty happy for a dude who can’t walk, good for him! Wondering why the lead singer was sitting down preoccupied my mind for the first 20 minutes of the show. He eventually said he got injured playing some sport and walked around with a cane a few times.

The show lasted about 75 minutes, and its to nice some genuine enthusiasm from a band . They played all their hit songs, such as ‘boxcar’, ‘leaves do fall’ and their current single – ‘Get Up, Get Out’. It was a good set, although you kinda noticed how many times the band uses ‘ooohs’ and ‘whooaas’ in their songs after a while. They also had some good crowd banter going, and even let some overly enthusiastic fans play some instruments for their song ‘bluebird’. That’s always fun. The best part of the show , besides the lesbians making out, was when the dude in the chair said ‘well, thats the end of the set. How about we skip this encore bullshit and we’ll play a few more songs’. That was awesome. I hate encores.

3.5/5

Toronto – Since I am someone who grew up in Western Canada, I have never been too familiar with Joel Plaskett or Thrush Hermit, for that matter. I was pretty much too busy rolling in Oil and receiving free handouts from the government to listen to some East Coast rock. Really, I have never been to the Maritimes, but I would believe its probably night and day. I think the West Edmonton Mall is probably the size of PEI, but whatever, that would probably sound ignorant or something.

Basically, what I am saying is that I didn’t really know what the show would be like. Joel Plaskett is from Nova Scotia, and I’ve heard good things about him, so I expected a good show. I also expected a lot of ex-maritime people at the Opera House. I don’t know why, but I would expect them to be there ‘representin’ the east coast, much like how if there’s a scottish band playing, half the crowd would be ex-pats from scotland, and would yell out their township name halfway thru the show. Of course, I couldn’t really tell who was from the maritimes and who’s not (i would assume all non-white people are not from the maritimes).

the show itself was pretty good, catch canadian rock-pop. everyone seemed really into it and he played a really long set too, which kinda cut into the post-party kegger i was attempting to visit. it’s all good though. for someone who’s heard maybe five songs prior to the show, I enjoyed the show quite a bit and that’s saying something. joel plaskett is pretty skinny, Im pretty sure if I lived in Halifax, i’d probably eat lobster every day, and get really fat.

3/5