Looks can be deceiving.
When I first walked into the Garrison, I thought I had stumbled into some hard rock act more suitable for tattoo rock parlour or something. On stage were three band members, all with long hair and probably tattoos and seemingly the type of people who can go as extras on that Sons of Anarchy show. I was like, ‘this doesn’t look like a band who in their NXNE bio lists things like the Libertines, NME and Arctic Monkeys’.
The band on stage was called Elizabeth, a Vancouver group who had flew all the way here to play at NXNE. As I listened to their set at a nearly empty Garrison I started to realize my initial assessment was not correct. Instead, Elizabeth presented to me solid rock featuring spiky guitars and sounded like the good ole indie rock you would hear from a decade ago. The group had alternating vocals and a really solid guitarist who was just chilling and doing his thing. I wished their vocals came through more clearly as some of the tracks had some nice pop hooks to them but then I realized this was the Garrison and expecting a good mix was like expecting a properly cooked steak at your local dive bar. Wasn’t going to happen.
