Category Archives: Concerts

by | May 23, 2016 · 5:03 pm

7 Best Acts I Saw At CMW 2016

The Magnettes

The Magnettes

The slightly retooled Canadian Music Week 2016 featured less big name Canuck headliners and what felt like more international co-presents. While this may have reduced the number of sure things and verifiable buzz bands, it also increased the opportunity for discovery if you were willing to pound the pavement.

Over five nights I ended up seeing seven acts that managed to not blow while traveling from club to club, including my new faves, the creators of something called the “Sad Girls Club.”

Here they are:

7) Fake Palms
Wednesday, May 4 @ Horseshoe Tavern

One of the tentacles of the very good Buzz Records octopus, Fake Palms’ fuzzy noise pop was entirely acceptable setting the table for Bob Mould’s headlining performance later in the evening.

6) Tia Brazda
Thursday, May 5 @ The Painted Lady

I don’t have much time for jazz in general, and next to smooth jazz that winking, old-time, vocal standard jazz might be the least interesting variant to me. It was profoundly unexpected, then, that I came away from Tia Brazda’s set at The Painted Lady thoroughly entertained. It was a craftsmanship thing. Brazda’s band was solid, her voice was good and her songs, a deft time travel through the eras up to and including early rock ‘n’ roll, was surprisingly compelling.

John Jacob Magistery

John Jacob Magistery

5) John Jacob Magistery
Sunday, May 8 @ Horseshoe Tavern

I suspect John Jacob Magistery are the sort of band that have impassioned arguments in the van about how Bonnaro has gone downhill now that they care less about “the jams.” Indeed, lead singer Johnny Griffin’s stage getup of a technicolor blue poncho with “Die Hippie” taped across the chest was just about as in-the-pocket as you could get for a student of My Morning Jacket/Magnetic Zeroes/Father John Misty beardo rock. Anyone acquainted with those aforementioned acts would have found John Jacob Magistery more comfortingly familiar than reductive.

4) JEFF the Brotherhood
Friday, May 6 @ Horseshoe Tavern

For a duo JEFF the Brotherhood make a remarkable amount of noise with their burnout cosmic rock. I’m a bit spoiled by having Death From Above 1979 being in my backyard and setting a high-spirited standard for what kind of party a fuzzy two-piece can create. But even though JEFF the Brotherhood were less DFA79 dance party and more Fu Manchu-style basement headbang session, the resulting ear damage was well within the “worth it” range.

TUNS

TUNS

3) TUNS
Wednesday, May 4 @ Google Party

Sloan’s Chris Murphy, Flashing Lights/Super Friendz’s Matt Murphy and The Inbreds’ Mike O’Neill have formed a new band called TUNS and it sounds exactly like what anyone who loved those bands in the 1990s would hope they sound like — themselves. Picking whose songs were best was like picking a favourite child, but if it means anything it’s old Inbreds songs that I’ve had in my head ever since.

Fat White Family

Fat White Family

2) Fat White Family
Saturday, May 7 @ Velvet Underground

If I were to construct a fake musical product I couldn’t dream up a better band to plug into the hyperbolic NME jizz machinery than Fat White Family. Happy Mondays do The Horrors, Blur Rebel Motorcycle Club, a live action tribute to the film Dig!… I could go on. Fat White Family aren’t particularly unique sounding to anyone who dug British rock bands in the ’90s, but what they are doing is mixing and matching these pieces in enjoyable ways. Also, the ramshackle, we’re-fucked-up air of rock ‘n’ roll chaos they carry seems to play well with the millennials who haven’t really encountered that sort of thing before.

1) The Magnettes
Saturday, May 7 @ Handlebar

The Magnettes were a revelation. Dressed in matching cheerleader outfits with “Witch” and “Psycho” on them, Rebecka Digervall and Sanna Kalla introduced themselves by welcoming the spotty Handlebar crowd to the “Sad Girls Club” before unleashing a flurry of wryly anthemic electro that perfectly intersected Icona Pop and Lykke Li. Their backstory was sharp: They moved from a small northern Swedish town to the big city to get laid… but they couldn’t because everyone was into indie rock, so they had to start their own band. Their moves were sharp: synchronized blowing your own head off gestures married to cheer steps, stomps and jumps. And their songs were deadly catchy, too. Even their electro-fied cover of Springsteen’s “Dancing In The Dark” fit perfectly. I’m pretty sure I joined the Sad Girls Club that night and I’ve got a strong suspicion there are going to be a lot of people filling out membership cards in the near future.

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by | May 22, 2016 · 1:09 pm

Lykke Li Ain’t No Dance Party

Lykke Li

Lykke Li

February 6, 2009
Phoenix Concert Theatre
Toronto, ON

With all the gays and American Apparel leggings, it would have been easy to confuse the rammed Lykke Li show at Toronto’s Phoenix Concert Theatre with some hip West Queen West theme night, but the Swedish pop phenom’s show was often more (and less) than a primpin’ dance party.

The promise of dancing was there. Li started her set with a torqued-up version of “Dance, Dance, Dance” that immediately got the all-ages crowd bouncing. Li, who looked the part of a wood nymph let loose in the city, was all spastic dance moves while she furiously beat a lone cymbal at centre stage.

Li only fueled the dance fire further by asking the crowd early on, “How many people like to dance? Raise their hands.”

The problem with all this dance talk is that in the cold, hard truth of it, Li’s music isn’t all that danceable. It’s sort of like trying to make a mosh pit while listening to a Sugarcubes record. There are clearly danceable moments when one takes in Li’s Youth Novels breakthrough album, but it’s definitely not defined by the boogie as much as it flirts with it in the midst of a sonic adventure.

By the time Li got to “Hanging High” — complete with the rather thunderous double-drumming cameo from openers Wildbirds & Peacedrums — the Toronto audience had settled into a polite collective sway and most hopes of a real dance party were gone.

The Sugarcubes mention isn’t by accident either. Whether it was the strange boa/scarf thing that Li wore that made her boobs look like they threw up leaves, or her occasionally inhuman vocal bleats and wails, Bjork is about the only truly appropriate touchstone by which to compare Li.

It’s fitting, then, that the night’s most magical moment came when Li performed a massive take on “Complaint Department.” Li’s signature song punished in the same way that Bjork perfectly amalgamated pristine vocals and stomping industrial beats on “Army Of Me” almost 15 years ago. She began the song alone on stage and sang to backing programming while she threw herself about.

It appeared this was going to be a Peaches-like solo effort until the song broke down and her entire band reappeared to blast towards the conclusion. The much hoped-for dance party was finally here, but it seemed like the audience was paralyzed by the fact that the dance party they were getting was more Nitzer Ebb than Katy Perry.

The electric circus fizzled out only a short time later when Li entered into the stretch-the-set-out phase of the evening by covering Kings Of Leon’s “Knocked Up.” The song’s by no means a winner to begin with, and Li’s rendition did nothing to make it one.

At least that misstep was more than made up for by the closeout of the proper set with a vibrant take on the megaphone-enhanced “Breaking It Up.”

It was then on to the encore portion of the show, and with it came an intriguing glimpse of what might become of Li. She came on stage alone to do a couple of a capella verses of what I believe was Little Anthony And The Imperials’ “Tears On My Pillow” before she stopped and asked the crowd whether anyone knew what she was singing. Having decided that no one did, she launched into her best song, “Tonight.”

The ballad was what everyone was there to hear, but it definitely did nothing to end the night on a dance-y note, which may have been why Li decided to jar everyone out of slow song mode with what appeared to be a cover of A Tribe Called Quest’s Lou Reed-cribbing rap song, “Can I Kick It.”

That Li took the audience on an adventure that included Lou Reed, rapping, Kings Of Leon, industrial dance stomping, old-time crooning and copious Bjork-isms means she’s going to be capable of pretty much anything she puts her mind to in the future. It probably won’t be a dance party, though.

This review was originally published February 9, 2009 via Chart Communications.

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by | May 21, 2016 · 1:30 pm

Townshend Bails Daltrey Out At Who Gig

The Who

The Who

December 4, 2006
Air Canada Centre
Toronto, ON

It seemed a little odd that mere minutes before The Who were set to hit the stage at the ACC, Roger Daltrey’s climactic scream in “Won’t Get Fooled Again” was played over the arena p.a.

In this case, though, it was a sort of good faith gesture when it became clear very quickly from the one-two opener of “I Can’t Explain” and “The Seeker” that Daltrey’s voice was a tattered instrument, hoarse and ragged, and that he was more just belting out notes and words by willful grunt than actually singing.

Before launching into “Anyway Anyhow Anywhere,” Daltrey admitted as much, telling the packed ACC, “As you can probably hear, I’ve got a bit of a cold tonight” before promising to soldier through.

He didn’t need to worry, however, as guitarist Pete Townshend ably stepped forward to become the magnetic force that held the show together. For a near senior citizen, Townshend was a ball of fury. Stooped over his guitar, he pounded out power chord after power chord before launching into trademark windmill spasms.

His tones were vicious, snarling things, the sort of violent noises more closely associated with gutter punk than cinematic rock operas. It was a display of virulent guitar power that left his increasingly complacent peer group in the dust. Indeed, with Keith Richards reduced to foolish blubbering, Eric Clapton churning out increasingly tepid blues-pop and Neil Young ever oscillating between country, rock and misadventure, Townshend’s dynamic bursts are now just about as close as any students of classic rock will ever get to reliving the primordial power of ’70s rock ‘n’ roll.

The city had something to do with it, too. After “Fragments,” Townshend told the audience that Toronto “is probably the favourite city of mine to play in” and that “when I used to drink, I had such a good time here.”

It was nice tip of the hat to the T.O. crowd, which helped when Daltrey raised arms, mic in hand, during the peak of “Who Are You,” entreating the audience to scream in his stead. The anthemic singing along also buoyed Daltrey’s work on “Behind Blue Eyes.”

The six-song Endless Wire mini-opera was an indulgence politely tolerated by the audience. If nothing else, it made the transition into “Baba O’Riley” all the more welcome.

“Eminence Front” proved that The Who actually did put out something of quality in the ’80s, though “A Man In A Purple Dress,” “Black Widow’s Eyes,” “Mike Post Theme” and “You Better You Bet” were undeniable low points.

Still, as with any marquee act, all it took was a dip into the hit vault to shake things up. “My Generation,” “Cry If You Want” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again” were all blistering Townshend showcases, with Daltrey tolerably attempting to mirror his bread ‘n’ butter CSI moment on the latter.

The encore was Tommy-heavy, with “Pinball Wizard,” “Amazing Journey” and “Sparks” joining “See Me Feel Me” and the acoustic closer, “Tea And Theatre.” Much like the last song’s name might suggest, it was a tepid ending, but the point had already been made. With his bandmate failing, Townshend took up the mantle of rock ‘n’ roll and jumped, thrashed, bashed, power-chorded and windmilled his way through a textbook lesson in true rock.

This review was originally published December 5, 2006 via Chart Communications.

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by | May 7, 2016 · 12:13 pm

LIVE: George Thorogood And The Destroyers Avoid Rock ‘n’ Roll Jail

George Thorogood. Photo via http://www.georgethorogood.com/

George Thorogood. Photo via http://www.georgethorogood.com/

May 6, 2016
Massey Hall
Toronto, ON

Early into his set with the Destroyers last night at Massey Hall, George Thorogood threatened that he was going to rock so hard he was going to end up in jail.

It was a fundamentally unlikely statement coming from a 66-year-old playing a historic soft seat theatre, but these days keeping the spirit alive is almost as important as actually ending up in the slammer.

See, now that it’s obvious we’re in the middle of the First Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Extinction Event™ (R.I.P. Bowie, Prince, Lemmy), it’s even more important that those can still rock, do, and that the rest of us dutifully salute them.

If not outright crime-inducing danger, there’s still a sly cheekiness to Thorogood’s performances — the cheap pops for Ontario, Canada and “T.O.”, the threats to steal your girlfriend, and the declarations that he’s “full of shit” after conducting an anti-drunk driving psa — that rock ‘n’ roll’s current generation don’t have. The Black Keys ooze too much hipster smarm, Jack White’s too self-important, the Foo Fighters are too pop punk and Gary Clark Jr.’s too busy pursuing his Hendrix muse. If any of these people did a half-dozen Chuck Berry duck walks across Massey’s stage in an evening it’d run the risk of mean-spirited irony. For Thorogood, though, that duck walk’s absolutely real.

Where that places Thorogood is firmly in the role of lineal descendant and keeper of the flame. When Thorogood grinds out his take on Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love?” it’s a history lesson in the blues. When he smashes through a particularly righteous version of The Strangeloves’ “Night Time” it feels like it’s 1965 all over again.

Then there’s the drinkin’ songs.

The one-two of “I Drink Alone” and Thorogood’s celebratory version of John Lee Hooker’s “One Bourbon One Scotch One Beer” has made him the patron saint for unredeemable alcoholics for more than 30 years. And if the response from the Massey audience — a healthy mix of suburban dad bods, road-trippin’ smalltown bros and Duck Dynasty extras — was any indication, there still might be some menace left in rock ‘n’ roll’s old bones.

By the time Thorogood got to signature song “Bad To The Bone” it was abundantly clear he was not in fact going to be arrested this night for rocking too hard. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that intent to commit was still there. Which still means something when it comes to rock ‘n’ roll these days.

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by | May 4, 2016 · 6:06 pm

CMW 2016: Where I’m At

Canadian Music Week 2016

Canadian Music Week 2016

Canadian Music Week 2016 officially kicks into high gear today and for the 17th straight year, I’ll be out there in the clubs hoping to a) see something awesome, and b) not see something crap.

Over the years I’ve come to realize the best personal strategy for me to exact the greatest return on my wanderings is to focus on a) the acts I’ve never seen before, and b) the ones I’m not likely to bother seeing ever again. That means going heavy on the out-of-towners and foreigners and light on highly active and/or local CanCon.

This is reflected in this year’s CMW recommends list below.

If you want to see me there’s a chance I’ll be at one of these places:

Wednesday, May 4
8 pm Ella Fence @ The Cave
10 pm Adam Strangler @ Bovine Sex Club
10 pm The Shrine @ Hard Luck
10:30 pm Bob Mould @ Horseshoe Tavern
11 pm Heat @ Garrison
11 pm Madlick @ Nocturne
12 am Broken Hands @ Garrison
12 am Acid Priest @ Hard Luck
12 am Blocked Bones @ The Hideout

Thursday, May 5
8 pm The Fern Tips @ Silver Dollar
8 pm Vallens @ Velvet Underground
8 pm Basic Nature @ Smiling Buddha
8 pm Holly Macve @ Drake Underground
9 pm Ella Fence @ Painted Lady
9 pm Ora Corgan @ Cest What
10 pm Dark Bird @ Painted Lady
11 pm BR Mackie @ The Paddock
11 pm Broken Hands @ Drake Underground
11 pm Cat And The Queen @ The Hideout
12 am The Shrine @ Bovine Sex Club
1 am Annette Gil @ The Cave
1 am Walrus @ Silver Dollar
1 am BYSTS @ Nightowl
1:20 am Beat Market @ Nocturne
2 am Broken Hands @ Drake Underground
2 am Sturle Dagsland @ Smiling Buddha

Friday, May 6
8 pm Sturle Dagsland @ Central
8 pm Madlick @ Comfort Zone
9 pm Broken Hands @ Velvet Underground
9 pm Kane and Potvin @ Garrison
9 pm Dark Bird @ Hard Luck
9 pm Ho99o9 @ Comfort Zone
9 pm Holly Macve @ Cameron House
9:15 pm Ella Fence @ Supermarket
11 pm No Sinner @ Garrison
1 am Walrus @ Garrison
1:20 am Art Diktator @ Nocturne
1:30 am Beat Market @ Revival
12 am Dead Obies @ Great Hall
12 am Old James @ Cadillac Lounge
12 am Jeff the Brotherhood @ Horseshoe Tavern
12 am Fat White Family @ Lee’s Palace
12 am The Magnettes @ Nightowl
1 am Broken Hands @ Smiling Buddha
1 am RJ Cormier @ The Paddock

Saturday, May 7
4 pm Holly Macve @ Drake 150
5 pm Dark Bird @ The Garrison
7:30 pm AA Wallace @ Great Hall
10:45 pm Walrus @ Rivoli
11 pm Dead Obies @ Adelaide Hall
11 pm Acid Priest @ Smiling Buddha
11 pm Death Valley Girls @ Hard Luck
11 pm In Drift @ 300 Club – girl Smiths
11 am The Magnettes @ Handlebar
12 am Fat White Family @ Velvet Underground
1 am Above Top Secret @ Painted Lady
1 am Ho99o9 @ Adelaide Hall
2 am Onefilm @ The 300 Club

Sunday, May 8
9 pm No Sinner @ Garrison
10 pm Rolemodel @ Adelaide Hall

As an added bonus to reaffirm my music critic snob cred, below is a list of names that when I read them in the “Similar To” section of various CMW bands’ bios, I immediately skipped to the next act. There is no world in which any act who claims they sound like these bands would be entertaining for a 40 minute showcase.

All Time Low
Ani DiFranco
Bahamas
The Black Crowes
Blink 182
Brand New
Bright Eyes
Chvrches
Dan Mangan
Deadmau5
Deftones
Dillinger Escape Plan
Drake
Ellie Goulding
Elton John
Emerson, Lake and Palmer
Eminem
Foo Fighters
Frank Zappa
Fuck Buttons
Good Charlotte
The Guess Who
Guns n’ Roses
Great Big Sea
Hedley
Hozier
Imagine Dragons
Incubus
Jackson Browne
Jason Mraz
Jet
John Mayer
Kid Cudi
The Killers
King Crimson
Kings of Leon
Led Zeppelin
The Lumineers
Maroon 5
Mars Volta
Matchbox Twenty
Matt Nathanson
Motley Crue
Mudvayne
Mumford & Sons
Muse
New Radicals
No Doubt
NOFX
One Republic
Paramore
The Proclaimers
Queen
The Ramones
Rascal Flatts
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Rush
The Script
Sigur Ros
3 Doors Down
Sum 41
Taking Back Sunday
Train
Two Door Cinema Club
Ty Segall

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