Tag Archives: Concerts

by | March 30, 2021 · 1:41 pm

Nitzer Ebb Show Creates Dancing Machines

LIVE: Nitzer Ebb
December 1, 2009
Mod Club
Toronto, Ontario

Pioneering industrial dance group Nitzer Ebb’s connection to Toronto runs deeper than you’d expect.

The reformed Chelmsford, England band’s music was the anchor for no less than a half dozen major alternative/electro club nights in this city about 15 years ago, and that scene’s survivors — the hardy misfits who still wear black, or shave the sides of their heads, or aren’t afraid to go out on a Tuesday night — were witness to a Terminator-efficient performance that was vital, vicious and without any taint of retro kitsch.

Local dance rockers OPOPO had their work cut out for them as openers. Perhaps it was because they felt too much like The Shamen or Ned’s Automic Dustbin — comparative softies from back in the day that Ebb fans would’ve defined themselves against — but the arms-crossed, shaved-headed crowd mostly no-sold the band’s high energy set.

Credit the band for continuing to barrel through, though. Neither did it hurt when vocalist/guitarist Bryan Sutherland put his hands over his eyes to shield them from the stage lights, looked out into the crowd and assured, “Hi, we’re OPOPO. We’ve got a couple songs left” mid-song. It was self-aware and self-deprecating enough that it at least softened the audience to dish polite applause for the remainder of their stage time.

The Mod Club crowd was still a little cold when Douglas McCarthy, Bon Harris and live member Jason Payne bounded onto the stage, but that would change in very short order.

During the pulsing take on the Belief album’s “Hearts & Minds” the character of this show really began to show itself. Slowly but surely, bodies started moving as McCarthy flung himself across the stage in his suit and tie like a sinister Max Headroom while Harris and Payne pounded away at dueling drum kits.

Showtime‘s underground classic “Lightning Man” further elevated things. Hundreds of raised fists matched McCarthy’s shouts of “Baby! Come to daddy!” as a strange sort of hive mentality broke out on the Mod Club floor. It would be too gag-y and ravespeak to say there was a sense of “unity,” but as the band pushed on through “Blood Money” and “Godhead” the audience felt transformed.

No longer was it about the individual fan as much as it was about the interlocking mechanical parts that were the bodies that were moving, punching and stomping along to a fascinating machine language. If this was a collective synesthesia, the participants weren’t seeing colours, but instead phantasmal hammer strikes, gear shifts and piston firings as the band pressed on.

By the time the Ebb unveiled That Total Age‘s “Murderous,” McCarthy had lost the jacket, skewed the tie and the industrio-trance was in full effect.

There had been very little in the way of stage banter up ’til that point and there would be very little as the band continued. Besides, McCarthy was already saying all the important things he wanted to say in his songs — which mostly involved commands for people to get on their knees.

Nobody actually did drop down, but there were a few who were surely close during the surprisingly anthemic “Control, I’m Here” and the not-as-bad-as-I-remembered “Ascend.”

The only logical choice to close their set was dark club banger “Join In The Chant” and, sure enough, pretty much everyone did in fact join in the chant. Somewhere in there, McCarthy lost his shirt and that mechanical trance broke down into chaotic flailing, those machine parts oscillating so wildly that overheating was inevitable.

The Ebb’s short encore concluded with McCarthy doing his best Dave Gahan for an arms-wide-open take on “I Give To You.” Having made so many demands of all the little machines all night, it was the perfect gesture to give something back. It was a decidedly human way to end the show, but it felt a bit like a warning, too, and left little doubt that Nitzer Ebb would be back.

This story was originally published December 2, 2009 via Chart Communications.

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by | December 14, 2020 · 9:59 am

Talking Sloan And Music Mags For The Sloancast Podcast

Finally, my unique expertise has value to someone! I was recently asked to be on the Sloancast, a podcast dedicated to the band Sloan, to talk about said band and their inextricable link to the music magazine I used to manage, Chart Magazine.

Some of the topics we covered: how we’d pick the Chart Magazine cover stars, the three separate times we did the Top 50 Canadian Albums Of All Time poll, and what members of Sloan are like as hockey players.

It’s quite a romp if you care about 1990s Canadian rock music and or Sloan, specifically.

Listen to it by going here.

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by | January 1, 2020 · 1:28 pm

Julia Jacklin’s ‘Crushing’ Is Aaron’s Top Album Of 2019

Julia Jacklin Crushing

Julia Jacklin Crushing

Doing an annual top albums list for as long as I have one starts to see the true value in the exercise. It’s not the ranking, codifying or picking the “best” things so much as it’s about stitching together a tapestry of one’s year and seeing the patterns that emerged.

Much like in 2018, a lot of my personal music listening energy was devoted to my Before They Die list — a meticulously curated list of musical acts I need to see before, well, y’know — and I ended up catching 12 on-the-list and 17 list-adjacent acts on top of whatever other concert-going I did.

That meant a little less energy spent on discovery. It also meant if one pattern emerged it was that there was lots of leaning on the past. I don’t mean that in the Rolling Stone Magazine-will-always-give-Dylan/Springsteen/Stones-perfect-reviews leaning on the past kinda way. What it did mean, though, was there were a lot of albums that could be argued represent new forms of things I’ve enjoyed in the past.

Read below to see the patterns that emerged.

Bubbling under for 2019: Abjects, Geoff Berner, Sondra Sun-Odeon, Mimico, Jacques Greene, King Gizzard, De la Noche, PUP, Wargirl. (Also, Thus Owls’ The Mountain That We Live Upon probably would have been my #3 but it came out in Sept. 2018 and that was just too 2018.)

10) Mercury Rev — Bobbie Gentry’s The Delta Sweete Revisited

The best part of an album isn’t always the album itself, so much as the sense of discovery around the album. Mercury Rev redoing Bobbie Gentry’s The Delta Sweete with a cast of guest vocalists not only serves as a wonderful intro to Gentry, but also makes a wonderful entry point for contributors like Margo Price, Carice van Houten (Melisandre from Game of Thrones can sing?) and Phoebe Bridgers.

Hear “Sermon” ft Margo Price

9) Angel Olsen — All Mirrors

Sometimes when I play Fantasy A&R Man the best idea I can come up with is “a new Connie Francis… but goth.” There are points on Angel Olsen’s All Mirrors where she comes this close.

Watch “All Mirrors”

8) Murray Lightburn — Hear Me Out

I’m a firm Dears loyalist and might consider them my favourite Canadian band. However, my acceptance of their transition from an early days chaotic bombast machine to something with more dignity and refinement has been hard won. So it was a touch surprising that Lightburn lead singer Murray Lightburn’s bombast-free second solo album would strike so deep. What Lightburn gives us — “I Give Up” is a soul ballad from another time, “I’m Not Broken” has knowing gospel touches — paints with just enough different colours to enthrall.

Watch “Changed My Ways”

7) Rustin Man — Drift Code

This record is quite literally the output of a wobbly old weirdo who spent two decades building a science project in his back shed. Read my full review here.

Watch “Judgement Train”

6) Tallies — Tallies

It’s been a slow and not absolute process, but I’m on my way to divesting from Morrissey because of his terrible politics and worldview and middling late-period music. Having an act like Tallies and songs like the jangle gem “Midnight” help soften this transition.

Watch “Midnight”

5) Deadbeat Beat — How Far

If you like Sloan’s Jay songs you’ll love Deadbeat Beat’s How Far. I’m particularly partial to “Dim Bulbs.”

Watch “You Lift Me Up”

4) Michael Kiwanuka — Kiwanuka

This new Kiwanuka album is exquisite — a majestic, soaring, hands-held-high sermon from Mt. Soul. The brilliance of the individual bits of this record are only half the story, though. The other half comes from basking in the glow of the brilliant craftsmanship. Kiwanuka is a master of his domain and to be able to witness such excellence is its own type of reward.

Watch “You Ain’t The Problem”

3) Moonface — This One’s for the Dancer & This One’s for the Dancer’s Bouquet

Technically, this was a late 2018 release, but I didn’t really tweak to it until well into 2019. And yes, I realize that it’s near hypocritical to endorse Moonface while disqualifying Thus Owls, but it’s my list and my rules, so suck it.

This One’s for the Dancer & This One’s for the Dancer’s Bouquet is a fascinator. It’s two separate projects — half a delayed keyboard treatment audio experiment, and half songs sung from the perspective of the Minotaur of Greek mythology — woven together to create something otherworldly and unique. The Minotaur songs strike particularly deeply. For a giant, blood-thirsty, bull-headed beast, the Minotaur’s journey forgiving all those who’ve hurt it is one of the most genuine, better and human set of stories I’ve heard put to song.

Watch “Minotaur Forgiving Knossos”

2) Hawksley Workman — Median Age Wasteland

In the year 2019 I was not expecting to a) rate a Hawksley Workman album so highly, and b) to feel it so deeply. And yet here we are.

To be fair, I’ve always been casually fond of Workman’s dandy woodsman idiosyncrasy, but with Median Age Wasteland he seems optimized. Having the above-mentioned Murray Lightburn on production probably helped. Certainly Workman’s vocals are both torqued up and focused in ways they may not have been in the past. Where Median Age Wasteland truly stands out, though, is in the storytelling. Whether it’s the mythologizing of a snowmobile (“Snowmobile”), the joyful BMX bike gang journeying (“Battlefords”), the tributes to forgotten figure skaters (“Oksana”) or even the outwardly ludicrous (“Stoners Never Dream”), Workman takes us to fantastical places with each and every song.

Watch “Italy”

1) Julia Jacklin — Crushing

At the 4:27 mark of Jacklin’s “Don’t Know How To Keep Loving You” she delivers a series of repeated “don’t. know. how. to. keep. loving. you” lines so charged, so gut-wrenching you can’t help but worry if Jacklin will ever find her way. The entire Crushing album is filled with these emotion-charged bombs as Jacklin explores unraveling relationships, personal agency, hurt and self-healing in an unflinchingly beautiful way.

Watch “Don’t Know How To Keep Loving You”

Other album lists…

2018 Top Ten — Idles’ Joy As An Act Of Resistance. is #1
2017 Top Ten — Land Of Talk’s Life After Youth is #1
2016 Top Ten — Daniel Romano‘s Mosey is #1
2015 Top Ten — SUUNS + Jerusalem In My Heart’s SUUNS + Jerusalem In My Heart is #1
2014 Top Ten — Sharon Van Etten’s Are We There is #1
2013 Top Ten — M.I.A.’s Matangi is #1
2012 Top Ten — Dirty Ghosts’ Metal Moon is #1
2011 Top Ten — Timber Timbre’s Creep On Creepin’ On is #1
2010 Top Ten — The Black Angels’ Phosphene Dream is #1
2009 Top Ten — Gallows’ Grey Britain is #1
2008 Top Ten — Portishead’s Third is #1
2007 Top Ten — Joel Plaskett Emergency’s Ashtray Rock is #1
2006 Top Ten — My Brightest Diamond’s Bring Me The Workhorse is #1
2005 Top Ten — Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s Howl is #1
2004 Top Ten — Morrissey’s You Are The Quarry is #1
2003 Top Ten — The Dears’ No Cities Left is #1
2002 Top Ten — Archive’s You All Look The Same To Me is #1
2001 Top Ten — Gord Downie’s Coke Machine Glow is #1
2000 Top Ten — Songs: Ohia’s The Lioness is #1
1999 Top Ten — The Boo Radleys’ Kingsize is #1
1998 Top Ten — Baxter’s Baxter is #1
1996 Top Ten — Tricky’s Maxinquaye is #1

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by | December 27, 2019 · 3:03 pm

Las Vegas Psycho Fest Made A McDonald’s Themed Metal Band Seem Normal

Psycho Fest 2016

In the weeks leading up to Psycho Fest Las Vegas I found myself having to navigate increasingly awkward conversations.

After all, saying to people, “Yeah, I’m not around next week because I’m going to Psycho Fest” yields all sorts of difficult followups.

Namely, what the fuck is Psycho Fest Las Vegas?

If you believe Psycho Fest’s top-line, it was a multi-day heavy music festival featuring classic rockers like Alice Cooper and Blue Oyster Cult, metalcore and post-hardcore acts like Converge and Drive Like Jehu, and stoner-doom acts like Electric Wizard and Sleep.

Shows were split between three venues in the Hard Rock Casino — the 4,000 seat main showroom The Joint, the 650 capacity club Vinyl, and the Paradise Pool, an outdoor stage overlooking, yep, a giant swimming pool.

A slightly deeper look, however, yielded an impressively curated list of names you wouldn’t find at your average energy drink-sponsored mega-fest. Arthur Brown, the Brit eccentric behind the song “Fire” joked it took “the signatures of four Senators” to play his first U.S. show in ages. Other names like Truth And Janey and Wovenhand were playing rare or one-off shows. Doom pioneers like Pentagram and Candlemass were here. So were Fu Manchu and Uncle Acid.

Basically, the whole event was like the Kyuss Desert Sessions miraculously manifested into a strange 100 band-strong takeover of an off-strip Vegas casino. Either that or this whole thing was the masturbatory fever dream of Josh Homme as a sort of concert booking Freddy Krueger.

The thing is, when you take a spirit walk into the desert for something like this you come out changed. More experienced, more knowing. Here are a number of the things I took away from the festival:

1. Grimalice Is A Hero

There’s a McDonald’s-themed Black Sabbath parody band called Mac Sabbath. Their gimmick is amazing. They basically turn Sabbath songs (“Iron Man” becomes “Frying Pan,” “Sweet Leaf” is “Sweet Beef”) into anti-food industry anthems, all while wearing costumes perverting traditional McD’s characters like Ronald McDonald. What was most amazing about their set, though, was that the bassist “Grimalice” played an entire show in 90 degree F heat in their gigantic purple outfit. Respect.

2. Questions About Saws

During Black Heart Procession’s set frontman Pall Jenkins played a saw during a song while their drummer created thunderclap-like rumbles using a piece of industrial metal sheeting-as-a-gong. My question is: how much effort goes into finding just the right saw and just the right chunk of sheet metal for this? Did they spend a Saturday morning scouring a Home Depot, clanging at pieces of tin and discreetly bending saws between aisles? Did they scour the local junkyard? Or maybe they just have day jobs as foley people and they took that stuff from work.

3. Vegas Food Lifehack

When the casino you’re in charges $1.50 for a banana and $15 for a modest breakfast plate, you disrupt the system by walking to the Silver Sevens casino a block away, sign up for a player’s card, then eat all of the following things at their buffet for $7…

Cheese blintz
Pancake
French toast
Berry stuffed pancake
Biscuit with gravy
Hash brown
Bacon
Chicken fried steak
Apple juice
Scrambled eggs
“Breakfast potatoes”
Sausage patty
Corned beef hash
Watermelon
Vanilla frozen yogurt root beer float
Jello

4. Beelzefuzz vs. Bezlebong

This will take a bit of remembering, but Beelzefuzz is the shitty one that sounds like shit Uriah Heep and Bezlebong is the good one that’ll send you off on a rant about how, with their complete lack of vocals, their dependence on laying down a singular riff for five minutes at a time, and their majestic hair-flow in-sync headbanging on said riff, you will declare them stoner rock distilled down to its perfect essence.

5. Mudhoney

For years I was under the impression that some great cosmic injustice must have taken place when Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden rose up from the altera-grunge heap to take over the world, leaving behind poor Mudhoney.

I was wrong.

6. Music Festivals In Hotels

Know what’s awesome? When you can roll out of bed, into an elevator and walk your way down to see Blue Oyster Cult in six minutes. Better yet, you never have to worry about porta-potties being gross because you have YOUR OWN PRIVATE TOILET. Also, if you want to sneak off for 2-for-1 breakfast specials at Nacho Daddy on The Strip it’s only an $8 cab ride away. Open air farmer’s field music festivals are dead to me now.

7. The Budos Band

A staple of soul label Daptone Records, the afro-funk jazz act Budos Band are outwardly more at home supporting the likes of Sharon Jones or Lee Fields as opposed to appearing at a metal festival. But that’s a swerve. Their set was metal as fuck. Or at least as “metal” as a band that’s fronted by a trumpet player and a saxophone player and also features two separate guys on congas can be. In the way they acted and the way they were received, it would appear that the band, who put out the metal-spirited Burnt Offering album in 2014, appeared to have finally found their people. And when trumpeter Andrew Greene declared, “This is the greatest day of my life!” part way through their set you knew it was true.

8. Oresund Space Collective

I had a bit all ready for the Oresund Space Collective, “a music collective from Denmark and Sweden that play totally improvised space rock music,” who were scheduled to play from 5 – 7 a.m. at second stage venue Vinyl. It went like this:

“6:18 a.m. Woke up to go see Oresund Space Collective to say that I did.”

“6:26 a.m. Saw them. Now back in bed.”

Except that’s not what happened.

When I walked into Vinyl there was a pack of weirdoes throwing down some of the craziest Hawkwind/early Floyd mind bombs. Better yet, the frontman, a Gandalf lookin’ dude wearing a giant alien head, was jamming away at his “instrument,” which was basically a mixing console he used to add effects to other band members’ playing. He was also the main giver of fist bumps and high fives to the 100 or so bugged out space travelers who were on a spectacular journey.

9. Drive Like Jehu

Constantines are better.

10. Audience Demographic

Shockingly, Psycho Fest was not a complete sausage fest. It was more like a 60-40 fest, or, at worst a 65-35 peen-to-vag fest. It also wasn’t the getaway for old hippie burnouts I was expecting. The audience was younger, metal-er and 100 per cent looked the part. Here’s a rough breakdown:

17% Guitar Center employees
16% Scott Ian chin beards
14% Aspiring Suicide Girls
11% Only topic of conversation is how they’re going to complete their sleeve tattoo
10% Acts like they’re tough, but they’re actually monied Silicon Valley code dorks who chose this instead of Burning Man
10% Air guitarists
7% Dudes with luxurious manes whose cascading waves of hair made you curse the day you cut yours in the failed belief it would help you to make it in the normal world
5% Air drummers
5% Lemmy had sex with their mum back in the day
3% Turbojungen
1% That old guy who was at all the same things as us and was totally into it, proving you’re never too old to rock
1% Narcs

11. Tales Of Murder and Dust

It doesn’t sound like it’d makes sense, but watching Denmark’s Tales Of Murder and Dust unleashing their bespoke Godspeed-meets-Calexico shoegaze while doing aquatic dance moves floating around a swimming pool is a pretty righteous experience.

12. Respect Fu Manchu

With Lemmy gone (RIP), someone’s gonna have to fill Motorhead’s spot in the heavy metal lifer hierarchy and one could make a strong argument for three decade-strong Orange County vets Fu Manchu. It could be argued the band represents the stoner-doom rock genre’s first wave, but what’s more important than their place in the fuzz ‘n’ phaser timeline, is the fact they’re fucking stupendous.

It’s not that hard for a band to bust out a sweet Sabbath riff and coast on it for five minutes, but what Fu Manchu does — a deft mix of songs about classic muscle cars, drag racing and outer space — is conceptually perfect and sonically righteous.

It was their set on Sunday afternoon (which started at 4:20 p.m., by the way) which represented the biggest throwdown of the weekend. They were the undisputed masters of this reality and the standard bearers for a whole musical festival that was built upon the idea of delivering non-stop undulating waves of rippin’ stoner rock riffage. Fu Manchu’s crushing renditions of “King Of The Road,” “Saturn III” and “Regal Begal” sent The Joint’s attendees into hand-waving bouts of ecstasy more fitted to a religious ceremony than a rock concert and it truly represented the peak of the form.

This story was originally published August 30, 2016 via AUX TV.

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by | December 27, 2019 · 1:15 pm

Pixies Play Secret Show In Hamilton, Ontario

Legendary alt.rockers the Pixies played a secret show at the tiny Casbah in Hamilton, Ont. on Friday night.

The band were using the show as a tune-up for their next-day performance at Virgin Festival Ontario in Toronto, as well as to test-drive what may be the setlist for the upcoming tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of their Doolittle album.

Indeed, there was nothing from the Bossanova album played all night as the Pixies focused on signature Doolittle tracks like “Here Comes Your Man,” “Wave Of Mutilation,” “Debaser” and “Monkey Gone To Heaven” in addition to “Where Is My Mind” and “Gigantic” from Surfer Rosa. In another Doolittle timeline moment, Frank Black and company also dusted off a cover of Neil Young’s “Winterlong.” The band originally covered the song two decades ago for The Bridge — A Tribute To Neil Young compilation.

The Pixies’ appearance was a closely guarded secret right up until the moment they hit the stage. In the weeks prior to the event local music industry insiders were invited to what was alternately being billed as an album release showcase for Spirits, the new ’80s-tastic sounding band fronted by Brad Germain of The Marble Index, and/or as a launch party for the International Tour & Tech Academy.

Organizers were only suggesting that “an international touring band — not Canadian — will also be on the bill,” and right up until Black, Kim Deal, David Lovering and Joey Santiago appeared, there was belief among pockets of Casbah attendees that they were about to see Franz Ferdinand, who were also playing VFest the next day.

Anyone with a calendar and a good grasp of Frank Black lore would have guessed the Pixies, though. Black has a long history with the steeltown an hour south of Toronto. Sonic Unyon, the distributor for many of his solo ventures, is based in the city, he’s used the Hamilton as a rehearsal base in the past, and he’s also played secret shows at Sonic Unyon’s headquarters throughout the years.

For their part, Spirits seemed less intimidated than excited at the daunting prospect of following the Pixies. Even the lengthy almost hour-long changeover required to move the Pixies stadium show-worthy stacks of Marshall amps and other gear didn’t dampen the band’s enthusiasm as they flung themselves into songs from their self-titled debut which is set for a Sept. 29 release.

Indeed, Germain would later post on the band’s MySpace page, “did that just happen? pixies played Hamilton? we played after the pixies? insane!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!spirits!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

The show was also a good one for trainspotting some of Hammertown’s music celebs. Mingling amongst the 200 or so in attendance were Finger Eleven’s Scott Anderson, Gaz Whelan from Happy Mondays, members of Junior Boys, Sons Of Butcher, Dylan Hudecki (Cowlick, ex-By Divine Right) and at least four dudes who looked like Dan Snaith of Caribou.

This story was originally published August 30, 2009 via Chart Communications.

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