06.19.2009 Wintersleep / The Clicks / In Flight Saftey (Toronto)

There was a point in time where NXNE and NXNW were pretty much on the same par in terms of quality. No where near the same size or stature of what SXSW is now, but both were growing at a pretty good rate. Somewhere down the road, NXNW completely died, but NXNE seems to have grown up quite nicely. I'm not going to go into too much detail, (seeing as how as I write this it's been over a few days now), but I will say this, the quality of free shows was amazing: Wintersleep, GZA!, the Sonics, The Black Lips and more. It's really a shame NXNW went the way it did.

I think I've been watching too much TV because I could swear that at one of the NXNE booths I saw someone from one of the bands on Much Music's sort of reality band tv show, disBand. The person in question was the blonde from the sort of teen pop duo, that the judges thought were trying to be too sexy for minors, that sung that cheesy song "Sugar Free." Actually what's even funnier, is that I think I also saw the older rapper from Dog Bus shopping at Zehrs with his mom. I need to stop watching tv.

In Flight Safety, are a band from Nova Scotia. They sound like indie rock, I think. I don't really remember to much, except that their singer, unfortunately sounds like Bono. Unfortunate, because that comparison will be made every time someone tries to describe them to someone else, like I just did.

The Clicks, I wasn't really sure if I liked them or not. They're from Toronto, so it was a home town show of sorts, and they might have been an all girl trio as well. They weren't bad, I just didn't really feel a connection I guess.

I stood near the back for Wintersleep, which was actually kind of nice because I didn't need ear plugs. For once I got to hear the songs being played live without the muffle of the ear plugs I normally wear. Anyways, they attracted a really large sized crowd (yeah I know being free helps). Most people seemed to like it as I didn't see very many people leave during their set. Oh yeah all three of these sets were broadcasted live on sirius radio. Pretty cool I guess. Sort of a normal show. The only thing worth mentioning was that after they finished their set, and the Sirius people came on to do their outro talk, about 5 min after the everyone had left the stage, Wintersleep came back on and did Listen (Listen, Listen) as an encore.

Setlist:

Miasmal Smoke & The Yellow Bellied Freaks
Archaeologists
Caliber
Jaws Of Life
Murderer
Search Party
Weighty Ghost
Astronaut
Oblivion
Laser Beams
Baltic
Drunk On Aluminum
Danse Macabre
===
listen [listen, listen]

$20/$0