02.12.10 Malajube

It's hard to believe that it's almost been 5 years since I've seen Malajube. I found it amusing that when I arrived at Performance Works in Granville Island and asked when Malajube (I said "Malajube" in an distinctly lazy-anglo accent) would be on, one of the french-speaking workers replied with "who?". For kicks I threw in my best french interpretation of the correct pronunciation ("muluh-ju"), and that seemed to work. Anyways, crowd was a mix of hipsters, people looking for free shows and french speaking canadians, probably a lot who've spent time in Quebec at one point or another.

Since it was free, I was expecting somewhere between 30 min to a 1 hr set. Surprisingly they played just under 90 min. The lead singer seems to have a thing for hats on stage. I should try and catch them play a set in the summer time to see if he continues this trend. The band was in fine form. Maybe it's just me, but I found that their sound was really tight this time around. The heavier rocking chorus parts had more of an edge than I remember from their albums. The crowd was really into it, saw a lot of crowd surfers and after the encore even a large pit. The song selection was a mix of the last 3 albums. I'm mainly familiar with the Trompe L'oeil album, so it was nice that they played pretty much everything I wanted to hear off that album.

$20/0