04.22.2011 Starfucker / We Need Surgery

First update in a while. Still going to shows, just less of them...



Local opener was called "We Need Surgery". They had a dance rock sort of sound. Had a sort of preppy stage image. Only thing that struck out was that their singer was really good. I'm talking he could probably do studio work as he has a very 'mainstream rock produced' sound. A lot of people in the crowd knew of them. I did not since I'm apparently out of the loop now.



I was a little surprised that Starfucker's first song, 'Hungry Ghost' featured their singer on turntable. For some reason listening to their first album at home, I never thought a turntable would be used live, probably because it's been years since I've seen a rock-based band with turn-tablist. The show really started to take off a song later during 'Myster Cloud' when the synth leads kicked in mid song. This show was their second to last show of a lengthy tour across the states. They seemed tired but were by no means sloppy and they did bring the audience what they wanted, a sweaty dance party. Their singer reminds me of Island's Nick Diamonds, both have an affinity for face paint. I found the laser beam lighting machines they had onstage cheesy at first, but actually worked out pretty well as the night grew on. Material was a mix of old songs and new ones. To Starfucker's credit, I can't really recall many lulls in the their set, most of the crowd was dancing about the entire 70 or so min they played.



$15/$15

Monotonix - Live in Vancouver 2008

10.03.2010 Land of Talk / Suuns / Rah Rah

I actually remembered to bring my camera to this show, but apparently the band had requested no photos at the show. huh..

Anyways, Rah Rah, the first band, is not the same as that other band Rah Rah Riot. I'll confirm this when I see the latter in November. They're a really fun band. You could file this band under the indie label. Their singer has a sort of country-ish feel to it. Biggest surprise with this band was their drummer. She spent most of set behind the kit, but in the latter half, she did some singing and played bass as well. She could probably front her own band.

Suuns ("Sooons") is a band from Montreal that's very hard to classify. For the most part they reminded me of Maserati, but noisier and with more of dynamic sonic range. Their guitarist uses a lot of delay and distortion. They kind of drifted between lofi electronic music to catchy dancey indie rock. Like I mentioned before, hard to classify.

One thing that doesn't surprise me about Land of Talk after seeing them through the years, is that the lineup is pretty flexible. Case in point most of the older songs featured the power trio formation of Liz Powell on guitar/vox, Joe Yarmush on bass and Liam O'Neil (replacing Andrew Barr for a couple of shows). Despite the short notice and being only the second show that he was playing, Liam O'Neil filled in very well and didn't seem to miss a beat (bad pun). This is not the same Liam O'Neil from the Stills, though apparently Liz Powell knows em both. The new songs (and even some of the old ones for that matter) featured members of Suuns adding extra guitar and synth. In addition, a lot of songs also had Liz's friend and artwork contributor Corianne Tate as a backup vocalist. The setlist favoured heavily on songs from their new album Cloak and Cipher. While almost all the other albums were represented, I wouldn't have minded hearing either "Corner Phone" or "Give me back my Heart Attack", both of which slayed me last time I saw them. I will say this, I really can't say that Land of Talk's shows are predictable. The last 3 times that I have seen them, all 3 of the shows were quite different from each other. Tonight not being an exception.

$15/$15

03.19.2010 Immaculate Machine / Sun Wizard / A Pale Blue

Wasn't really a fan of the first band, A Pale Blue. Might have been a case of not digging their alt-country-ish sound. In fact for me it was very forgettable. Some people actually described the singer as Tom Petty-esque. Fans of the genre may disagree.

Sun Wizard, has a pretty cool name. When I was watching their set, I was reminded of that mid 90s band Soul Asylum. Crowd seemed to dig them. In fact, I do believe that a large portion of the crowd came out to see them. There was a couple in the front who made use of the empty stage lip area and really tore up the dance floor.

Tonights show was a little bit special because long time members Kathryn Calder and Luke Kozlowski would be performing after being on hiatus. Kathryn's been dealing with an ill family member while I believe Luke hasn't even been in the band for a while now. I figured if I was going to see an IM show, this might as well be it. The band started their a little over an hour set with "Only Love You For Your Car", from their new album. I knew my prayers for older songs would be answered when they followed up a few songs later with "C'mon Sea Legs" and then "Dear Confessor".. I've never seen the band before, but I'm sure most people will admit that the band is better with Kathryn and even Luke in the lineup. There were many old favourites played. The crowd ate up older songs like "Jarhand" and "There's No Such Thing as the Future". Luke's drumming was solid. I was pretty impressed by their other guitarist Jordan as well. Having seen the New Pornographers a few times, I was already a fan of Kathryn Calder's voice. It's really unfortunate she hasn't been able to play with the band recently. She has a really beautiful voice. Without trying to be insulting, it'd be hard to imagine seeing this band again without her. As teased in their twitter, they also threw in a cover of "The Chain" by Fleetwood Mac, which I noticed gets covered by a lot of Canadian bands. Highlight of the night was the main set closing "Neighbours Don't Mind," which had Brooke screaming at the end.

02.06.2010 Do Make Say Think / Charles Spearin's Happiness Project / Years

The opener for this night was Years, which in Ohad's words is a previous incarnation of Do Make Say Think. I actually thought they were really good, as they were for the most part a stripped down version of Do Make Say Think. The first couple of songs were either Ohad solo or Ohad and someone else doing accompaniment. The solo songs were mostly Ohad with a guitar and looper. Ohad dedicated one of the solo songs to his daughter, as it was her guitar she was using. The last couple of songs were pretty much Do Make Say Think, the whole ensemble.

Charles Spearin's Happiness Project followed. It was self described by Charles as a science experiment exploring the idea of happiness and putting music to it. Basically what he did was record interviews with his neighbours. Afterwards he would play them back with instruments. So if you recall in the "Peanuts" cartoons when the kids would talk to the adults you'd have a saxophone playing instead of the voice. Well same sort of thing but you'd hear the voice as well. The most interesting interview was from a girl who was deaf for all her life up until a few years ago. I don't think I'd pay to see a headlining set, but as a opener it was fairly entertaining. Obviously with a project like this, some things worked, others, not so much.

Since this was an early show, it seems like Do Make Say Think put an extra emphasis on giving the near sold out crowd as much bang for their buck before curfew. They played the entire Do, Make, Say, Think in it's entirety, though not in order. I think the saxophonist from the Happiness project was a new addition because I don't remember her from last time. Highlight of the night was definitely "The Universe!" which had both the band and the crowd rocking out. Throughout the set, Justin kept apologizing for the shortened set because of the curfew, though I didn't think it was that short, maybe short for a DMST set. They still managed to squeeze in about 90 min set. The funniest part of the show was when Justin exclaimed "We're going for gold! Bitches!". At the end of the day, I suppose if you like Do Make Say Think, then I guess this was a pretty good show.

$20/14

01.23.2010 Julie Doiron

It kind of took me by surprise to see Julie onstage after they opened the curtain for the first band. Someone was telling me that she would be headlining this gig. On this tour she was actually the opener, but as I was told she's a bigger draw in Vancouver. Oh well, I thought to myself as she started into "Wrong Guy", at least I'll be able to leave early.

Last time I saw Julie, she played, backed by a full band. This time however, she was only backed by a drummer who I didn't recognize. Said drummer also played accompanying guitar for a couple songs as well, even though on most of the songs she was the only one playing guitar, she really rocked it out. Some songs sort of reminded me of the classic grunge style songs. Clean to mild distorted verses followed by heavily overdriven choruses. Midway through the set, Julie mentioned that they had been listening to Ladyhawk before doing a cover of "Teenage Love Song". I think the drummer forgot some of the words. Some would say they butchered it, Julie laughed it off, apologizing to Ladyhawk afterwards. I dunno if they were in attendance.

This show was actually an early show. Funny enough, there was another show afterwards, Attack in Black. This would probably mean Julie would do a couple of songs with them afterwards like I saw them do at Hillside. I guess to return the favour, the singer for Attack in Black, played drums for a couple of songs while the aforementioned drummer and Julie played guitars. It's actually quite amazing when you think about how different this set was in comparison to the set she did only 6 months ago. Normally, I don't expect too much for 90% of most bands opening sets. This particular set exceeded my expectation.

I left before the Bowerbirds. If I didn't have somewhere else to go I probably would have stayed.

$12/15

11.07.2009 Land Of Talk / Machu Picchu

The show billed as an early show with doors at 7, which is when I got there. Doors opened an hour later. I don't normally do this, but I actually went to the venue without a ticket thinking it would be undersold and usually tickets are cheaper at the door. This turned out to be a mistake as, the lineup for non-ticket holders had to wait until the ticket holder's line disappeared. As my luck would have it, there was a line up to get in, which I've never had to do at the Biltmore. This was probably due to most people thinking that doors were earlier. It didn't help that everyone who brought their big cold weather rain jackets had to have them coatchecked.

I had a chat with Joe LoT's bassist when I got in. He said to expect a totally different show later in the evening. I shrugged it off thinking it would be just new songs. I had a chance to ask him if they ever played "2 Ships" and "Dark Nature Places" live. It looks like they did, around 2007 for a short period of time. The aforementioned songs, for those who don't know, appeared as bonus tracks on the European version of their 'Applause Boo Cheer Hiss EP', in order to bring it closer to "LP length". There's also a possibility they'll be reworked for a later LP.

I think Machu Picchu is local, but I'm not quite sure. They do sound familiar, I just can't place from where. The drummer was wearing a Cobalt T-shirt. One of the guitarists, I know I've seen him before. Plus I'm pretty sure they're associated with My!Gay!Husband! somehow. I think my overall impression of them is mixed.



This marks my 6th time seeing LoT in one form or another. Admittedly seeing a band this many times makes it harder and harder to leave the show impressed. Fortunately, the show was quite a departure from any of the previous shows. The Biltmore's stage has a curtain that they use to hide the change over. I never would have expected to see a fourth person on stage when they opened the curtain launched into a blistering version of Corner Phone. It took me a minute to realize that Joe was handling guitar duties and the fourth person, who turned out to be their guitar tech, covered bass. This would be the case for a couple of the songs, but most of the set they were still a trio. I should make note that Land of Talk were also using some onstage visuals as well. Most of it consisted just visual background noise, but it still upped the stage ambience of the show. The rest of the setlist varied from the usual staples to include lesser played songs such as, "Troubled" and "Corner Phone". Overall, you couldn't help but be impressed by how tight the band sounded, especially drummer Andrew Barr (which shouldn't surprise anyone seeing as how he also plays in the Slip). Towards the end of the night, frontwoman Elizabeth Powell mentioned how packed it was at the Biltmore and how there was only 120 people last time at the Media Club. Unfortuanately, judging from the crowd of disinterested clubby looking people talking behind me, I've got a feeling they were already letting people in early for the "Dance Party" after the show. Still another good night for one of Canada's best kept secrets.

$30/$10

10.08.2009 Mono / Maserati

I haven't been to the Biltmore in a while, so it sort of surprised me how tiny the place actually is. It's one of those places that are pretty nice on the inside with quite the cozy atmosphere, however with a low stage, it's not really that great if it's packed and you want to see anything below the performer's head.

I arrived at the venue about 5 min before Maserati got onstage and was able to find a decent enough spot. I've only heard a couple of songs from Maserati, one of them is a definite banger, "Monoliths", the other was more of a atmospheric/soundscapes kind of tune. Being my only exposure to them were those 2 songs, I was sort of expecting a "Boris" type of set, half uptempo rockers, and the other half soundscapes, which could go from boring to brilliant depending on mood. Well they ended up going with the aforementioned and not the later. Their set was pretty much all uptempo stuff. Dare I say it, it was dance-y post rock. The crowd seemed pretty into it, actually there was this girl beside me who was pretty much 'rave' dancing. I didn't find it weird at all, until she started doing it during Mono's set. But yeah, awesome stuff from Maserati, although a lot of their songs sound the same...

Mono came out while classical music was being piped out of the PA system, which was kind of interesting. I snuck a look at the setlist during change over and noticed that there weren't any songs before the last two albums. Not that this should surprise me, because even in their last tour, they mainly stuck to recent material. It was a little disappointing that I wouldn't be hearing tunes that I"ve become used to hearing at a Mono concert like "Halycon" or "Lost Snow". If it's any consolation however, their recent stuff does contain songs with the same elements that made the aforementioned songs awesome (crescendos/airplane take offs, chimey melodic songs). Their drummer has a gong as part of his live setup. I never actually saw him use it, though my friend says he saw him hit it during their first song "Ashes in the Snow". If you were near the front row you would have seen Taka at one point in the show on his hands and knees looking like he was overcome with emotions or in a musical trance. At the beginning of Everlasting light there was a pretty cool glockenspiel duet with Taka and the drummer, on two different sets of glocks. There was no encore, just 90 min of emotion rich instrumental musical energy.

$15/$15

06.19.2009 The Pack A.D. / Sorcerers / Canaries

I must admit, I really don't see that many non-touring acts. As good as the local Vancouver scene is, the last local show that I saw was probably Fake Shark, Real Zombie. Even that was almost a year ago. I'm not really sure why this is, but this show was all local, so there you go.

The first band up were Canaries. No "The". Apparently this is important. I wasn't too into them. They had a very lo-fi, synth/party/screamo sort of feel to them, or as my friend put it, "Hey look it's Andrew WK".

Sorcerers were a little better. Firmly planted in the Vancouver Skate scene, their music had a interesting stoner/dub/punk feel to them. Actually throughout their set, they blasted out the smoke machine, making the stage seem like, for lack of better words, an opium den. Ironically, I don't remember much about their set, I do recall their bass player being really tight and their guitar player using a lot of effects, but that's about it.

The Pack A.D.hit the stage to a pretty packed house. The crowd was a bit on the older side (including the owner of Neptoon Records), but there were a couple of the usual indie crowd. The overall vibe of the show was very much like a homecoming gig despite the fact that it was more of tour send off show. Lots of crowd interaction as well as a surprise guest for a song or two. Two things really stood out for me. The first being the presence and power of singer/guitarist Becky. The second being that it was quite apparent that there was an abundance of chemistry between the two girls in the band. The seemed to be playing off of each other all throughout the set. Despite a couple of technical difficulties, the show went off without too much of hitch - a good send off for a band who probably won't be playing Vancouver again until December.

06.14.2009 Julie Doiron / Dog Day

We've done a write up on Julie Doiron pretty recently, so this will be a bit of a shorter review for the Vancouver Biltmore show.

Dog Day started out the night with a blend of rock not so much unlike Eric's Trip. Boy/girl vocals and post grunge like sound. Their set seemed a little rushed, but I think they were under some time constraints. They played well, but I wouldn't say they rocked out like what other people have described. I'd probably still check them out again. Maybe a headlining show.





I don't know why I'm mentioning this, but during the set change I went and tried to play some of the arcade games at the Biltmore. To my chagrin, after about 2 minutes trying to fish out my quarter from the busted money slot of the Marvel vs Capcom machine, I decided I probably won't be doing that again. The other writer of this blog tells me that the pinball machine has a sketchy launcher.

Similar to the Waterloo show, Julie hit the stage with 2 or 3 solo songs. After that the rest of the band came in and rocked out. I'll try not to repeat the previous review, but this show was a little longer. Usual Julie Doiron fun banter and overall charm was present. Actually there was one point in the show where she sort of implied feeding her kids wine. At the end of the show, one thing was fairly obvious. Julie's backing band is incredibly talented. As mentioned before, her shows don't really use a setlist, but instead are based on what she wants to play and usually will entertain some requests. This night was no different. Some in the crowd requested a song from one of her side projects. She obliged, which resulted in her band fumbling through the song. In fact, I get the feeling the lead guitarist pretty much just improvises all his solos. Which leads me to a whole new appreciation for her live show.



$20/$17

05.31.2009 Clues / Apollo Ghosts

I missed the first time Clues came to Vancouver, but tonight I had a second chance. It was at still also still at the same venue, the Biltmore, and an early show at that. I suppose after seeing both Islands and the Arcade Fire in small venues, I had somewhat high hopes (I know unfair comparison). Expectations aside, there were a couple of surprises.

The night started out with Apollo Ghosts. Songs were sort of surf rocky, folky and heavily influenced by the city of Nanaimo. Not really my thing, but showed some promise. Singer had pretty good presence, bassist had a couple of good licks and the drummer, I don't think, curiously, played a single drum fill the entire night.



Shortly after Apollo Ghosts left the stage, 2 men dressed in black hit the stage unannounced. I later found out they were members of the rarely to tour Jerusalem in my Heart. For the next 5 minutes or so, the audience was hit with a barrage of middle eastern chanting/song/prayer?.



After an even shorter turnover, Clues took the stage. Much like their band name, musically they were a bit of a puzzle. Despite packing the stage with a expanded drum kit and a variety of different instrumentation, it was quite clear from the onset that front man, and former Unicorn, Alden Penner was the main focus of the show. Having only heard a demo prior to the show, I pretty much came into the show with a clean slate. That being said, some things worked somethings... not so much. I did get the impression that the next album would be a better measuring stick as to how to really rate them. Overall, the show didn't exactly blow me away, but did seem to keep me intrigued for the 2 hours I was there.

$10/$12