Drowning Nor Waving

So, guess what time of year it is?

Yes, this one.

I am hoping to actually pace myself this year, and not totally burn out hard on the second night of the festival like I did last year, because I have Plans (tm) for things I want to be seeing and all that. With that in mind, tonight's excursion was one set large:


This being July Talk at the Horseshoe

So about a month back I discovered this band called July Talk, and you should click that link, and you should listen to the two songs on that website, because I am telling you to in the most imperative terms possible. This is what happens when Young Tom Waits meets a floaty-voiced, bustier-wearing girl, and then they make out to every guitar ever in a bluegrass/rock/awesome kind of way.

Understand that I was already pretty much bouncing on my toes with joy for this show. No, really. I was literally dead centre in front of the stage, beer in hand, good and early before the set time and bouncing on my toes, and I didn't care that I was seeing this by myself.

And then they went on, and...holy shit.

The stage presence that pours off Peter Dreimanis and Leah Fay is kind of visceral and incredible. They strut and tease each other and bite and blow kisses and dance and bend staggering over a guitar, and never miss a beat. They sing somehow both clean and raw at the same time. Thirty seconds into that set, a set full of songs I hadn't heard ("Paper Girl" was the closer, so there I could sing along) the whole of the Horseshoe Tavern had taken a collective deep breath that tingled down to the toes. It was thirty minutes of grinning, sweating wildness. It was the kind of thing that lots of bands try for, and never really get.

Mostly just...holy shit.

They pretty much took that house down.

They do not even have an EP out yet.

Mark my words: In two years this band is going to be famous.

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I also think it says something about a set to see what the mood in the room is after. After that set the dude next to me gave me a giant high five, and then two guys in the back struck up a conversation about said set and we talked about small bands and good places to eat on Roncesvalles and whatnot, and then two guys behind us who are in a band playing a set tomorrow struck up another conversation too. This was a room full of sociable, grinning, energized people. This was a room full of liquid happy.

On that basis -- and because, y'know, I'd paid $12 cover -- I stuck around for the next set, by a band called The Heartbroken (or maybe just Heartbroken), but it was pretty apparent early on that it was a bit too country for my tastes, so out into the night we went.

I have no specific plans for tomorrow: There's a Hooded Fang set at 10pm somewhere or other, and Black Owls, the band of the dudes behind me who struck up a conversation, is playing the Hideout at some point. I'm also meeting up with a compatriot for the evening, so I think it's going to be the NXNE Free Period: we're just going to go where the wind takes us.

Look for more concert report through the weekend. Because there's gonna be more concerts.

Quick pop out for a couple sets at the Rivoli tonight with ksumnersmith: the band one of her workfriends sings for was playing at Pop With Brains, which is a bi-monthly indie showcase that donates the cover/proceeds to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. So we get bands, Karina's workfriend gets some cheering section, good charity donations are done, all's good.

I have no pictures for this one. See last post re: the cellphone camera, its stubborn refusal to, y'know, focus, and how I was going to take it in to get looked at this weekend sometime.

We grabbed some fancy Queen West burgers beforehand at BQM, which was pretty tasty if not so air-conditioned. I had one called the Ossington, which was the most gentrified burger on the menu (cow, grilled portobello, tomato, lettuce, garlic aoili, balsamic glaze, mozzarella). I am not sure if the name is a very subtle joke.

The show itself was in the back room of the Rivoli, which was sort of half-empty and weirdly reminiscent of the sorts of battle of the bands friend-of-friend's shows you'd go to see when you were 15, and this is not a criticism. Tiny cashbox at the door, very loud monitors (and not-so-great levels, honestly; I think they didn't have a dedicated soundperson), people who obviously know each other/know the bands. This was kind of amazingly nostalgic for me, even though it was always the Opera House or the Big Bop when I was a high school band groupie.

There were some other attractions going on: a clothing label selling some stuff, and an artist who was doing quick paintings of each band off to the side of the stage, in watercolour, which was neat. You'd stop every so often and look over at the easel to see how the painting was coming.

We were, sadly, the jerks who only stayed for the set we came to see* -- Karina has to be up early tomorrow, and I have had a somewhat long day here -- but I did catch enough of the first set to comment. The band was Drugs in Japan, and it was very metal: the bassist took this seriously and had the giant poofy metal hair that entirely obscured his face/head, as well as tight black pants with a giant zipper. As far as metal goes it was okay -- actually, I'm deeply impressed that the singer was the drummer, because that means offsetting your own rhythm, and that is not easy business. But mostly it was there, and it was okay, and it's not really my genre.

The workfriend's band, Dinosaur Dinosaur, was...actually, really, really good.

They're a three-piece: bass, guitar, and vocals, with occasional keyboard and other stuff, a drum machine in back, and some legitimate stage presence. And the sound is not easily definable: the things it reminded me of the most were that kind of lush eighties goth music; Shriekback or Sisters of Mercy with the occasional heavy rock guitar thrown in and a definite sultry, noirish, cabaret sort of thing on the vocals and rhythms, although not so much cabaret as Ruby Spirit, which we have established I did not like on the grounds of finding them to simultaneously be trying too hard and not really trying hard enough. It was a little hard to dance to until I figured out that yes, I should just dance like goth clubs, and then it all came together.

Really, really liked the first song -- I think it was called "Somniloquy" -- and a newer one they played, the name of which I didn't catch. I do remember one called "Vampires vs. Swear Words", which is all kinds of excellent.

They do not have an EP yet. This is sad, because I would have honestly bought one after that set even if I wasn't there on friend-of-a-friend grounds. But I am told that by the end of summer this will happen. But I have found their downloads, and I will rest content.

So we gothdanced a bit, and then headed out on earlier grounds of having to get up -- plus, the next band was named R.A.P.E. Tazer, and they were all dudes, and that sort of thing just doesn't bode well -- and I walked back up through Chinatown and Kensington in the soupy air, and around the raccoon sacked out on the sidewalk on Brunswick because it was just too hot to raccoon properly, and home. I have not been walking enough this week. My feet hurt just from down and back.

It is too hot to Leah too, so I am going to sack out myself. Although not on the sidewalk.

*This is something like the downtown twentysomething equivalent of the parents who go to the dance recital and only stay for their kid's number. Très crass.

So yesterday afternoon, after logging my words, Dr. My Roommate and I made the journey to the hinterlands Downsview Park to see this megaconcert object. We have had the tickets for a very long time and were very much looking forward to it: It was my first time seeing both Weezer and the Hip, so.

I am trying to figure out why this was not a mindblowing excess of awesomeness packed into one day.

It started off just fine: Everyone going northbound on the subway was clearly going to the show, and people started cheering and goofing around on the subway train, and then singing along to Weezer songs on the shuttlebus running from the station to the venue. Nice mood! All good!

Hey Rosetta! were already playing when we got there (we missed Buck 65), so we grabbed some overpriced hot dogs and some criminally overpriced bottles of water ($5? Really? Even by festival concert price-gouging standards that's a little much) and got ourselves into the crowd to finish off the last of the set and camp a good spot for Broken Social Scene.

What I heard of the Hey Rosetta! set was really solid. They played "Welcome", obviously (that's the radio single) and a few other things I'm actually familiar with but couldn't name and couldn't say from where, and I probably ought to get around to getting their stuff sometime soon.

Not a lot of people were up for them, so we made it inside six or seven rows of the stage fence for the BSS set and hunkered down to wait the 40 min until they came on. At which point, I turned around and saw that jonofthewired and sandwichboy and their friend Dave were...well, pretty much right behind us. Since there were only 20,000 people in the place, and all. Thus was the afternoon's adventuring party assembled.

BSS played a different kind of set than I'm used to hearing from them, but then again, usually when I'm hearing them, it's their show and their crowd, and they can go as long and as obscure as they please. This was a show the Hip organized, and I think the setlist they picked was my first clue that it was not the sort of crowd I'm at home with: very much the hits (Fire Eye'd Boy, Forced to Love, Texico Bitches, 7/4 Shoreline, Cause = Time, KC Accidental) and a few covers -- Beastie Boys and Modest Mouse. Opening the set with Lover's Spit was nice. They ended with Meet Me in the Basement, but they always do that; I don't think I can hear that song anymore without getting a visceral multilayered flashback of sun-drunk and punch-drunk and giddy and every show they do.


Terrible, blurry stage shot of BSS

After the set the guys wanted to get some food, and I wanted to sit down for a bit -- it was hot and close and several kinds of smoky, and that sort of goes right to my knees and makes me wobble -- so the Roommate and I parked ourselves on a patch of grass and waited for them. They didn't make it back before the Weezer set started, so we went in without them and, well, the crowd had kinda changed.

I don't know if it was more/different people showing up, the tipping point of drinking bad beer (they had Bud. It was $8 a cup. This is a terrible thing to do to anyone) or just serious cultural shift in fan mentality? But. You can kind of feel the mood of a crowd, or a room, and this was not cheerful and grinny and pleasant. It was don't-stand-in-front-of-me, bleary, and kind of mean.


I think this is Weezer, but honestly can't tell.

The set was fine; again, kind of a greatest hits thing. I remember hearing the Sweater Song, Pork and Beans, My Name is Jonas, Say it Ain't So, Troublemaker, Perfect Situation, Island in the Sun, Dope Nose, Hash Pipe, I Want You To. They closed with Buddy Holly. Interestingly enough, they played that cover of Paranoid Android kafkonia gave me just a few days ago. And there was a lot of singing along, both impromptu and of the "Okay, you sing this chorus" type, so that was all good.

Thing is, I don't like being in a crowd of thousands of people and looking over my shoulder. I didn't like the feel in there. I have said here and there that live music is the closest I get to what some people get out of organized religion, and I guess this is what it feels like to spend the afternoon in someone else's church.

Dr. My Roommate left after the Weezer set: she wasn't feeling well, there was a little too much fuckery going on, she's not a Hip fan, and she had to housesit for someone that night anyways. So I stuck it out with the guys in our little press of space until they came on. And it stayed kind of rowdy and fratboyish, and one too many crowdsurfers landed on someone's back, and then one landed on my glasses and, while I caught them, that's it, we were out of there. We watched the rest of the set from off to the side, at a decent distance, with ice cream. And let me tell you, it restores your faith a little to have friends who will quietly interpose themselves between the drunk staggering person in front of you and where you're sitting on the grass, especially when you are feeling like you're surrounded by asshats who are also wasted on bad beer.

Stuff played? Honestly (and kind of depressingly) I wasn't paying huge attention at that point. They opened with Grace, Too, and definitely did Love is a First, Blow at High Dough, At the Hundredth Meridian, Fully Completely, Courage, Bobcaygeon, Poets, Ahead by a Century, Little Bones. There was It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken, which was surprising. There was Fiddler's Green (!), which was even more surprising, since I was under the impression that they do not, not, not ever play that live and haven't for literal years. Although I just found two YouTube hits of it live, so I guess they've started again. The encore was...The Kids Don't Get It, Wheat Kings, and Music at Work.

The best thing in the set, bar none, was a version of New Orleans is Sinking that had Nautical Disaster nested inside it like matryoshka dolls. And oddly enough, that's the one place where I connected with the space, the crowd, the band: standing up on achy legs to sing along, in a sort of spit-through-my-teeth vicious way, the lyrics to the thing that got me into this band in the first place; one of the very first songs ever to haunt me like a shadow in the way that sends me to the keyboard half-blind now to write, but back when I was 12, just swirled around my shoulders in a way I didn't know how to process or deal with.

Here is the official video of it. It didn't make the haunting any less:

It's a poem. It still is. And it still makes me shudder a little, deep down, with sheer intensity and the cold ocean and death, like nothing else ever.

That was worth the price of admission.

Once they left the stage there was this, which we didn't expect, since officially the Downsview Park Canada Day fireworks had been cancelled for the show:



And that seemed to bring everyone kind of down to earth again, and the crowd moved out, and we skipped the whole crowded and stupid shuttle bus arrangement and just walked the 15-minute trip to the subway station -- although it took longer, since we were all tired and totally going the long way -- and, thankfully, Dave's car. And one quick trip back downtown and one helping of late-night post-show dim sum later, that was that.

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I am left, this afternoon, trying to figure out what made that crowd so damned mean, or if festival crowds were always this way, and I was just young enough when I was regularly doing festivals that I didn't notice/got the special treatment for being a cute little 19-year-old girl. I like all those bands and have for years, but that was so decidedly and utterly not my scene it couldn't get any less my scene. Yeah, I've been to outdoor shows where ridiculous amounts of drugs were going around -- see, Island Concert, last summer -- and that was not a substance abuse sort of result. People can be, and are, cheerful and friendly and fabulous at a show during and after serious drinking and pot-smoking (see: Island Concert).

It would easy to say that there were probably a ton of people there not from Toronto (true), or that it's the accessibility of the venue to said people versus something more downtown (possible), or that it was partially the holiday (nationalism, always good for making one a little bit of a jerk) or the fact that it's Pride Weekend (is this where all the jerks went to get away from The Gay?) or a quirk of the fanbase for either Weezer or the Hip, but. I can't honestly say. Too many variables, and too little objectivity on my part. I'm aware that where I live -- in terms of not just city but neighbourhood -- I live in a bubble, and y'know? I can't always say I dislike that.

If I ever see another drunk, skinny, sunburned, scowling, buzzcutted white dude with his shirt off and his hands all over the ass of his stumbling girlfriend, it'll be too soon.

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That being said, and hopefully this isn't famous last words of some sort, for tonight mon ami Danny and I are seeing Coheed & Cambria and Soundgarden at the Amphitheatre. I'm tired, but it's Chris Cornell, and that's something you don't say no to. Let us hope for less back-patting thick-necked laddishness there.

Very briefly, this is a Sloan concert report.


Look! See? It's Sloan.

This fine evening, Dr. My Roommate and I went to the Mod Club to see Sloan (Sloan!). We have seen Sloan before, most recently last summer at Dundas Square, but that was a free set and short and tiny, and sometimes a band's playing and you've liked them since you were fourteen and you really just don't say no.

Clearly other people felt that way too, because it was sold out. I have never seen so many people in that room. And this was the second show of a two-night run.

We got there just as the opener was playing their last five bars or so (good timing! We are bad people who skip opening bands!) and they played for about an hour and a half: a lot of the new stuff and a lot of the faster, heavier, headbangy stuff. Unlike at the Rusty show, the people who go to see Sloan (or at least the people who work their way into the front, like we did) went to Nineties Concert Finishing School and are headbangers of quality.


Piratical drums.

We danced. A lot. And got enough of the old stuff salted into the main set to keep the energy moving: Coax Me, and Everything You've Done Wrong, and The Good in Everyone, and Losing California. The encore was fabulous: People of the Sky, Lines You Amend, and Money City Maniacs, in that order. Chris Murphy kept getting the audience to sing full verses and/or the backup on the hit songs. It is deeply satisfying to have a band onstage that encourages my tendency to sing the set back to the band.

The thing with bands that have been around since I was fourteen, and which I have loved since I was fourteen, is that after seeing them a couple times over the years there's a bit of a sense of relationship: you see people change as you change. And you see how people are the same. Chris Murphy is still kind of goofy and tells stories that trail into nowhere but in a funny way. Jay Ferguson is kind of focused and sedate until you put him behind the drums and then holy shit, what a total and complete ham. Andrew Scott's hair is less blond and getting kinda grey already, but he is kind of scarily built. And (as is maybe visible in the bad photo above) Patrick Pentland wore a bowler, vest and tie onstage tonight, still has that perpetually concerned, concentrating, tongue-should-be-sticking-out-with-focus look, and this has rekindled the ridiculous crush I used to have on him in high school. It's something about guys who look faintly concerned. Don't ask me, I just work here.

Shocker of the evening? We got this:

That's video from last night's show, not ours. But holy. They never play that, and I love it, and it has been obsessing me for three weeks, so. :)

And then that was that, and we wobbled back home (I mentioned there was dancing) and stuffed ourselves with protein and water, and five minutes, literally, after we got in there was a massive rainstorm, complete with thunder. Good timing. My feet hurt.

Next concert report, unless I find spare music lying around next week: Canada Day Spectacular! aka, Death By Concentrated Joy (tm).

1) Thus endeth one of the busier months per year at the Dayjob.

2) To celebrate that, saw Broken Social Scene and Superchunk Thursday night with mykwud, who was gracious enough to take the second ticket on short notice (it originally belonged to Dr. My Roommate, but she is unwell at the moment). This'll be a short version of the usual show report, since I didn't write it up that night and since we left during what we thought was the last song and then I found out later they kept playing until 1:45 in the morning. Oops. But anyways.

Sound Academy is sort of redeeming itself as a venue for me, even though they have a constricted, sad beer selection and it's all the way out in the docklands and you have to walk half an hour in the cold through industrial nothingness to get out there if you don't have a car. Usually when I'm at things there they haven't done anything with the back of the room, and it sort of feels like a long deserted hallway. This time, because it was a BSS show, they had a long merch table, Amnesty International, a whole art display/auction thing from a non-profit that runs arts programs for street kids or at-risk kids (and a lot of the art was really, really good) and a video display thing for another one. They were also taking donations for the food bank at the door. Yes, this is a Broken Social Scene show.

I didn't know the opener more than glancingly (Mike did) but it was a really nice, danceable kind of early-nineties alternative set: kind of in the Limblifter/Age of Electric/Treble Charger sort of constellation of things.

Then! There was Broken Social Scene!

(Leah, you ask, didn't you see this band in the summer and write up a whole squeefaced concert report then? Yes. Yes I did. And next time they do a hometown show I will see them again. And the time after that. And the only reason I didn't go to the second date they played at the same venue last night was because my legs were very, very tired from all the dancing I did the night before and I ended up having to eat THIS MUCH protein and crash into bed early and sleep late to feel normal this morning.)

In terms of my Songs I Like bingo card, I got most everything but Major Label Debut (below) and All My Friends, and danced until my legs didn't work (as above). Highlights: original-style version of Almost Crimes, nice long Superconnected, string-and-horn-filled Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl (made me cry in the good way; always does), Sweetest Kill, which is a song I now have a lot more appreciation for, and on the top all-time list, Lover's Spit done just piano and voice by Kevin Drew, with the entire rest of the instrumentation coming in halfway through on the bridge. And the crowd singing most of it. And...oh. :)

It's actually entirely possible they played Major Label Debut later; we had an agreement that when it looked like the last song before the encore, we'd go get the coats, because otherwise you spend an hour in the coat check line. And then we ended up not staying for the encore because we were both hungry and exhausted and wobbly and had to still walk half an hour back to civilization to catch the streetcar, so we staggered back through Scary Industrial Desolate Lakefront Toronto, passing a vitamin water and a bag of Sunchips back and forth, jaywalking indiscriminately, and being ridiculously hyper. Little did I know until the next day that they played until 1:45 in the morning. Yes. You heard that right.

I'm a little miffed about that, but to be fair, I was legitimately tired and out of go and had filled up the concert tank more than adequately. And had to work the next day. I am old, I am old, I will wear my trousers rolled etc. etc. whatever.

Have samples:

This is last night's show, not the Thursday show, but it's the same song and the same venue and you get the idea:

Yes, the crowd sang along on my night too. :)

Oh, here's the one I was at. I'm a little back and to the right there!

...so that was Thursday. :)

3) Back in our everyday lives that aren't actually all about Broken Social Scene, the fantabulous csecooney interviewed me about Ideomancer for the Black Gate blog. It's mostly about this issue and the process of making it, as well as my own personal history with the magazine, but there are some bits about what we look for if you are the sort of person who cares about such things.

4) stillsostrange's second novel, The Bone Palace, came out this week. I picked it up on Thursday and am, so far, about two chapters in. Amanda can write like whoah. You should read it.

5) While I'm in the Amazon links thing, Chilling Tales, the anthology which "Stay" is going to be in, is available for preorder at Amazon. The release date's March 1st otherwise. It has a cover that looks like Nick Cave's bald guy mullet, true, but it contains some of the brighter lights of Canadian horror fiction and will be well worth your time. Apparently there are going to be some events for it when it comes out too, at World Horror Con and around town here. Stay tuned.

6) A new episode of Shadow Unit came out this week too: "Uniform". It is 30,000-plus words of WTF goodness and a bit of stunt-writing besides.

7) My brain's still chewing on that short story I mentioned a bit back. Don't spook it.

8) I am going to the circus tonight. I would say "If I get everything done here, I am going to the circus tonight," but this would fool nobody. I'm going anyways.

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Such is the week that was. And now to send slush, answer e-mail, and go to the circus.