Patrick Wolf has released another single from the forthcoming album The Bachelor, entitled Harsh Times. Check out the day-glo filled video below. Wolf is headlining Nylon Magazine’s Summer tour which also features Plastiscines, Living Things and Jaguar Love. The tour hits Mod Club on June 17th. Tickets still available here.
Check Grizzly Bear’s new Video for Two Weeks below. Their new album Veckatimest is out this week and the play the Phoenix on June 5th. The show seems to be sold out.
Think About Life/Tune Yards/Bayonets
Over The Top Festival
Polish Combatants Hall
Friday May 22, 2009
Last minute concerts always turn out to be the most fun. While being bored by the National, I received a message from Jen asking if I wanted to check out Think About Life at Eric Warner’s Over The Top Festival. I had been wanting to check out the show due to the fact that I am completely obsessed with their new album Family, not to mention that I’ve always heard wicked things about their live shows. I messaged her back to arrange a ticket pick up and meeting time and began getting excited.
Family will likely get tons of comparisons to TV on the Radio, which isn’t a bad thing and is entirely true. It’s a pastiche of styles, borrowing elements from hip hop, indie, dance and punk. I really believe that this album could make them huge, and after witnessing them live, can honestly say that they deserve to be.
Arrived at the Polish Combatants Hall at 9:15pm, earlier than needed, the venue was pretty much empty. The venue is great, it’s a typical legion hall, but feels cozy and intimate. The bar staff are super nice and they serve North American and Polish beers. First band up was Bayonets from Edmonton. Wasn’t familiar with them at all, they were….noisy and kinda funny. Jen said they reminded her of The Mae Shi. Their set was short about 30 minutes, people seemed to enjoy it. Up next was another artist I wasn’t familiar with. Tune Yards is a solo project by Merrill Garbus, and her music is quite hard to explain. I guess you could compare her to Ariel Pink, super lo-fi indie rock. Her live show is spellbinding. She does the Final Fantasy recording/looping thing, but also plays the ukulele, drums and sings. Her voice is her greatest asset, she sings, chants and does wondrous gargling/throat noises. Layering these different sounds, she creates soundscapes that sound frail at first then build into these room-filling masterpieces. I was completely floored by her set. Check a video from her performance at Pop Montreal last year below.
Last but not least Think About Life took the stage at 11:30pm, and launched into Havin’ My Baby, the second track on their new album. Perfect song to start their set. High energy, fun, and totally danceable. Their set was super upbeat and got the room going. They played pretty much all of Family including Johanna, Sweet Sixteen, Young Hearts, The Wizzard and Set You On Fire. The material is even better live than recorded. They finished with Paul Cries (from their debut), which saw a good chunk of the audience take to the stage for a full dance party invasion. In convinced that their set last night will be one of my favourite shows of the year. It was near perfect.
Ps. The picture above is not from last night, I have stopped carrying a camera to shows, I want to be able to enjoy it and not worry about getting good photos. The picture is actually taken from an old show in Brooklyn (via BrooklynVegan).
The National
Kool Haus
Thursday May 21, 2009
Somehow I’ve missed The National every time they have played Toronto in the last couple years. Other commitments, be it shows, work or family events has plagued my attendance. I kinda wished that I had other plans Thursday night. It’s funny, I had a conversation a couple weeks ago with a friend who travelled to Chicago last summer for Lollapalooza and she said that one of the biggest disappointment of the weekend was The National’s set. I thought maybe it had something to do with the sheer size of the venue, but maybe not.
I must first say that I love this band’s recorded output. Their two full length albums have been in constant rotation for years, and I never bore of lead singer Matt Berninger’s voice and smart wordplay. Thursday night’s show for me was completely mediocre, the band were a tad sloppy, the venue seemed to swallow their music, and as a live band, The National were painfully boring to watch. Matt’s voice during the first few songs was really great, but then he seemed to lose it and relied on a Ian Curtis-eque yelp for the rest of their set. I couldn’t engage with what was happening on stage, I felt myself drift from the music and ended up people watching for the bulk of their set. Another leading factor to my disappointment was the fact that they seemed like background music, there was a ton of audience noise during their set and it seemed like many people we’re paying attention. On a positive note, the addition of a live horn section was pretty awesome.
Mark put it best, we’ve all seen way too many mediocre straight ahead rock shows in the last 15 years of attending shows. If I’m going to pay money to see a band, I need to see something interesting and new, the band needs to be able to offer an actual show or spectacle. Shows like Thursday just don’t cut it anymore, even if the band’s recorded material is quite fantastic.