What a fine life we are living....

Date: 29 July 2010

Venue: The Starlite Room

Guests: Carla & Scott

Tickets: $15




Opening Bands:

Aidan Knight:

Just caught the end of his performance as we were running a little late, but liked what I heard. Have a listen for yourself. Mellow but upbeat, with interesting instrumentals. My favourite song of his is Jasper. He has done a lot of support work for Dan Mangan and Hannah Georgas to name a few.

We are the City:

Good performance, with a pile of passion in their songs. They won a competition earlier this year form The Peak in Vancouver. They are up and comers and I'm hoping to hear more from them later this year as they put their winnings into prize development. This is from last December, Astronomers, my favourite song of theirs. They were a little quiet and subdued for an opening band, but that's their style.

Main Act:
Said the Whale

Set List:

Dear Elkhorn 

This City's a Mess

Love is Art/Sleep Through Fire

BC Orienteering

Black Day in December

The Light is You

Howe Sounds

Out on the Shield

The Gift of the Black Heart

A Cold Night Close to the End

Strong Swimmers

False Creek Change

My Government Heart

Camilo (The Magician)

Goodnight Moon

Plans for the Future

Emerald Lake, AB

Curse of the Currents

Oh, Said the Whale. You are quickly on your way to being my favourite band. This is the third time I've seen you at the Starlite room/Brixx in the last 9 months. I am eagerly awaiting the next album for sure!  My favourite song of this concert has to be the Curse of the Currents. Ben played it on acoustic guitar and it sounded hauntingly beautiful in my opinion. 

Trumpet, xylophones and ukulele all were featured in a song or two in the mix which was quite fun and added some variety to the set. We Are the City and Aidan Knight were popping up behind the boxes and came on stage for a song as well. You can tell from the chemistry that have a good friendship going and they all really are having fun on the tour. Speaking of working in collaboration, I wish I could have seen them as the Malahat revue. They played concerts as part of bicycle tour they did on Vancouver Island with Hannah Georgas , Aidan Knight and Jeremy Fisher in the summer, biking between venues and played in some teensy intimate venues along with Sugar and the VFMF.

July 18 | Vancouver Folk Music Festival 

July 16 | Nanaimo Entertainment Centre 

July 13 | Roberts Creek Hall 

July 11 | Duncan Garage Showroom 

July 10 | Sugar in Victoria

July 9 | | Pender Island Community Hall 

July 8 | Salt Spring Island Artspring Theatre

 As an aside, Said the Whale just recently was mentioned in USA today with Hey Rosetta, another great Canadian band. I love the energy and contrast between Tyler and Ben on lead vocals that are at works with the last album, Islands Disappear; they played all the songs I was wanting to hear, and are apparently in the process of getting a new album up and on the way. I also love the irony of Ben's hat here, in reference to my favorite song of theirs, False Creek Change. It is an Expo '86 hat. Awesome.

 I think that Spencer from Said the Whale does an incredible job on the drums. Scott and I had the unique perspective of an eagle eye view in April with Plant and Animals. Look at the posture on Matthew here also. The view which gives me a new found appreciation for drummers. Also guitar hero helped a little with that appreciation too...

Here is goes again....

Date: 09 July 2010

Venue: The Starlite Room

Guests: Ryan & Scott

Tickets: $20

As an aside... we lined up an hour early to get three of five coveted seats in the house... which were pretty awesome. During the one hour of waiting, torrential downpour and thunder storms. Needless to say, we were a crew of three, very damp and soggy Neufelds. Ryan jumped the gate to try and get under the awning by the Starlite entrance... but was throughly rebuked by a bouncer. I found a cheap umbrella at City Centre Mall... through, predictably, upon returning it to the boys, the rain  ceased. 

Opening Band:
Michael Bernard Fitzgerald
Three guys from Calgary. They warmed up the room really well! He had good energy as a lead singer and the keyboardist and the guitarist (both names Steve) played well too. I loved that they played a cover of Baby Got Back... a rendition that sounded quite sweet.  I like when an opener plays cover songs, since often I am not familiar with the original songs they play, and it helps get into the show. He also played the next day at the Sounds of Old Strathcona on Saturday. Normally, I like to do a little research and listen to an opener before the show, but up until we arrives inside starlite, the opener was "And Guests". 

Main Act:
OK Go

Set List:

Invincible

Needing/Getting

A Million Ways

All Is Not Lost

I Want You So Bad

White Knuckles

Oh Lately

Good Idea

Here it Goes Again

What To Do

Last Leaf

Don't Ask

Get Over It

Back From Kathmandu

End Love

This Too Shall Pass

WTF

Skyscrapers

Do What You Want


Oh, OK Go. You are always a good time. I find the music is a blast to dance to and the guys are original and fun on stage. The videos really got me hooked a few years ago, quite original and upbeat... and they most certainly check their egos at the door, and you can tell that they have fun with what they do. OK Go just left their record label, EMI, to start their own label, which they are pretty stoked about . From the fans perspective, it looks like there will be a lot more YouTube videos and creative freedom with this switch. As a downside, there were no albums for sale as merch at the concert... as they haven't pressed any of their own vinyl as of yet. Luckily, I have iTunes and the most awesome Edmonton Public Library to help me through the tough times until I can have a vinyl of my very own. 

The show was a great experience! There were confetti cannons that showed the room with colourful paper. The front-man Damian came and played in the middle of the floor, for an entire song as well as in the middle of a song or two song, and pulled up the guy who was one person behind us in line to play his guitar on stage (who did really well!). The band played with the space quite well, and as an encore, played WTF, Skyscrapers and Do What You Want with awesome lighted jackets that were quite fun, and furry neon-lighted, laser guitars. 

Now, for the heart to heart: I was a little disappointed there was no band dancing, like we saw last time... although they had to use a recorded track for when they did "A Million Ways" in Seattle in 2005... The band skedaddled pretty quickly after the show; although my superfan-in-training, Scott, was able to track down three of the four band members for a chat as well as grab signatures for our Million Ways vinyl single from the first show we saw them at. And they didn't play You're So Damn Hot...  the gateway song that first got me tuned into to OK Go 6 years ago... A couple others I was hoping to hear were Love Cats and Television, Television...but I guess you can't always get what you want... sometimes, it's pretty damn close.

If you ever get a chance to see OK Go, I heartily recommend them. Fun, fun, fun.
Two very enthusiastic thumbs up.

The New Pornographers

 

Date: 08 June 2010

Venue: Edmonton Event Centre

Guests: Steph, Angela & Scott

Tickets: $30

Opening Band:
The Mountain Goats

I enjoyed the opening band; I was expecting a band that was more local, as The New Pornographers hail from Vancouver, and The Mountain Goats are from North Carolina. Nothing they sang particularly stood out to me, but they did have good energy, and a similar sound to The New Pornographers. Angela wiki'd them during the show and we were astounded to discover that they are exceptionally prolific. The band originated in 1991, and there are 17 albums to date. The most recent success they have was from "The Mountain Goats will cure your Bieber Fever" meme from early May.
They have an album called Heretic Pride, and all the songs are based on biblical verses, which appeals to me as I love albums with a unifying theme and that are written with a certain method to the madness. Also, scattered throughout the 17 albums, there are different song series, which also have a theme through them. The "Going to..." series reminds me of "Away We Go".
All in all.... 6 out of 10 stars. (7 had they been/become Canadian.)

Main Act:
The New Pornographers

Set List:
Sing Me Spanish Techno
Up in the Dark
Myriad Harbour
Use It
The Laws Have Changed
Crash Years
Jackie, Dressed in Cobras
Adventures in Solitude
All the Old Showstoppers
Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk
Challengers
Moves
A Bite Out of My Bed
Testament to Youth in Verse
Your Hands (Together)
My Shepard
Twin Cinema
Silver Jenny Dollar
Mass Romantic
The Bleeding Heart Show

Jackie
It's Only Diving Right
Slow Decent into Alcoholism

The New Pornographers hit the stage at about 9:30, and played for a solid 90 minutes. There were 8.5 members of the band (Dan Bejar would mysteriously leave the stage then occasionally stagger back on for about half of the songs with a brew in his hand). The main singing was done by (A.C.) Carl Newman and Neko Case, with Kathryn Calder and Kurt Dahle on backup vocals.

I thought the vocals were great, although the speaking between songs was a little garbled and difficult to understand. I was throughly disappointed that they didn't play My Rights Versus Yours, I believe it was requested but they didn't play it as it was a downer... and they didn't remember all the words, but this was in the garbled sections between songs I didn't fully catch. It's my favourite of their songs, not to mention the third most popular song of their on iTunes, so the fact that they didn't get to this song is a dash in the negative category.

The band didn't seem to engage with the audience at all... with the exception of Kathryn and Carl, who seemed into the show. Kathryn Calder seems genuinely excited to be there during the show, and stuck around afterwards and mingled with the few people that stuck around after the show. Dan Bejar was very strange on stage... when he was on stage and wasn't singing vocals he would face the drums with his back to the audience... and when he was facing the audience, he was nursing a different beer every time he hit the stage. A beard-less John Collins also stuck around after the show to talk to people, which was appreciated.

The band has been around for 13 years, so there is a lot of material to go through, and a lot of great songs to choose from. I loved all the different instruments and the way the band used them, there was an electric cello (played by guest instrumentalist Ben Kalb; when looking into his other credits, I see that he had contributed to, my fellow Claremont 2002 alumni, Kendel Carson's Alright Dynamite album) harmonica, vibraphone, accordion, kaossilator and other synthesizers, and adept whistling, especially on "The Crash Years". The vocals were rich with so many members, but also it was hard to pick out any individual sounds of the instruments with SO much going on.

Fun fact: Todd Fancey, the guitarist for The New Pornographers, sang the song that Jan played during the Dinner Party episode of The Office... :)

All in all, I would say the show was an 8, but it could easily increase with a bit more engagement with the audience, visiting with fans after the show, and of course, playing "My Rights Versus Yours".