I skipped out of work a bit early on Sun­day to catch the ferry over to the Toronto Islands for the fourth annual Poor Pil­grim Island Show. My first time attend­ing this event, I decided to go as much for the music as for the chance to explore the islands along­side some friends. The fore­cast for the evening called for a thun­der­storm, and with most of the acts per­form­ing out­doors, I was a lit­tle wor­ried that the event would have to devi­ate from its plan. Luck­ily, the storm just missed the islands, so every­thing pretty much went as planned.

The first act of the day, start­ing a 5 pm and per­form­ing inside the Franklin Children’s Sto­ry­book Gar­den, was Picas­tro. They’re a band that I’ve always heard about but never actu­ally sat down to lis­ten to or see live. In fact I don’t know a whole lot about them, but check­ing their bio on Wikipedia they’re described as a “sleep rock.” An odd descrip­tor for a band, but not entirely inac­cu­rate. Singer Liz Hysen sings qui­etly and some of the songs stretched on pretty long; I feel their inti­mate, noc­tur­nal sound would have been a good fit for later in the day, not as the first band. Still, I liked their set, but I feel if I acquaint myself more with their mate­r­ial they could be a band that I could really get into.

Accord­ing the our handy maps (which were avail­able to pick up at Sound­scapes dur­ing the week lead­ing up to the show), the next two acts were going to be per­form­ing at the Gibral­tar Cen­tre for the Arts. The mob of peo­ple, which I’d esti­mate at about 50 or so, made the trek west­wards to find that there were already a bunch of peo­ple wait­ing at the next stop. While Euca­lyp­tus was set­ting up on one end of the room, we were treated to a pup­pet show retelling of the ugly duck­ling story, with a few twists. It was fun.

Euca­lyp­tus is a bit of an all-star band, as far as hav­ing a lot of great Toronto musi­cians among its ranks. Led by alto sax-extraordinaire Brodie West, mem­bers include trum­peter Nicole Ram­per­saud, gui­tarist Alex Luka­shevsky, bassist Michael Smith, per­cus­sion­ist Blake Howard, drum­mer Nick Fraser, and Ryan Dri­ver on piano. I won’t pre­tend I know all that much calypso music, but the band sounded amaz­ing. Cool stuff!

As we were leav­ing for the next spot on our map we were informed to check out the art instal­la­tion on one of the beaches. It con­sisted of a few boom­boxes play­ing music buried under the sand. It was pretty neat! A lot of peo­ple were putting their ears up to the sand to hear bet­ter but I didn’t stick around long enough to try.

At the Cen­tre Island Pier under dark­en­ing skies and light rain I watched Not the Wind Not the Flag, an impo­v­ised duo play­ing a vari­ety of instru­ments includ­ing kalimba, a homemade-looking gui­tar, recorder and drums. My friend who is more into impro­vised music seemed to appre­ci­ate their tech­niques, but it mostly just went over my head. Still, they kept it short and the back­drop was nice, so I’m not complaining.

It was back indoors for the next band, Toronto-by-way-of-California’s Snow­blink, per­form­ing at St. Andrew-by-the-Lake Church. I’ve been a fan ever since I saw them in Jan­u­ary 2009 and have given their last album Long Live many lis­tens. I’ve seen them play a bunch more in the last year and I thought I knew exactly what I’d be see­ing on Sun­day. Hap­pily, the band was play­ing almost entirely new songs that, dare I say, kinda rock? I mean, I don’t know if Snow­blink could ever really rock out, but to me their live show has always been very pre­cious and care­ful. This time, the band seemed a bit looser and the new songs floated less like but­ter­flies and stung more like bees, to use a cliché. Very much look­ing for­ward to see­ing what else they have up their sleeves.

The last stop of the night (for me) was Snake Island where I arrived just as the sun was start­ing to set. THOMAS played a stripped-down set of pop jams to kick things off. I’ve caught them live a few times now but still haven’t given their album Self-Help a proper lis­ten. I was sit­u­ated pretty far back from where they were play­ing and kinda zoned out for part of their set, but I could tell it was good.

Once it was dark out we moved to another sec­tion of the beach for both Tasseo­mancy and Daniel Romano. I saw both of them play very recently and have already writ­ten a lot about them, so I can’t add much more. Artist Yuula Benivol­ski built a “dream machine” which spun around dur­ing their sets and from my van­tage point fit nicely into the Toronto sky­line. Tasseo­mancy used a very cool sound­ing pedal that made their man­dolin sound like an organ or some­thing, and the light­ning in the sky behind them added some fit­ting ambiance to their eerie music. Daniel’s set was dif­fer­ent enough from last week’s show to make it stick out, includ­ing a few new tunes and a cover or two. After his set my friend said, “That man can do no wrong,” and I’d have to agree with him.

There were a lot of peo­ple film­ing the con­cert so I’m hop­ing to see some footage sur­face. I had some tech­ni­cal issues (I for­got my bat­tery at home and had to get my brother to bring it to me, miss­ing out on the first half of the night) but on top of film­ing Snow­blink, I got another song from Daniel Romano, which I’ll post here:

I was exhausted come 11 pm and hav­ing to work in the morn­ing made me decide to sac­ri­fice catch­ing the last two acts of the night, Alex Luka­shevsky Trio and Drumheller. For­tu­nately, by that point in the evening a lot more peo­ple had showed up so despite a fair num­ber of peo­ple tak­ing the ferry back to shore with me, it’s good to know the last two bands would still be play­ing to a good crowd.

All in all, the mini-festival was a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence. It gave me the chance to see a lot of inter­est­ing bands I might not go see nor­mally, and really let me see some cool parts of the islands that I had yet to explore. Kudos to the orga­nizer Matt Cully and to all the bands that played for free. We live in a good city.

Tags: Daniel Romano, Eucalyptus, Not the Wind Not the Flag, Picastro, Poor Pilgrim, Snowblink, Tasseomancy, THOMAS, Toronto Islands · Leave a comment

So last night I vis­ited Toronto’s newest venue, The Shop, located under­neath the restau­rant Parts & Labour in the heart of Park­dale. I remem­ber last fall when I started hear­ing peo­ple talk­ing about a new restau­rant, an off­shoot of Odd­fel­lows and The Social, open­ing up at Queen St. W. and Sorau­ren Ave. that was going to have a small “punk” venue in the base­ment. I’m always happy when bands have new places to play, but I was mostly excited to have a venue open­ing up so close to my apart­ment (Toronto’s west-end is severely lack­ing in rooms to see bands I like play). The venue now known as The Shop finally opened about a month or so ago and I meant to check it out sooner but I’m glad I waited until a show I really wanted to see popped up, as was the case on Sun­day night.

Will Kid­man opened the night with a quick set of songs that have yet to appear on any of his albums as Woolly Leaves (I’m still not sure if he’s play­ing under that name any­more). I cap­tured some video but I had a feel­ing, per­haps because he was still read­ing the lyrics off a sheet, that a lot of the songs were still being devel­oped and I don’t like to put stuff on the inter­net when it’s still being worked on. You know what I mean? Maybe it doesn’t mat­ter. Any­way, I thought all his songs were among the best he’s writ­ten, and his cover of Neil Young’s “Shots” (which he also cov­ered in the Con­stan­tines on their 2006 split 12″ with the Unin­tended) was par­tic­u­larly cool to hear.

Next up was Baby Eagle (Steve Lam­bke, also of the Con­stan­tines) who brought a full band with him, which I believed he dubbed “The Proud Moth­ers,” com­posed of three quar­ters of Attack in Black (Spencer Bur­ton on drums, Ian Kehoe on bass, and Daniel Romano on acoustic gee­tar). It was a fairly sim­i­lar set to the one I wit­nessed back in March at The Horse­shoe when he opened for Daniel, Fred & Julie, which was fine because it gave me a sec­ond chance to hear all his new songs. My ver­dict: I like ‘em! While not too much of a depar­ture from the rest of his mate­r­ial, with song titles like “Fish­er­man or Fish” and “River Bank Sit­ter,” mov­ing to the East-Coast def­i­nitely seems to have informed his lyrics, at the very least. He has a new record called Dog Weather com­ing out soon on You’ve Changed Records, but it was avail­able at the show last night! I lis­tened to it today!

Daniel Romano was last up, armed only with his trusty acoustic and Bruce Penin­sula’s Misha Bower singing in har­mony — the same for­ma­tion I saw just over a month ago at his album release show at The Dakota Tav­ern. It was nice to see a lot more peo­ple come out to Sunday’s show, the record seems to be pick­ing up steam and there were a lot of peo­ple up front lis­ten­ing atten­tively, but enough peo­ple towards the back of the room talk­ing loudly and play­ing foos­ball made for a worse expe­ri­ence than at The Dakota. That’s okay though, there a plenty of other venues in the city that are bet­ter geared towards folk music. I think The Shop will be a good place to see louder music, when a lit­tle bit of chat­ter isn’t such a distraction.

Now that I think about it, are there any good places to see quiet music in Toronto? I men­tioned The Dakota before, but even that place gets loud when there enough peo­ple there. I guess the only time you’re going to find a quiet room is if it’s a large venue and peo­ple have paid a lot of money to be there (Massey Hall for exam­ple). Any bar with a cheap enough cover is going to attract peo­ple who aren’t there for the music, and that’s okay. I feel for­tu­nate enough that I can even see musi­cians I like on a weekly basis play­ing rooms that I can afford. What are your thoughts on this subject?

Tags: Baby Eagle, Daniel Romano, Parts & Labour, Will Kidman · 2 Comments