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

One of the first bands I saw this year at Sap­pyFest was The Har­bour­coats, the still-sorta-new-because-they’re-relatively-unknown band led by Bry Webb from the Con­stan­tines. It was a really nice way to kick off the fes­ti­val and def­i­nitely had me hum­ming the songs to myself all week­end. This wasn’t my first time see­ing Bry play­ing away from his reg­u­lar gig — I remem­ber hear­ing at least one of these songs when he did a set at the Three Gut Records 5th anniver­sary party years and years ago at the Tran­zac, and I’ve sub­se­quently seen him play on a few other occa­sions lead­ing up to last Fri­day. Join­ing him this time ’round was Mike Feuer­stack (aka Snail­house) and my old pal Jonas Bon­netta (aka Evening Hymns). The songs were sub­tle and majes­tic, show­cas­ing Bry’s pow­er­ful voice in a whole new way. I’m super excited to hear their forth­com­ing record, too bad no one knows when it’s com­ing out. Maybe I should look into get­ting that Con­stan­tines acoustic EP they put out a few months back to hold me over. Which reminds me: if any­one from Arts & Crafts is read­ing this, can you please press it to 10″ vinyl and send me a copy? What’s with this digital-only foolishness?

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Tags: Attack in Black, Harbourcoats, Jon-Rae Fletcher, One Hundred Dollars, Sackville, SappyFest, Snowblink · 5 Comments