To cel­e­brate and offi­cially wel­come their new 7″ sin­gle, last week Tasseo­mancy played a rare Toronto head­lin­ing show at The Tran­zac. I first encoun­tered the twins Sari and Romy Light­man when I moved to Toronto in 2008. They were actu­ally the first group I inter­viewed (when they were known as Ghost Bees) for the National Post, and their album Tasseo­mancy was one of my favourites from that year. In the two years since then their music has evolved to have a much darker and atmos­pheric sound, per­fectly suited for their macabre lyrics and style. The addi­tion of keys and drums and switch to elec­tric gui­tar should help turn a few more heads, espe­cially those who had them painted as just another folk band with nice harmonies.

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Tags: Castlemusic, Tasseomancy, Tranzac · Leave a comment

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

Well, I’ve been putting off writ­ing this for days now and I really don’t think I can wait any longer. This year, like the last two years, I attended North-By-North-East. I decided to make more of an effort this year to check out mul­ti­ple shows each night and in the end I did pretty well. As usual though, I ended up grav­i­tat­ing towards bands I already know and love rather than check­ing out new stuff. Here’s my week­end, day-by-day.

THURSDAY

My night started at The Great Hall, a 120-year-old build­ing at Queen and Dover­court that recently started host­ing con­certs. It was my first time there, though I’d pre­vi­ously been to The The­ater Cen­ter (which is in the same build­ing). The Great Hall is a sim­i­lar room, with a bal­cony wrap­ping around the room, but instead of seats in the mid­dle, the main floor is entirely flat, which I guess explains the “hall” part of its name. I didn’t get too close to the stage, prefer­ing to lurk in the shad­ows under­neath the bal­cony, but the sight­lines were good from wher­ever I stood. This would be thanks to the high stage, which reminds me of a minia­ture ver­sion of the one you would find a The Opera House or The Phoenix. Together with some great light­ing and sound made for a pretty fine place to see some music.

The first band I saw was Women, who I last saw at the Horse­shoe in March 2009, dur­ing CMW. The Cal­gary quartet’s first album came out in 2008 and I can’t say I’ve lis­tened to it more than a hand­ful of times, but I remem­ber lik­ing much of it. Unfor­tu­nately, the band really stayed a bit too still for my lik­ing and my excite­ment waned early on. Still, the new songs were solid.

Tak­ing the stage after them was LA’s Best Coast, who I caught last time they were in town back in April. I liked ‘em then, and I liked them here too. Good songs, good style, look­ing for­ward to hear­ing their album.

I left after a few songs, hop­ing to catch Metz at The Gar­ri­son, but by the time I arrived they’d fin­ished play­ing. Nev­er­the­less, DD/MM/YYYY were about to take the stage, so I decided to stick around because it had been a long time since I’d seen them play. I’ve never really con­nected with their music in the past and my atti­tude didn’t change too much this time, but I do appre­ci­ate what they do more than before. Their long repet­i­tive grooves reminded me of Oneida, which I liked. They’re fun to watch and while the music isn’t always my thing, they obvi­ously work very hard and I can back that.

I hur­ried over to the Kelp Records show­case at Clinton’s, and caught a bit of The Michael Parks (fea­tur­ing Andy Swan, San­dro Perri, Greg Smith of the Weak­erthans, and Shayne Cox, most recently of Sports: The Band) and stayed for some of Andrew Vin­cent. Both acts were laid­back, loose, and delight­ful. Andrew Vin­cent was espe­cially enter­tain­ing, as he decided to sing/rap over pre-recorded back­ing tracks for the first few songs. That might sound strange, but his smart lyrics, awk­ward ges­tures and hushed voice made for fas­ci­nat­ing show.

I ended the night back at The Gar­ri­son, where my house-guests for the week­end, PS I Love You, were play­ing at 2 am. Not too many peo­ple were still there at that late hour, but you could tell that every­one who stuck around and saw them was pretty excited.

FRIDAY

The first stop of the night for me was the Glad­stone Hotel Ball­room for the NOW Mag­a­zine showcase. I was there to see Halifax’s Tasseo­mancy (for­merly Ghost Bees, they announced the name change mid-way through their set), the project of twin sis­ters Romy and Sari Light­man. I last saw them when they played a show at my apart­ment in March, and their new songs have really stuck with me. Right off the start I knew I was in for a treat, when I real­ized that Tim­ber Tim­bre’s Tay­lor Kirk and Simon Trot­tier would be accom­pa­ny­ing the twins, switch­ing between drums, gui­tar, key­board, and lap­steel. Also shar­ing the stage were a group of women cov­ered in body paint and car­ry­ing staffs and sculp­tures and essen­tially just adding a the­atri­cal ele­ment to an already dark and creepy set of music. One of them even did an inter­pre­tive dance to one of the songs, freak­ing me out fur­ther. Best thing I saw at NXNE this year, for sure!

Obvi­ously I wanted to stick around to see Tim­ber Tim­bre, but I also really wanted to go check out Katie Stel­ma­nis at Wrong­bar. I decided to try to see a bit of both sets, duck­ing out dur­ing Tim­ber Timbre’s third song to make my way west along Queen St. I don’t think I missed much — I’ve seen them play so often and I always enjoy it, but I’m really itch­ing for some new material!

It was my first time vis­it­ing Wrong­bar, and the lay­out was not at all how I pic­tured it in my mind, but I still thought it was a pretty cool room. I was able to catch the last half of Katie and her band’s set, which included one very dance­able num­ber that I’d never heard her play before. They’re one of my favourite acts in Toronto right now and I hope more peo­ple catch on to what they’re doing because it’s really quite good.

Dia­mond Rings played next, dressed like a pea­cock. Peo­ple lost their shit, of course.

At mid­night, I hur­ried over to the Dakota to catch Evening Hymns. The place was jam packed, and unfor­tu­nately it seemed like a lot of the peo­ple weren’t there to lis­ten to music. It was a damn shame peo­ple didn’t shut up for their set because from what I could hear it was beau­ti­ful. I got fed up with the chat­ter and left early to try to get into Lee’s Palace for PS I Love You.

When I arrived, Japan­droids had just fin­ished and there was a steady stream of peo­ple exit­ing the build­ing. All I could think to myself is, “These folks don’t know what they’re miss­ing!” I think a lot of Japan­droids fans would dig PS I Love You — they’re both gui­tar and drum duos who write really catchy ener­getic anthems — but if I’m not out there check­ing out new bands, I can’t expect oth­ers to as well. I found my spot up front and had my brain melted by them for the sec­ond night in a row.

SATURDAY

I was pretty exhausted after the first two nights, so for Sat­ur­day I chose to just one show: The D’Urbervilles at The Drake. They weren’t going on until mid­night though, so I decided to go see if my boys in Attack in Black were hang­ing out at the Horse­hoe. I’d be miss­ing their set for The D’Urbervilles, but it was good to hang out for a while any­way. I did man­age to catch some of Bruce Penin­sula’s set, and to my ears they’ve never sounded bet­ter. I wish I could have stuck around for their whole show.

So yes, the fes­ti­val ended at The Drake, with my old friends The D’Urbervilles. See­ing them play is a NXNE tra­di­tion that I’m happy to keep up.

To wrap things up, I agree with every­one else who has said this was the best NXNE ever. Though I wasn’t around in the mid-90s when it began, it was cer­tainly the most fun I’ve had out of the past three that I’d attended. With all the new venues that have opened up in the last year, and with the nice weather we had over the week­end, walk­ing around the city at times reminded me of being in Austin for South-By-South-West. About a mil­lion less peo­ple, but the feel­ing was still there.

If you’ve read this far, con­grat­u­la­tions, here’s a video of PS I Love You play­ing their song “Meet Me at the Muster Sta­tion” at Lee’s Palace from the Fri­day of NXNE.

Tags: Andrew Vincent, Attack in Black, Best Coast, Bruce Peninsula, Clinton's, Dakota Tavern, DD/MM/YYYY, Diamond Rings, Lee's Palace, NXNE, PS I Love You, Tasseomancy, The D'Urbervilles, The Garrison, The Great Hall, The Michael Parks, Timber Timbre, Women, Wrongbar · 1 Comment