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By Alex Huynh -  Losing My Edge - 01/11/2007

*siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh*

Coming in from the cold into a Main Hall that has held more bodies, I prepare myself for an evening where I wasn't exactly looking to be conquered. Hands belonging to familiar faces are shook and as soon as I dramatically turn around -- the only way to turn around -- with my drink in hand, The Corduroys came into my consciousness and what hit back was some nice sloppy, shambling 90's-style indie rock. I was at the tail end of their set, but what I had paid attention to did hit some chords. Nice little shimmering sound amidst the slick dirge and some catchy tunes to boot, it was surely more than I had any right to expect. I thought bands only played quirky dance punk these days. I picked up their free CD-R at the door -- OK, I took four -- and the sloppiness was sadly missing from those recordings (collected under an EP they call Love What You're Left With), replaced by dreamy indie pop. It was still nice, but nice doesn't get me off, dirty does. Still, I'll go with memories from the past rather than experiences from the present, so I'll remember their set as being Good.

Almost rather informally, Elizabeth Powell began a set that refreshingly didn't have that performer-audience wall since, well, there wouldn't be much in terms of number on either side of that wall. I had good memories of her set opening up for Evan Dando almost a year ago at the very same place, so I was bracing myself for another powerful and cathartic experience. Though it was more loose than the last time, her performance still hit the right notes. She was joined by a stand-up bass and an acoustic guitar (after she put away her own guitar), and just like that, they were now The Dirty Draws. Covers came in the form of Neil Young's "Harvest Moon", "Nothing Up My Sleeve" by Wilco and some Iron & Wine song, and it was fun -- if you think feeling like you're at the end of your rope is 'fun' -- but the songs themselves almost didn't matter as long as you were being mesmerized by her vocals. The combination of gin warming over inside and chills down the spine made for quite the rush.

Last were Faces On Film and they played like headliners. OK, that meant nothing, let me try again, perhaps using the Peter Travers technique of strategically placing words together that could be used for movie poster quotes. Their first number reminded me of The Walkmen in terms of vocal delivery (y'know, how Hamilton Leithauser enunciates words clearly and slowly in a rising cadence on the slower tempo songs) and also how the music punctures sharply through a washed-out sound. The songwriting didn't do much for me and neither did the sound in all honesty, but somehow the vibe did. There was another one where it felt like the jamming end of Pavement's "Fillmore Jive", but with more emotional detachment coinciding more with the end of the world rather than the end of the rock 'n roll era. This was actually fun -- if your idea of 'fun' is blah blah blah -- but once they started introducing songs that were more, um, song-like into their set, the gin was gone and my spine was room temperature. Given the predicament, I went back out into the cold.

[Tune in to Losing My Edge Sundays 2pm-4pm and Tuesdays 8pm-10pm]

By Trevor Kiernander - Ones and Zeroes - 12/03/2006

And the winner is: the unexpected!

That seemed to be the general sentiment during a lot of the MIMI gala that took place December 3rd at the Spectrum -- well, for me since this being my first MIMI attendance out of ten, as this was the 10th anniversary of the event. Supposedly though, the reports swirling after the show were that it was pretty low budget and seemingly unprofessional, but I’ll give you my take.

First up, the MIMIs are the Montreal International Music Initiative and was founded in 1996 to help bring attention to what was going on locally in the music scene. Originally, the first I in MIMI stood for Independent, but the organizers obviously had bigger dreams for this baby, and rightly so. I won’t go into any more details on the history of MIMI, but if you happen to come across a program for the evening, everything is detailed in there: the who’s who, the what’s what and the planting of the first seed. After reading through the sensational history of the event, I did scratch my head at the size of what was laid out in front of me, but it reflected the very close-knit music community that Montreal has and something I find spans all of the arts communities in Montreal. Montreal’s acceptance and support of the arts is what brought me here from southern Ontario as opposed to moving to Toronto, but I digress.

I grabbed at the opportunity to cover the gala for two main reasons: Think About Life and We Are Wolves. I’ve always enjoyed WAW whenever they have played and I had yet to see TAL play live, so I thought this was the perfect night to get a lot out of the system. When I arrived at the Spectrum, I definitely wasn’t expecting an entire sit-down event. I guess this should have been obvious by the "Gala Event" title, but part of me was hoping for one hell of a throwdown of some serious local talent.

The presenter/host took to the stage and gave the impression of being someone I should’ve known, but due to my lack of socializing outside of my small institutional bubble -- rapidly shrinking now that I have graduated -- I hadn’t the vaguest clue who she was, and other friends of mine ‘in-the-know’ didn’t either. Again, small thing, but let’s get to the music!

Angela Desveaux took the stage first, with three or four sweet country tracks. I hadn’t previously heard or heard of Desveaux, but by the reception, she’ll probably be kicking around for some time to come. Next up, more awards, presented by more people I didn’t know.

Call Me Poupée were next on the bill. I like this band, I really do, but I feel that there is just something missing from them. They seem like a fluffed-up and toned-down Les Ritas Mitsoukos. Maybe I’m wrong.

Think About Life were up third, again peppered in with awards here and there. These guys played like they were playing any other show with hundreds of screaming and jumping fans; it was just too bad that the most people could do was to tap their feet and bob their heads (the typical Montreal show position, but I’ve heard the tales of TAL’s shows). The sound guy seemed to be sleeping on the job as well, but TAL battled through, and ended with a kick-ass medley, cramming about three to five songs in less than four minutes. Brilliant! These guys should have walked off with the Étoile montante (Rising Star) award, but as in everything, there are hidden politics I’m sure.

We Are Wolves were the last performance I stuck around for, and these boys can rock a party. They seem to get tighter every time I see them, and I am thoroughly looking forward to some new material. The only distraction were the visuals that were obviously of no doing of their own. The screens were projecting the band with psychedelic designs à la Jefferson Airplane, and they weren’t even close to being low-budget. They felt more along the lines of some presets in iMovie or something. Again, small things that really shouldn’t distract from the purpose of the evening of promoting the Montreal music scene.

The only other disappointment to the evening, I felt, was the lack of nods to other parts of the music scene, and more specifically the electronic music scene. One example being Foe Destroyer, released by Stephen Beaupré on the MUTEK_REC label. After being nominated as the Album of the Year - Electronic Music at the ADISQ 2006 Gala (Quebec Music Awards), one of its tracks, "LES FILLES", is now nominated at the 3rd QWARTZ Electronic Music Awards (Paris). More politics? I did have a good time, nonetheless.

The award results for the evening were:

Nova - Carl-Éric Hudon, Darling Arms and Snailhouse
Cosmo - Afrodizz
Réalisateur - "Close to Paradise", Patrick Watson
Bourreaux de tournée - Priestess
Concert - Les Breastfeeders
St Urbain - Ghislain Poirier
Electro - 011
Rock - The Besnard Lakes
Fountains - The Adam Brown
International - Patrick Watson
Étoile montante (Rising Star) - Call Me Poupée
Groupe - Wolf Parade
Song/Chanson - "You are a Runner and I’m My Father’s Son", Wolf Parade
Album - Trompe-l’oeil, Malajube

[Ones and Zeroes is currently on hiatus.]

Check out last year's review here.

By Dan Stefik - The Ground-Up - 11/05/2006

Sometime early November, Colin Meloy and his lofty band of Decemberists pulled into Montreal’s Metropolis and delivered on that Sunday night. While I was under the impression that something was missing during their performance, I couldn’t shake the fact that this band has a vast, diversely made-up following dedicated to their own brand of indie-folk/rock.

Appreciating this Portland-based outfit is becoming a contentious affair; some people just don’t get it (the obsession) while others find no need to get anything (obsessed) in the first place. I say just like it if you like it and loathe it if you don’t.

The fact that EMI have signed them on to their shiny, polished roster has rubbed some the wrong way, and with good reason. This new batch of songs (The Crane’s Wife) have a glistening quality about them, especially when compared to the production qualities that nurtured Meloy’s last batch of songs, (2004’s Picaresque).

At the root of the Decemberists popularity is a deep-seated ambivalence. Some say that the band’s histrionics are over the top, and when compared to most cooler-than-thou trendy indie rock bands and their followers, they indeed are. Similar arguments are often leveled at Destroyer’s Dan Bejar and his idiosyncratic vocal stylings. I would argue that Bejar and Meloy are two of the most interesting lyricists in indie rock, but if you can’t appreciate where their pens meet the page, you just might not get it.

So, to say the least, a number of lovers and literature majors recently congregated at the Metropolis club, and Meloy and his cast of characters didn’t let them down. The set comprised a number of tracks from each album, but the majority of them from the latest, which might have disappointed some fans this time around. Regardless of the (major label) track leanings, the show was about much more than meets the ear. Meloy proved that indie rock can be so much more than the iPod generation have made it. It can be smart and it can be dubiously cool. At one point he had the rather large floor-bound crowd split right up the middle, the one side shouting, albeit lovingly, at the other in one immensely uninhibited sing-along. Doesn’t sound original enough for you? How about Meloy organizing his costumed bandmates onto the floor and narrating a scene from the stage: they were to render one of those moments of National Heritage (not unlike those wonderful commercials from Canadian Heritage we’ve all frequently seen on the tube). If that didn’t do it for you (read: make you proud to be a Canadian, or a native for that matter), then nothing could (or you simply weren’t there).

[Tune in to The Ground-Up Tuesdays from Noon to 2pm.]

By Jo Satana - 11/17/2006

I can already hear the sighs in your voice: "Guns 'n Roses... you mean that hack Axl’s poor excuse for a band? He’s ripping people off by selling concert tickets for a band that no longer exists? Who needs him, and besides, there’s nothing he does that I haven’t seen before!"

I want to first start off by saying that if you recognize yourself in the quotation above, then you are a whiny bitch. Secondly, I want to add that I disagree with people who immediately write off an artist by comparing them to an older peer. Art IS evolution, and each new generation of artists build from the structures handed to them from the artists of the past. Writing off Axl as a glorified Steven Tyler for example is like saying Steven Tyler is a glorified Robert Plant... who is in turn a supped-up version of Mick Jagger... you catch my drift.

Now on with the show:

Arriving a little tardy as usual -- come on people, I was gunning it cross-province style -- we completely missed the opening act. I was detained at the entrance by a few of the bouncers in a friendly exchange of conversation and couldn't be bothered to wrap things up rather than hurry on in, out of curiosity, to witness the noisy crapfest that was going on onstage (i.e. I heard what the opening band sounded like from outside and preferred to share a few drinks in the parking lot).

Surprisingly, The Suicide Girls (salivating) were up next and to my dismay, shook their little party things in front of a quiet, polite audience. It's not that their routine was tired or anything (well frankly, aside from the stewardess bit, the awesome hula-hoop bit, and the chocolate sauce as "feces" bit, these girls aren't really great dancers albeit excellent eye candy) but the Ottawa crowd was way too polite and came off a little prudish. They clapped...but were were the screaming and the cat calls? At least the music was good; they strung together a fairly nice soundtrack, kids!

Sebastien Bach was the last opening act and I'm not going to lie: I couldn't take it. Three songs in and a 100 "Canada can really rock/Canadian women are the best" comments later, I was off to the bar to get energized and to cleanse my pallet. Man, what was even worst was the sound. I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but there was either a strategic move to make Sebastien's voice the only thing audible (more on this later), or someone really needs to check if the "on" switch was pulled on everyone else’s equipment (I'm not going to blame the arena's accoustics... yet). Barely bearable set in my book, not from a music perspective but Bach is one of the more annoying frontmen I've encountered in my lifetime and the fact that he messed up "Ottawa" for "Toronto" was the icing on the cake. And yes, the Trailer Park Boys did come onstage a few times, which is curious because WTF were they doing there in the first place? Couldn’t the Suicide Girls come on and join the party instead? I mean, really.).

Now for the moment of truth, the pièce de résistance, the moment that validates and qualifies this review in the first place: Axl Rose's new G'nFkn R!

Walking leisurely onstage at the early time of midnight, I was immediately taken aback from what I saw: Axl Rose really is the artist that time forgot. My mouth was almost agape as I watched the world's most notorious frontman walk pleasantly onstage during "Welcome to the Jungle", smiling genuinely at the audience, wearing a respectable black shirt and jeans. I was suddenly overtaken with the impression that the world really did move on without him for the past 15 years and that we are suddenly becoming re-acquainted with someone who obviously took the time to mature and perfect his game. Let me explain.

When he first announced his comeback two years ago, it was a disaster. He had strung together a freak show of a band that he obviously didn't fit in with (or respect) and was plagued with stories of brawls and show cancellations. They were obviously trying to hold onto the torch that has long been unlit. Obviously learning from his mistakes, what I saw before me was an artist who culled together a nice adult band comprised of virtuosos and jammers who could easily fit in as Joe Cocker's group. It was shocking. It was as if he shed his "Appetite" skin and is now able to focus on something else entirely. Really weird stuff considering the last version of him I saw was a coked-up wife-beater on the road to destruction.

Live, the group played their classics ranging from the fast to the slow. It’s obvious that his voice (which was always plagued with problems since the beginning) no longer has the power to carry like it used to and the sound, for the faster/louder songs at least, were subdued and very tame. I was put off by this at first because the only thing audible at a respectable Rock 'N Roll level was his voice and whatever solo was being played. Frankly, if the sound arrangements were done otherwise, Axl would have been completely drowned out. On the plus side, the slower ballads were perfect and were actually the most pleasurable part of the whole experience: I can totally see Axl doing a small club tour in the future, just him, his piano and a guitarist.

So there you have it, two hours and a half, all the classics, one encore, five new songs (insert Chinese Democracy jokes here) and a very upbeat and surprisingly appreciative -- I can even say HUMBLE -- Axl. I have no clue where his current journey will take him, but if 15 years made him what I saw last night, he is definitely on the right path. At 2:30 am, the car ride was quiet on the way home (everyone was fast asleep, jerkoffs!), but looking into the barren countryside of the 417 on my way back to QC, I couldn't help but smile and realize that Rock 'N Roll isn't dead, it just traded its leather jacket and bandana for a smoking blazer and a nice pair of shoes.

Great, mature and professional Rock 'N Roll that was stained by an unfortunate appearance by Sebastien Bach. He even came onstage with Axl and gushed like a little school boy. Blergh!

[Jo Satana doesn't work here anymore, but he keeps sending us stuff.]