November 21, 2008
Plants & Animals, Wolfe Island Music Fest, 9 August 2008
Hey folks – one of the last shows of the year in Kingston will undoubtedly be one of the best. My good friends and yours from Montreal, Plants & Animals, are hitting the Grad Club tomorrow night with Brian Borcherdt. I am very, very excited about this. It will be the third time I’ve seen P&A this year and I have no doubt that they are going to be just as good as they were the previous two times they were at the Grad Club and as they were at the Wolfe Island Music Fest. They are exceptional live – coming across right at home both in the small club venues like the Grad Club as well as commanding the outdoor festival stage. Do yourself a favour and see them live for yourself. If you are planning to see them at the Grad Club tomorrow but don’t have your ticket yet, you better get there early – but you will want to be there early anyway, to catch Brian Borcherdt who is fantastic. Since I last posted the show has sold out but I have it on good authority that there will be a few tickets at their door. Tour dates can be found on their site.
November 21 – SHERBROOKE, QC, Le Telephone Rouge
November 22 – KINGSTON, The Grad Club
November 27 – MONTREAL, La Tulipe
December 20 – HALIFAX, The Marquee Club
To get you even more excited than you undoubtedly are for the show tomorrow I have a couple of songs from their performance at WIMF this past August. The good people at CBC were there recording the show too and are streaming their recording online at CBC’s Concerts on Demand. Check it out and check out the rest of the site: there is a tonne of good stuff there. They didn’t post the entire show, however, so here are the two songs from the set the Ceeb left off. I hope you dig it.
Plants & Animals, Wolfe Island Music Fest, 9 August 2008
* Faerie Dance
* Bye, Bye, Bye
Buybuybuy – Parc Avenue is hands down one of the best albums of the year. And Mr. Borcherdt’s new record is guaranteed to be amazing as well so be sure to pick that up too.
November 19, 2008
Elliott Brood, Grad Club, Kingston, 12 October 2007
pic from the Ottawa show the following night by Blurasis.
Buckle your seatbelts, Kingston – it’s gonna be a big weekend music-wise and you might just need to prepare yourself. The last time we saw Elliott Brood they came storming through town with The Acorn and Plants & Animals as part of Exclaim‘s Wood, Wire & Whisky tour. Now, they are hitting the Grad Club on Friday with NQ Arbuckle and Plants & Animals are in on Saturday with the radness that is Brian Borcherdt. It was just too much rawk for one show so they had to devote 2 nights to it all (I plan on posting about P&A on Friday but just a heads up – if you want tickets to their show, or for Elliott Brood for that matter, you better act quick because they are selling out fast. MapleMusic – GO!). The Brood never fail to put on a fantastic, footstomping, sweaty night of death country. Really, it is not something that you want to miss. Banjo, suitcase-kickdrum, shredded-throat vocals are all in store for you. Their latest record, ‘Mountain Meadow’ took a couple of years to come out but it was well worth the wait. It is classic EB, with narrative lyrics underlying both the raucously gritty and the strikingly beautiful moments. They tour rather relentlessly so if you’re not in Kingston on Friday chances are pretty good you might see them in your neighbourhood before long. Full dates at their site, upcoming shows include:
November 20 – The Capital Music Hall, Ottawa
November 21 – The Grad Club, Kingston
November 22 – Call the Office, London, ON
December 3 – The Tractor Tavern, Seattle
December 4 – The Doug Fir, Portland, OR
December 5 – Transmission Festival, Vancouver
December 7 – Habitat, Kelowna
December 31 – Lee’s Palace, Toronto
Here are just a few tracks from the fantastic 1.5hr long show they put on in Kingston last October.
Elliot Brood, Grad Club, Kingston, 12 October 2007
* Lookin’ For A Love (Neil Young Cover)
Buy the amazing Elliott Brood CDs here. Pick yourself up a shirt while you’re at it.
[note: post edited to correct year – should be 2007 not 2008]
November 10, 2008
Feist, Massey Hall, Toronto, 1 November 2008
photo by K.Mercer, taken at the NAC in Ottawa(?) from the Feist tour archive.
Prior to Feist‘s stadium gig at the ACC in Toronto, she held a more intimate show (as well as a few ‘secret’ shows in town, or so I am told) at that gem of a venue, Massey Hall. I wasn’t at ACC, so I can’t say how it compared, but the Massey Hall show was outstanding. From the get-go it was pretty clear that this was not going to be a girl-with-a-guitar-singing-on-stage kind of concert but rather it was going to be a *show*. Seeing Feist, I found, was witnessing a spectacle. She is an amazing showperson who commanded the stage with her presence and, of course, her amazing voice. It was evident that a great deal of thought was put into every aspect of the performance. The three person projection/lighting team were absolutely fantastic. They created innovative artistic backdrops for each of the songs using a projector, spotlights, and tiny videocameras. As with Final Fantasy’s use of the projector, this can be somewhat distracting from the music, but overall it was very complementary and enriched the experience for the audience. Feist’s performance was as good as could be imagined. While I was worried her voice might not be at its best (she seemed to be a little hoarse when she spoke) her voice remained strong and clear throughout the evening. Employing looping pedal for her vocals and guitar – and backed by her band – Feist created lush tapestries of sound. She was mesmerizing in the slower moments and absolutely captivating in the upbeat ones. These rock-ier moments led to some of the highlights of the show, with the one-two punches of Mushaboom & I Feel It All at the start of the show and 1234 & Sealion at the end ensured that the audience would walk away with nothing but sheer adoration for her.
Below you will find my recording from the night. I think it turned out rather well, although you may need to turn up the volume on your speakers when playing. I hope you enjoy…I’ll be over here hiding under my desk waiting for my bandwidth to implode.
Feist, Massey Hall, Toronto, 1 November 2008
1) Leaning on the Everlasting Arms
2) fancy meeting you here (talk)
3) So Sorry
4) Mushaboom
5) I Feel It All
6) The Limit to Your Love
7) Ouija board (talk)
8 ) When I Was A Young Girl
9) Honey Honey
10) smoke & mirrors (talk)
11) Who Could Love You More than Me?
12) pull something out (talk)
13) The Park
14) My Moon My Man
15) Past in Present
16) Brandy Alexander
17) ghosts have risen (talk)
18) Gatekeeper
19) 1234
20) Sealion
21) The Water
22) making a lot of noise for Hayden (talk)
23) Secret Heart
24) Let It Die
Buy Feist cds (including the new deluxe edition of The Reminder, out Dec. 2, 2008), shirts, and other goodies at the Feist store.
November 7, 2008
Shows: The D’Urbervilles with Woodhands & PS I Love U TONGIHT
Hey everyone,
Get out your dancing shoes and head to the Grad Club for an epic night of rocking and rolling with two of Canada’s hottest bands The D’Urbervilles and Woodhands (numbers 17 and 7, respectively). They will be joined by PS I Love U for a show that will undoubtedly be epic. This is going to be a monster of an event and not to be missed.
Here’s a taste of live D’Urbs for ya:
(from this recording – more to be found here and here).
If you miss the Kingston show check The D’Urbervilles and Woodhands elsewhere in Ontario:
7 Nov 2008 Grad Club (w/ PS I Love U) – Kingston
8 Nov 2008 Montreal House (w/ Evening Hymns) – Peterborough
12 Nov 2008 University of Ottawa – Ottawa
20 Nov 2008 Call The Office – London
22 Nov 2008 Starlight – Waterloo
23 Nov 2008 Phog Lounge – Windsor
Don’t forget to pick yourself up some awesome records by these three bands.
B(oot)log 