The CanCon Catalogue

If you've never been to the Alix Goolden Hall in Victoria, British Columbia, then consider yourself among those who have not experienced one of the better concert venues around. And if you've never seen Jill Barber in concert, then consider yourself among those who have not experienced one of Canada's better live performances. And so, if you were among those who saw Ms. Barber at the Alix Goolden last night, you may consider yourself lucky.

The show was opened by a game David Myles, who entertained the crowd with the story behind the song he wrote to convince his wife to marry him ("I wrote it five years ago, and we got married last fall, so it didn't work as well as I wanted it, too") and how despite being an East Coaster, failed to visit Cape Breton for years because he had it so built up in his mind. An old friend of Barber's, he was a good fit for the opening act.

Barber, for her part, took to the stage with a four piece band that included a stand-up bass and multi-instrumentalist (violin, clarinet, saxophone) and a glittery backdrop that was, apparently, the first thing she ever bought online. I was curious as to how she was going to mix the fifties soul sound of her most recent disc, "Chances" with the singer-songwriter-country-folk fare of her earlier releases, but she pulled it off ably. She started with a couple of "Chances" songs, before donning a guitar and delving into her back catalogue. She switched back and forth throughout, sometimes losing band members for the more intimate numbers. What gave it all continuity was her gift for putting fresh legs on old themes (love found, love lost, love never had), and her formidable pipes. Powerful but never overdone, she can lay claim to being a female chanteuse in the tradition of Patsy Cline.

The highlight of the night came with the last song before the inevitable encore, this is when she pulled out "Chances" first single, the propulsive, call-and-response blues of "Oh My My." With the audience joining in, the band going all out, and the church setting, you could easily picture a similar sound coming out of a southern gospel church circa 1923. Alas, that's the only song she has in that style, I'm sure if she wrote a few more, there would have been dancing in the aisles. As it was, there was simply a rush to the merchandise table. Definitely a show to check out.

Jill Barber plays Vancouver tonight at The Rio Theatre and in Penticton, BC, on April 5 at the Dream Cafe.

What's to say? If you've listened to Hawksley Workman lately, you know that he's one of the best (and most prolific) singer-songwriters in Canada, putting out two albums last year alone, one focused on pop and ballads and the other more dance-rock. If you haven't listened to him lately, you probably think of him as the guy who did "Striptease," and "Jealous of Your Cigarette" and not much else. Well, back then he had moments of greatness, but was somewhat inconsistent. Since then, well, he still has moments of inconsistency, but they are far fewer and far between, and the greatness is, well, greater. If you wrote him off before, it's time to take a second look.

Hawksley Workman plays tonight at the Royal McPherson theatre. Tickets and details here.

The Tranzmitors - "Live A Little More"


*for more songs, hit "click to read more"*


So, tonight is Shad and tomorrow's the Tranzmitors-- and if you're keeping score at home, that's two shows in two days, meaning it will be concert work concert. This almost wouldn't be worth it except the groups involved are so great. I told you about Shad yesterday with his easy-going hip-hop vibes, and the Tranzmitors are a major shift with their jagged rock and roll. They trade in the sort of late-70s/early 2000s garage rock that made me fall in love with music in the first place, the sort of stuff that sounds like it's going to fall apart any moment, but even if it did it would still be amazing. I don't know why a bunch of guys from Vancouver sing with British accents, but the effect is to make you want to grab a pint and raise a toast to the working class. All I can say is don't expect too much from me for a few days after this.

The Tranzmitors play at Lucky Bar on Friday, February 20. myspace, radio 3

Sometimes I feel like I'm something special because not only did I get a Bachelor of Arts Degree (political science/international studies), but I actually got a (temporary) job from it. Inevitably, though, there's a million people out there to knock me off my high horse. Shad is one of those people.

Not only does he have two critically acclaimed albums under his belt, the most recent of which was nominated for both a Juno and a Polaris Prize, but he made his name in the music world while at the same time getting an undergraduate degree from Wilfred Laurier University. And then not only does he get a much cooler job (professional rapper) than me, but he destroys any dreams of intellectual superiority I might have by balancing his pending superstardom by working towards a master's degree from Simon Fraser.

On top of all that, he goes and makes the best music video (see below) I've seen in years! The worst part is, his music is so good (organic hip-hop with a sense of humour) and his live show so well-regarded (apparently he often has a live band, and he's been invited to play the Vans Warped Tour this year), that I am handing over MY hard-earned money to give HIM more. DAMN YOU SHAD!

Shad plays at the Lucky Bar on Thursday, February 19. Tickets here, Shad myspace here.

Further Reading: concert review, mindyourmind.ca video interview, torontoindie.com interview, eyeweekly, the globe and mail, the national post, exclaim.ca

It's almost good I'm so swamped with work that I can't go to any concerts tonight, because that saves me the difficult choice of seeing either Kardinal Offishall (earlier post) or the Library Voices, a Saskatchewan band who I think may have the best name since the Tragically Hip. Because as much respect as I have for Kardi, you can't argue with the fact that it's almost impossible to get the beginning of this song out of my head.



Library Voices play tonight at Lucky Bar with Matt Goud.


myspace, thelibraryvoices.blogspot.com

Back in 1998, the single "Northern Touch" was released. Featuring a number of Canadian rappers, it was a coming out party for hip-hop on this side of the border. Since then, a number of homegrown stars have been touted as "the one"-- the rapper who was going to move beyond these borders and make a splash in the United States and beyond (apparently disregarding Snow, who had done that five years earlier with "Informer"). First it was going to be someone from the song: Rascalz seemed likely, then Choclair. After that, new names like Swollen Members and k-Os started to make waves. But no one made the jump. Until last year when, ten years exactly after "Northern Touch" came out, the man who was brought in at the last minute to be a part of that song (replacing k-Os and Jully Black, who couldn't make the session) and who had in recent times been somewhat disregarded here in Canada, returned in a big way by teaming up with international stars like Akon and Rihanna and becoming the first Canadian rapper in history to hit the top ten in the United States. The song? "Dangerous." The man? Kardinal Offishal, rudebwoy number one, leader of the underground sensations the Black Jays, and an undeniably dedicated and hard-working individual for having made it after so long.

Given the amount that "Dangerous" leans on the already established Akon and the extent to which Kardi has been taken for granted here at home, it's easy to write him off. And while it's true that his latest album Not 4 Sale is nothing if not a commercial venture, it still contains some of the catchiest songs to come out last year, and Offishal's back catalogue is consistent enough that he can be forgiven going pop in order to get some pay-off. I mean, aside from "Northern Touch," which would be nowhere near as good without him, he's got "On Wid Da Show," "Everyday Rudebwoy," "Bakardi Slang," "Ol' Time Killing," "Money Jane,"... the list goes on. And as for those who might accuse him of "going American", well, he is doing a Canadian tour in February, so that's got to say something.

Kardinal Offishall plays tonight (February 17) at Element (formerly Legends). Tickets here.
Kardinal Offishall: site, myspace

I wanted to love this show. I really did. You Will Land With a Thud was one of my favourite albums of last year, and the raucous eight-piece band I heard on record seemed like they would put on an exciting, high-energy live show. And don't get me wrong, they do-- or, at least, they obviously can. But there were enough bad ideas in the night's organization to take what should have been a great show and turn it into a merely ok concert-going experience. So what follows is a list of suggestions for either the band or the venue (I'm not sure who was behind these decisions) so that future shows aren't similarly tarnished.

1. If you're playing a government town, don't do it on a weeknight.
I've never been to the East Coast, so I don't know if this applies there. But if there's one thing I've learned about Victoria in the short time I've been here, it's that the party is reserved strictly for the weekend. Other than that, the nightlife is limited to-- well, none as far as I can tell. Put it this way: when it's nigh-impossible to find a downtown restaurant that's open past seven on a Sunday night, you can be darn well sure that putting on a concert by a little-known band after ten o'clock on a Wednesday is a good way to ensure a far-less-than-capacity turn-out. When one in four of the people there is in the band, something's wrong with the scheduling.

2. If you have to play on a weeknight, start earlier. Or at least on time.
Not being much of a bar person, it is a giant pet peeve of mine when I go to see a show and have to hang out in said bar for an hour before the band I came to see starts, especially when I arrive after the advertised start-time. This goes double when the advertised start-time is ten o clock and I have to go to work the next morning. And again, this is a government town, and you're playing in the government district-- odds are I'm not alone with the early morning wake-up call.

3. If you start after the advertised start-time, the opening act should not play a full set.
Especially when the opening act is actually three people from the headliners.

4. If the opening act plays a full set, then you should start almost immediately after they do, and not take a half hour break prior to taking the stage.
Especially when the opening act is actually three people from the headliners, meaning there's no need to switch set-ups. Everything was already on stage! Why didn't you tune your instruments before the opening act went on? Why did you wait half an hour after they finished before even going up there to see if they worked?

5. If you have made all of the above errors, for god's sake when you finally take the stage, put the crowd into a great mood, have a full dance-floor (a real feat when doing that involves having literally 95% of the audience out there, do not take a "short break" twenty minutes in.

This is where it really became clear someone involved was not thinking straight. Because despite all of the above setbacks, they could have been erased from my memory if the band had just played their set right through. Let me reiterate: the Tom Fun Orchestra put on a great show. Eight band members (including an accordionist, trumpeter, and violinist) crammed onto a tiny stage, all but the drummer right up front, giving a full-on assault of dirty Celtic rock led by a guttural, Tom Waits-ish front-man that has almost the entire audience dancing is something you are unlikely to experience anywhere else. I was loving it as they sped through what was shaping up to be their entire recorded output, building to momentum which each new song, when suddenly it's announced that the band will be taking a short break. What?

Again, let me state the facts: it's a Wednesday, it's a government town, and now it's after midnight. It's also freezing (inexplicably, the doors were left open, possibly to allow the smoke machine to keep doing its thing, but who really likes smoke machines anyways?) and we had to pay a cover to get into a a bar that is almost empty. This is not Saturday night at the city's hottest bar. People are not just hanging and-- wow!-- they get treated to a great live show.

No, people have very obviously changed their nightly routine and handed over cash to come watch the band. So you don't pull the "take a break so they buy more drinks" after the band plays for less than hour, especially when it's now past midnight, and especially when the audience is already dwindling despite an undeniably exciting performance. The "short" break is the perfect time to leave, and leave they did-- at least a quarter and probably closer to half. This pared down those who watched the rest of the set to just over two dozen. I was tempted to leave myself, but only stayed because I was familiar with the group's work and really wanted to hear some of my favourite songs, which I was sure would be great. And I was right-- when "Last of the Curious Thieves" with its beautiful violin line made way for the driving "Rum and Tequila," it becomes clear why this group has won and been nominated for such high-profile awards as entertainer of the year on their home turf.

But for anyone who just thought they might check the band out and had someplace to be the next day, a break is a great time to take off. And, yeah, they likely left thinking "they seemed like fun," but having missed about half of the band's best songs, the incentive to look into them further or pick up a CD was likely lost. And as to the bar, those who left weren't buying more drinks.

So here's my verdict: the Tom Fun Orchestra are worth seeing, but not so worth it that if you're only sort of interested in them it's worth giving up a good night's sleep to do so. Singer Ian MacDougall was joking when he said "If you haven't figured it out... we're famous. Really famous," and I laughed at the time. But looking at the way the way the show was set up, I can't help but wonder whether someone involved actually believed that they had such high-profile entertainers they could get a big late night/early morning audience coming out on a weeknight to see them, and get them to fill up on drinks besides. Again, I don't know if the band or the venue or some combination are to blame, so I don't want to dissuade you from seeing the band in the future-- it was an enjoyable show despite these set-backs, and that is a testament to their entertainment value. They are a talented group of performers, and if you like their recorded output, you will like them in person. As for me, I still like the band, but am disappointed that a poor set-up prevented me from loving them, and while the small minority of people who stuck the whole thing out were clearly happy, in the end the band was left preaching to the choir while the unconverted skipped out early.

The Tom Fun Orchestra is currently on a cross-Canada tour. For more dates, see tomfun.ca or the band's myspace.

Thank goodness for laundromats.

Because if I hadn't stopped in at one, I would have totally missed this show. But I went into a laundromat and there, amidst old calendars and invitations to walk your dog for cash, was notice that Cape Breton's the Tom Fun Orchestra would be bringing their Tom Waits goes to the the East Coast sound to Victoria in the form of the Pan(Handling) Canadian Boxcar Crusade. Their album, You Will Land With a Thud, deserves to be far more popular than it is, even in indie-rock circles. This tour has all eight of their members squeezed into a van, and based on some of the reviews of their shows so far, tonight's show should be a good one. They're playing tonight at the Upstairs Cabaret, and here's some of their songs for you to enjoy.




More songs here and here.

Further Reading:
tomfun.ca
See Magazine, the Gauntlet, the Hour, punktv.ca interview.

As promised, here is my review of the excellent Mother Mother show at Sugar Nightclub this past Saturday night.

First off, let me give you my impressions of Sugar. Having been to enough concerts with drunken/hopped up idiots, I appreciate their high level of security-- everyone was scrutinized, and any possible problem-causing material taken away. However, nothing can protect you from the decor.

I'm all for dives, but generally dives involve concrete or wood. Not carpet. Sugar is completely unique to my experiences for being a bar with carpet. From the 80s, too, by the look of it.

Having been to so many shows recently that were in a theatre setting, it was somewhat disorienting to find myself in a bar, without assigned, or, well, almost any seating, save a few chairs, a couple of booths, and a questionable looking couch. But after grabbing a couple of drinks, we soon carved  out a little corner for ourselves to listen to the music.                                        


The first act was one Laura Smith, who I know nothing about. Her music seemed to be in the vein

of the indie-chanteuse that's so popular nowadays and that you can find in almost any town. She performed ably and the crowd was appreciative, although she definitely seemed better suited to a coffee shop than a dance floor and pool table venue.

 






Next up were the Racoons [sic], whom I'm gathering are turning into something of hometown heroes around here. I'd listened to a couple of their songs prior to the show and found myself shrugging, but that changed once I saw them going live. I'm rarely converted to a completely unknown band solely on their live performance, but in this case I was. They occupy a sonic density somewhere between Bloc Party, Tokyo Police Club, and Wolf Parade, with lead singer Matthew Lyal recalling some combination of the latter's Spencer Krug and the Kaiser Chief's Ricky Wilson. I'm not going to talk too much about them here since I grabbed a CD and plan on doing a full review, but suffice it to say they're likely going places.




The Racoons hyped the crowd up sufficiently for Mother Mother to take the stage for a room of
happy people. With their band's name hanging behind them they opened with a high-energy rendition of "Hayloft" from their newest release, O My Heart. New singer/keyboardist Jasmin Parker fit in seamlessly, with her vocals melding in perfect sync with the brother-sister combo of Ryan and Molly Guldemond. Despite the darker post-punk tendencies of the music, these two clearly come from a country/folk background based on their vocal harmonies and Ryan's guitar-picking style and tendency to keep said guitar above his waist, not to mention his Chris Isaak-style coifs. While the enthusiasm of the female singers was infectious, it is Ryan who occupies centre stage, and for good reason. He is an entertainer, playling like a man possessed-- at times, he acted as if his finger-picking hand was getting away from him and there was nothing he could do to control the results.

What would have been an enjoyable show became a great one when drummer Ali Sidait and bassist Jeremy Page started the instantly-recognizable rhythmic pulse of "Body of Years." They wisely played up the introduction, slowly building the parts with Ryan semi-improvising the opening riff. This is the song that very-rightly won the CBC Radio 3 Bucky Award for "Best Vocals" and my fear going in was that the band wouldn't be able to replicate it's sonic range in a live setting. Well, they can and they did, to great effect. After the jam session on the end of the song, which works far better live than on record, they wisely kicked immediately into the next song so as not to lose any momentum. Other bands take note: this is the mark of a professional-- switching gear is cool once in a while, but if you want to keep the crowd going, you use the gear you're holding while the audience is hyped.

While this one-two punch was easily the pinnacle of the night, the denouement didn't lack for excitement. While Mother Mother's two existing records, Touch Up and O My Heart, each have unique sonic qualities, they are similar enough that songs from each record can be blended together without coming off schizophrenic. They also threw in a new song, the name of which I didn't catch, into the mix, and this one seemed to be delving further into the 60s-girl-group harmonies the band has flirted with on occasion. Other highlights included "O My Heart," the haunting "Ghosting" (which garnered a huge reaction from the crowd with it's somehow-snarky line "You don't need no treats, you don't need no tricks, and you don't need me," and the encore-opener "Dirty Town," which, with its shifting styles and time signatures, really let the band show what sets them apart from anyone else.

This was Mother Mother's last date before heading to the United States to open a series of shows for the Sam Roberts Band. It's really too bad that they'll have to condense their show into an opening act, because these guys deserve to be headliners worldwide, and if they perform as well as they did last week for the rest of their tour, they soon will be.

Mother Mother: official site, Myspace, tour dates
The Racoons: myspace
Laura Smith: myspace

Good morning. And how was your weekend? Mine was pretty good-- the Mother Mother show on Saturday was an excellent excursion and should feed a couple of posts later this week. But right here I'm going to feed you some new music from K'Naan. I just checked the Hype Machine and they don't have this, so if you are a. a K'Naan fan and b. actually reading this brand-new blog, then I just made your day.

If you don't know anything about K'Naan, here's the quick facts that most media outlets will tell you (nothing new from me!):

-born and raised in Somalia
-learned English by listening to rap records his father sent to him from his job as a New York taxi driver
-as civil war broke out in 1991, his family managed to get the last commercial flight (ever, so far) out of Somalia and to New York
-moved to Toronto, started rapping
-once performed for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
-had a brief, now finished, feud with k-Os
-while touring for his first album, the Dusty Foot Philosopher, made a fan of Damian Marley, who helped him record his new album in the legendary Tuff Gong studios in Kingston, Jamaica (legendary because that's where Damian's father, Bob, recorded)
-the new album has guitar work by some guy named Kirk Hammett, plus appearances from Marley, Mos Def, and Chubb Rock

He appeared on the CBC program Q last Wednesday, talking about his new album, his growing fame, and Somalia, and he also performed acoustic versions of three new songs, which I've put below. If you want to hear the Jion Ghomeshi interview, then you can get the podcast here. Compared to the 80's rap beats and Metallica guitar solos you can hear on his website (click here, as you really should listen to it, too) this stuff is pretty different-- barely a rap to be found, and all acoustic guitar riffs and palm-of-the-hand production. It will be interesting to see how it all fits together on one album. Here's the Q stuff.

Fire in Freetown zshare



Take a Minute zshare



Waving Flag zshare



Aside from recent appearances on Q and CNN, K'naan is also getting a good push in the media as the first-ever X3 Artist of the Month, a partnership between CBC Radio 3, Exclaim! Magazine, and aux.tv to promote one new deserving Canadian artist every month. Here's the playlist of stuff from K'naan's first album they're using to promote it. Definitely check out "Water" and "I Was Stabbed By Satan," if nothing else. I'm going to post some collaborations and rarities I have from him later this week, but if anyone has the k-Os diss track, please pass it along. I believe it's something about an avocado.

X3 Artist of the Month Playlist

So even though I'm "of" Prince George, I'm not currently "in" Prince George, having taken a gig in Victoria for half a year or so. During this time, I'm taking advantage of the change in locale by going to a bunch of great shows that, unfortunately, don't and probably won't come up to PG (until I do something about it, that is). I've already seen Sam Roberts with the Stills, Kathleen Edwards, and Jeremy Fisher, and today it's Mother Mother. Interestingly, I got into the band as a result of my fact-finding mission to Victoria while looking for a place

to stay. I'd thrown together an iPod mix of bands I'd wanted to check out, and the song "Body of Years," was in there. Normally I'm not a fan of the 80s style production, but as my ltgf pointed out the odd goodness of the song, I couldn't help but agree.

It's been in constant rotation since then, as has the rest of the album Oh My Heart, the follow-up to the band's 2005 debut, now-called Touch Up. I think what really works is the arrangement-- it's got a clean, minimalist feel, but manages to maintain the vitality that's often sapped from those sort of projects. It'll also be my first trip to Sugar, and I've noticed the opening act is Victoria group the Racoons, who seem to be generating a fair amount of buzz themselves. Oh, and Mother Mother are originally from Quadra Island, so it's something of a hometown show, which is always good. This tour marks the debut of new vocalist/keyboardist Jasmin Parker.



From mothermothersite.com:

O My Heart is Mother Mother’s second album on Last Gang Records (Metric, DFA 1979, The New Pornographers, Crystal Castles) and since its release in September of 2008, has achieved great milestones:

             - #1 on Chartattack’s weekly Campus Radio Top 50 for four weeks
             >- #1 on !Earshot’s weekly Campus and Community Radio Top 50 for six weeks
             - #1 on !Earshot’s monthly Top 200 for two consecutive months (ranking at #13 in the                  Top 200 albums of 2008)

In its yearend accounting of noteworthy albums during 2008, iTunes Canada positioned O My Heart as:
             - #3 Best Canadian Album of The Year
             - #3 Best Indie Album of The Year
            
- #5 Best Alternative Album of the Year
             - #5 Best Overall Album of the Year

The song “Body of Years” won the band a CBC Radio 3 Bucky Award under the category of Best Vocals and was rated #31 by iTunes for Best Song of the Year - All Genres. South of the border, O My Heart made its American debut as the #6 most added album on CMJ’s Top 20 weekly adds, charting as high as #24 on the CMJ Top 200."

I'll let you know how it goes.