Andrew Bird | | photo by Gerald Deo
Plays:Four | | photo by Steve Louie
Plays:four was a surprise local opener. Jonathan Scherk of 80(sun), Sam Beatch of Beamss and Ellis Sam of Flash Palace hovered around an island of laptops, samplers and effects gadgetry plunked in the middle of the W2 floor. Skittering psychedelia floated up over ambient, sometimes shiver-inducing bass drones. Loops veered from erratic to expansive, but remained accessibly stimulating. The trio’s youthful chemistry was impressive, but understated.
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Damo Suzuki entered the Waldorf at an amble, an unassuming middle-aged Japanese man clad in sensible clothes and a backpack. His entry bore no relation to his performance; the ex-singer of acclaimed krautrock band Can whipped through a free-form set backed by Vancouver band Von Bingen.
Standing centre stage, Suzuki gripped the microphone with both hands and then shunt into it for each lyric and phrase, a strange snap and relax that carried through the whole set. Lights flickered and ebbed from green to blue to red, punctuating the performance which had few breaks between “songs.”
Since Suzuki left Can in 1973, his performances have all fallen under the banner of Damo Suzuki’s Network, where “sound carriers” improvise a set with him. Von Bingen followed in the footsteps of Broken Social Scene, Acid Mothers Temple, and Omar Rodriguez Lopez, among others.
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Five Sixty hosted the quadruple bill of TOPS, Teen Daze, We Were Lovers, and Peace on a cold Thursday night that kept a number of people away from what could have been a packed house.
The biggest draw of the night may have been Peace, who accounted for most of the initial turnout. The boys from Edmonton brought out the Oil City ex-pats, a mini-reunion of both local bands and those who went to high school in Edmonton with TOPS singer Jane Penny.
As Peace played a set of mainly new songs off their upcoming sophomore follow-up to 2011’s My Face, the casual banter with friends in the crowd and the over-the-top reception of the band made for a loose but wicked set. The four-piece was firing on all cylinders, executing perfect rhythm within their driving, mellowed post-punk sound.
While previously Peace may be more known for flipping their car en route to Sled Island, if their show at Five Sixty indicates anything, the next album is bound to make bigger waves within Canada.
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Sun Araw | | photo by Ashlee Luk
Sun Araw’s night kicking off the Waldorf’s 3D Fest had somewhat of an air of a psychedelic vaudeville show. The curtains of the cabaret drew back and forth revealing locals Evy Jane followed by different arrangements of the eclectic band’s members and friends for each set, and ultimately getting together at the end of the night as a full band for a deep cosmic jam.
I came just in time to catch the last bit of the soulful duo Evy Jane playing to a handful of people glued around the walls of the cabaret. With a sound drawing from UK bass and deep R&B in the vein of James Blake, I would never have guessed them to be from Vancouver. Closing slow and deep with their single “Sayso,” the two shuffled between an array of laptops, synths, controllers and an electric guitar, as Evelyn Mason’s ghostly and slightly raspy vocals swelled through the empty floor.
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Ladyhawk || photo by Kati Jenson
If the temperature drop got to you last Friday night, you’d have been wise to go to a warm and crowded Biltmore as Baptists and Ladyhawk proved themselves as a couple of Vancouver’s finest. The sold out show was abuzz on booze and the anticipation for these bands was hardly dismissable.
It was an odd pairing having Ladyhawk and Baptists playing back to back, Baptists a pummeling metal band and Ladyhawk an emotive, guitar-driven, bar-rock band. But they do share a member in Sean Hawryluk (bass) who did a fine job of pulling double duty, and on his birthday, no less. And really, the pairing was not head scratchingly odd. I’d rather pay closer attention to a couple of really good bands than slog through the usual assortment of sometimes predictable indie-rock openers of varying quality.
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Sometime in 2002, one Forbes Latimer sold his boat and took on a former butcher shop at 195 East 26th. On March 24 of that year, it opened its doors as the Butchershop Floor and became home to a collective of some twenty artists, including Ehren Salazar, who now runs the space as the Little Mountain Gallery.
“It had a good run, we had great shows, but it just got exhausted,” Salazar said of those days. “[Myself] and another member from the Butchershop, Alex Cieslik, [renamed it and] kept it going… I just felt the need to keep the space alive, because there [were] so few spaces like it in the city.”
Fast forward a decade. Little Mountain Gallery is now a licensed performance venue run by the newly founded non-profit Little Mountain Community Arts Association; a celebration was in order. But that Saturday, the Gallery remained curiously empty nearly an hour after door time.
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Trust
with Myths.
April 14 @ The Electric Owl.
Real Live Review by Grace McRae-Okine
Trust | | photo by Ashlee Luk
This past Saturday presented both a gift and a curse to the patrons of Main Street’s Electric Owl — the early show. There seems nothing more daunting to a young Vancouverite than arriving at any venue before 11 p.m., so it was surprising that there was a crowd milling about by 9 p.m.
The double bill of local electronic opera pioneers Myths and Toronto’s depressing yet danceable three-piece Trust seemed like a sure bet. With enough ‘80s synth riffs and fat bass beats, we would be just drunk enough to dance by the 11 p.m. curfew, so help us.
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