I celebrated my first Father's Day as any good father would. By ditching my family after bedtime and hitting some great music in the city. Apostle of Hustle, Broken Social Scene guitarist Andrew Whiteman's "side?" project, played the small dive bar Great Scott. My feeling was it would sell out and be too small. No? Probably only 50 people there. Chalk it up to no school kids and a Sunday night. Maybe, but wow, I was a bit surprised by the lack of support. Oh well, their loss. (They being the people that missed the show) The show was sickness. It's my 3rd BSS-related concert of the year, and my 2nd show in a row featuring a band that starts with Apo- for those keeping score at home. I want to say that this was the best of the BSS bands, but it really is a tough call up against that amazing Do Make Say Think show I saw earlier. Though it was a bit better than Feist's live offering from a week ago. With Apostle you from the start are working with freaking excellent material. Folkloric Feel was a fantastic debut, and their latest National Anthem of Nowhere is one of my faves so far this year. I can't get enough of the title track lately. They whipped that track out early in the set, where many bands might have held it for the last song, or encore. And eventhough I love it, it wasn't nearly the hightlight or even all too memorable. One thing that I never really thought about going to the show was that this band is just a trio. They get a lot of guest spots for the recordings, so how would it translate to the stage? Very well. During the aforementioned song it really struck me as Police-esque. Whiteman's vocals invoked Sting. Thankfully they didn't just rehash the new album, though I think they may have opened with the first and second tracks. They played a healthy mix of both albums and mixed in some great stage banter and some downright odd stage antics, made even odder by the fact that they were even remotely planned. Prior to one of their spanish-influenced tunes they hung a ratty plastic streamer with colored and spanish-esque triangles hanging down (like a grand-opening type decoration except with a spanish theme) from two stands across the stage. Then they hung 3 pieces of paper up with words written on them, though I am blanking on what they said. Whatever it was it didn't make much sense and was not explained, but it was bizarre. Since they were just the guitar, bass, drums trio, you might expect a lot of sampling and looping filler, but those were used very minimally. The synthesiser was only used on 1 or 2 songs. They were very much the rock-pop trio playing a really eclectic bit of music. Such a great show. Here's a sample:
Also, as long as we are on the subject of Broken Social Scene, don't miss out on the fresh new sample from their next project Spirit If...
Kevin Drew - Tbtf
The opener was Memphis, a band led by Stars' Torquil Campbell, and possible featuring other members of Stars and Metric. Tough to find any hard info on this band. Live, I couldn't really get into them too much. The music was good, but Torquil's singing and antics bugged me too much. Kind of a cross between Brian Setzer and that guy from the B-52's? I would like and then hate a song moments later. Very late-80s modern rockish for the most part. Torquil also sat in with Apostle for 2 songs, Animal Fat (awesome!) and another which I can't remember.
No comments:
Post a Comment