RAE SPOON at the Gladstone, Wednesday, September 18. Rating: NNNN
“It’s a promotional album for Alberta,” Rae Spoon said of their new record at its two-part release show. That was tongue-in-cheek. Spoon’s voice, though, was so pure and clear, it did evoke that province’s famous turquoise lakes.
My Prairie Home tells the raw, intimate story of Spoon’s upbringing. But live, there was humour in the lyrics that isn’t immediately evident on record. A line from show opener Amy Grant – “Where was Jesus when we needed him? Where was Amy Grant? I thought she was his backup” – had the audience chuckling.
Accompanied by a laptop and drummer Laurie Torres, the singer/songwriter traversed genres. On country song Cowboy, Spoon was quiet and vulnerable Love Is A Hunter erupted into an electro-pop jam with Spoon’s vocals unleashed into a rock-star yelp super-danceable Ocean Blue started an actual dance party.
The drumming was especially effective on I Will Be A Wall, about protecting Spoon’s siblings from an unspecified terror. Torres’s soldier-like pulse felt like what a child might imagine a war to be like.
Between songs, Spoon was witty, maybe a bit nervous, very funny, a little hyper – a natural. At times My Prairie Home is dark, but this night felt incredibly celebratory.
Julia Leconte
PERE UBU at Lee’s Palace, Wednesday, September 18. Rating: NNNN
In 2007, before seeing Pere Ubu in Montreal, I asked singer David Thomas if they planned to perform Non-Alignment Pact, from their 1978 debut. “Eh,” Thomas croaked. “So you want a brain-dead rock show?”
A Pere Ubu concert is the opposite of a brain-dead rock show. The band plays fully lit up, no strobes or pyrotechnics. Thomas sits half-slumped in a chair, sipping red wine and Diet Coke, squint-eyed and pear-shaped, like a homeless Rob Reiner. It’s a counter-spectacle.
From new stuff like Mandy to “hits” like Heaven, Modern Dance and Final Solution, the quality of the drama at Wednesday’s Lee’s Palace show pitched and yawed across some loose narrative arc. Thomas reminded the audience that he and we were not friends and repeatedly made snide jokes about entertaining “the ladies” – the kind of thing that might scan as innocent, embarrassing grandpa stuff coming from anyone other than a guy who named his band’s 13th album Why I Hate Women.
Nearly 40 years on, Thomas’s voice remains the most schizoid and neurotic of all the venerable post-punk yelpers. Piercing, warbling, trembling, it’s the voice of the world’s last nervous man, the off-sync metronome keeping time in this not-brain-dead not-rock show.
John Semley
THE SADIES and SHADOWY MEN ON A SHADOWY PLANET with TV FREAKS at the Garrison, Saturday, September 21. Rating: NNNN
Turns out the Sadies make a fine Alice Cooper cover band.
At the Garrison, they played the Coop’s breakthrough 1971 album, Love It To Death, from front to back, with help from Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet (with whom Dallas Good now plays bass, though not in this incarnation). That meant two drum kits, one bass and three guitars – a whole lot of power.
Lead vocals alternated between Dallas and Travis Good, both wearing Vincent Furnier’s trademark eye makeup and sounding convincingly unhinged, particularly ragged-voiced Travis. Hits like I’m Eighteen and Ballad Of Dwight Fry went over big, the latter featuring Shadowy Man Don Pyle singing in a straitjacket.
But the supergroup also flourished while embracing the album’s plentiful nuanced, psychedelic passages. It all got us amped for the Sadies’ new album, Internal Sounds.
Earlier, local punks TV Freaks delivered a set of Misfits covers, infusing them with attitude and energy despite the between-song music playing through the P.A. during most of their set. They ended fiercely with the Viletones’ Screaming Fist, which they originally learned for NOW’s 50:50 video series.
Carla Gillis
A TRIBE CALLED RED, METZ, YOUNG GALAXY, WHITEHORSE, METRIC, COLIN STETSON, ZAKI IBRAHIM and PURITY RING at the Carlu, Monday, September 23. Rating: NNN
It was the Polaris Prize gala’s first time at the Carlu, and there were a couple of kinks to work out. First, seated at the top right corner of the balcony, members of the media couldn’t see the presenters (including Sarah McLachlan, Joseph Boyden, George Stroumboulopoulos) who stood for no good reason among the tables instead of actually on the stage. You couldn’t drink up there either. So if you were thirsty or wanted to see, you had to descend to the bar, where you couldn’t hear. A bit frustrating.
But those glitches were made up for by eight stellar performances that made us remember why, despite the lack of an obvious front-runner (most people were calling METZ or A Tribe Called Red), the Polaris short list was actually damn good. Those two performances, saved for the end, were definite highlights, the former’s blistering guitars making our stomachs leap roller-coaster-style, and the latter’s moving pow wow vocals meshed with dubstep beats accompanied by a hoop dancer. (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, who almost never speak to the media or appear publicly, did not perform. Tegan and Sara couldn’t be there, but Choir! Choir! Choir! filled in for them.)
Hosts Shad and Kathleen Edwards did a good job holding the crowd’s attention over three hours of songs and many, many breaks. Even if they were a little over the top – Edwards’s profanity (there were swear jars for charity) and the pair’s Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke costumes – the ballsy risks paid off.
Everyone was taken aback, and most were delighted, that veteran Montreal experimental alt-rockers Godspeed You! Black Emperor took home the $30,000 prize (which they’ll use to fund music programs in Quebec prisons) for their album Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!
Sort of anticlimactic given their no-show, but shock endings are often the best ones. No one can deny the album’s merit, which is what the hoopla is all about after all.
Julia Leconte
