RIVER TIBER at the Drake Hotel, Thursday, November 21. Rating: NNN
Toronto singer/songwriter River Tiber (aka Tommy Paxton-Beesley) has been enjoying growing buzz for his hazily romantic electro productions, which attracted a strong turnout of new fans curious how the up-and-coming performer would interpret those recordings live. His work is mostly electronic, but the strong pop sensibilities suggest that he’s also done his time in more conventional rock groups, so it wasn’t surprising to see him joined by a three-piece backing band when the lights went up on the Drake Underground stage.
If the closest comparison to his recorded work is the post-dubstep torch songs of James Blake, in the live setting River Tiber’s debt to Radiohead becomes much more apparent. But while it’s generally a good thing to rely as little as possible on backing tracks, something tends to get lost when translating laptop pop into a rock band format. As tightly rehearsed as they were, they still couldn’t convincingly approximate the subtle textures of the recorded work, and the fragile intimacy was sacrificed for the sake of rocking out.
