Frightened Rabbit and Wintersleep rock The Phoenix

March 31. Easter Sunday, for those that follow such things. A fairly mild night in this cold spring Toronto is experiencing. Frightened Rabbit and Wintersleep are holding court at The Phoenix Concert Theatre.

After their opening track, "Holy", Frightened Rabbit's lead singer Scott Hutchison seems genuinely taken aback by the roar of approval coming from the sold out crowd. "Holy shit!" he exclaims before deciding that this will be a good night.

Frightened Rabbit played a great setlist with tunes spanning most of their discography, including a solo acoustic version of "Poke", and a great version of "Good Arms vs. Bad Arms" which started as solo acoustic and saw the band re-emerging for the second half. Scott's humour shone through and his banter in between amazing music made it a great night. We even got to be accordions.

Check out some Frightened Rabbit music, all of which was played at the show.

"Holy", the set-opening tune, from Pedestrian Verse.

"Backyard Skulls" from Pedestrian Verse.

"The Woodpile" from Pedestrian Verse.

"State Hospital" from Pedestrian Verse.

"Living In Colour" from The Winter of Mixed Drinks.

"Swim Until You Can't See Land" from The Winter of Mixed Drinks.

"Old Old Fashioned" from The Midnight Organ Fight.

"My Backwards Walk" from The Midnight Organ Fight.

"The Modern Leper" from The Midnight Organ Fight.

Wintersleep did a great job of warming up the crowd. They played all their great tunes, starting with "In Came The Flood" from their latest. They laid out a very solid opening set with tunes from Welcome To The Night Sky and their latest, Hello Hum. They may have played some songs from 2010's New Inheritors, but I'm not as familiar with that album. I was looking forward to seeing these guys live and they did not disappoint.

Here's a bunch of music from Wintersleep.

"In Came the Flood" from Hello Hum.

"Resuscitate" from Hello Hum.

"Nothing Is Anything (Without You)" from Hello Hum.

"Archaeologists" from Welcome To The Night Sky.

"Weighty Ghost" from Welcome To The Night Sky.

Yup, those are pictures I took. I'm beaming with pride.

Two nights with the incredible Stars!

On March 20 and 21 I did something I've never done before - I saw both nights of a two-night stand. Specifically, I saw both nights of Stars' "Evenings of Sex and Death" at the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto. It was beautiful, awesome and incredible. So glad I went to both shows!

When I saw Metric with Stars opening back in November, I wished that Metric was opening for Stars so that I could enjoy more Stars music in the live setting. While my wish for Metric to open the show did not come true, my wish of seeing Stars in their full glory was completely fulfilled. Twice over.

One of the reasons that I wanted to go to both shows is that they were doing "Evenings of Sex and Death" at their shows in Toronto, Montreal, Brooklyn and Vancouver. One evening would feature "Sex" and one would feature "Death"-themed songs. As they pointed out, there's a fine line there, and many of their songs touch on both. They did vary the set somewhat over the two nights. Unfortunately, no one put the set lists for the Toronto shows online that I can find, so I can't be sure how much. From my poor memory I think they mirror the Montreal sex and death sets pretty closely. I guess I'm learning my lesson and I need to be that geek who pulls out his phone every song and jots down the titles.

One thing I did notice, that I would not have been as keenly aware of had I not seen both shows, is that they all wore black for the second night: Death.

And now, time to get down to some music...

I'm not usually big on the whole "lyric video" thing, but I'm not hesitating to put this one up, because the song is so good. It's "Hold On When You Get Love And Let Go When You Give It" from their latest release The North.

And here are a ton of Stars videos for your listening and dancing pleasure.

"Backlines" from The North.

"Reunion" from Set Yourself on Fire.

"Elevator Love Letter" from Heart.

"Take Me to the Riot" from In Our Bedroom After the War.

This was the first Stars song I ever heard. It blew me away. "Your Ex-Lover is Dead" from Set Yourself on Fire.

"Dead Hearts" from The Five Ghosts.

"Fixed" from The Five Ghosts.

Set Yourself On Fire is one of my all time favourite albums. Definitely on the "desert island" list.

They also had two great opening acts. On March 20, Yukon Blonde warmed us up with a solid set of power pop and on March 21, Said the Whale did the same with their rootsy harmonies. Glad I got to see both of these bands live.

Here are a few tracks by Yukon Blonde from Tiger Talk.

"My Girl"

"Radio"

"Stairway"

"Guns"

"Six Dead Tigers"

And a few from Said the Whale.

"Camilo (The Magician)" from Islands Disappear.

"Loveless" from Little Mountain.

"Heavy Ceiling" from Little Mountain.

There are a bunch more Said the Whale clips in this post.

I did opt for seats for this show. This reflects in the overall poorness of the photos I took, since they were taken from the balcony. The photo at the top of the post is the best of the lot. Sigh. Just when I was getting a bit better...

New music from The National

Yesterday I tweeted that I was dreaming of the new album from The National, Trouble Will Find Me, which gets its official release May 21. Today I hear the news of the official release of a new song, "Demons".

I've listened to it about 5-6 times so far and it's beautiful, and it's The National. It sounds great and bodes well for the new album. Can't wait!

There are lots more new tunes captured at various live shows. A quick Google should provide you with those clips.

Check out Ribs

I'm off to see The Joy Formidable again this week. They're playing on April 12 at The Phoenix Concert Theatre here in Toronto. I decided to look up who was opening the show and thought I'd do posts on these unknown-to-me artists.

Second up is Ribs. They're from Boston and you can listen to their first album British Brains and their latest Russian Blood at their Bandcamp.

Check out "Alarm". It rocks.

Check out Team Spirit

I'm off to see The Joy Formidable again this week. They're playing on April 12 at The Phoenix Concert Theatre here in Toronto. I decided to look up who was opening the show and thought I'd do posts on these unknown-to-me artists.

First up is Team Spirit. They're from Brooklyn and their YouTube clip lets me know that "Team Spirit is the latest project from Ayad Al-Adhamy, the synth and samples dude from Passion Pit." So there.

Check out "Fuck the Beach" from their EP, which gets its release April 9. It's an upbeat, rockin', power pop number. Should be a fun band to see live.