CMW 2017: Vallens at Lee's Palace - Concert Photos

I caught Vallens at Lee's Palace for CMW. Their music is atmospheric and powerful while being quite emotional with a theatrical drama to the massive, musical mood pieces.

See what you think:

"Consent"

"Dark Tunnel"

"Tennesse Haze"

CMW 2017: Twist at Lee's Palace - Concert Photos

Twist was the second band up on Lee's Palace's stage on April 22 at CMW. They play easy-on-the-ears indie pop tunes. Guitar strumming shifts dynamically into grunge territory. From earworm choruses to lazy atmospherics, this band keeps your ears interested.

Check them out:

CMW 2017: Pony at Lee's Palace - Concert Photos

Pony were the first band up on stage at Lee's Palace for the last night of CMW 2017. This show marked my second time seeing this jangle pop band. The first time was at The Silver Dollar Room during CMW last year. Click here for those pics.

The band sounded great. The new guitarist added more dirt and power chords to the sound with chiming riffs between verses. They sounded more powerful than I remember from the first time and every bit as good, with bouncy grooves and catchy choruses. They drew a pretty big crowd for the first band out. In fact it was the biggest crowd for a first band that I saw in the entire festival.

Check out some tunes from Pony and try to catch their show next time you get the chance.

"DIY"


"Alone Tonight"

NXNE 2017 is almost here! Line-up for Portlands, Info on curated club series, GameLand and more!

It's coming up really soon! June 16-25 to be exact. It's the 23rd Annual North by Northeast music festival, more commonly known as NXNE or Northby. Yup, this year it's expanding to ten days, with a dynamic selection of music, gaming, comedy, and more. I hope to be there to capture all the action. Check out the coverage from last year, in case you missed it.
 
NXNE returns to the Port Lands for three days from June 23-25, 2017. NXNE Port Lands will include two main stages, art installations, sponsor activations, and comfortable places to chill between acts, as well as a comedy tent, and carnival rides.

This year's NXNE Port Lands music festival features: Passion Pit, Tyler the Creator, Post Malone, Bleachers, Sleigh Bells, The Soul Rebels featuring Talib Kweli, Twin Peaks, Cold Specks, Muna, Son Little and dozens more. NXNE's Club Land festival will feature the best up-and-coming bands as curated by some of Canada's best musicians.

"In it's first year the NXNE Port Lands saw thousands of attendees in two days," said Michael Hollett, President and Managing Director of NXNE. "Our growth and expansion for 2017 are based on the success of last year with cool programming from indie rock to hip hop to soul and much more each day."

Let’s hope they found a way to pipe in fresh water for this year!

New for this year is a curated club series featuring line-ups hand picked by Moe Berg of The Pursuit of Happiness, Ian D’Sa of Billy Talent, Brendan Canning of Broken Social Scene, Shad, Leah Fay of July Talk, Nick Rose, Tasha the Amazon, The Dirty Nil, Rural Alberta Advantage and Raina Douris from Indie 88 and CBC. These shows are Monday through Thursday at venues including The Baby G, The Garrison, Cold Tea, The Rivoli, The Dakota Tavern, Bovine Sex Club and The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern.

NXNE Game Land will kick off the 2017 Festival at Yonge-Dundas Square with a massive live e-Sports competition, new video game demos, interactive activations, and live music June 16-18, 2017.

From June 19-25, 2017 NXNE will host hundreds of new and established artists at over a dozen venues across the city for NXNE Club Land, including The Danforth Music Hall, The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern, and Adelaide Hall.

NXNE Game Land will present Canada's largest-ever, free outdoor e-Sports competition at Yonge Dundas Square.

Here are some of the artists I'm most looking forward to:

Sleigh Bells

Passion Pit

Yukon Blonde

Twin Peaks

Son Little

And some inspiration from the curators:

July Talk

The Pursuit of Happiness

Broken Social Scene

Father John Misty and Dams of the West at The Royal Alexandra Theatre - Concert Photos

On Saturday May 6, 2017, Father John Misty played his second sold-out show at the historic and newly renovated Royal Alexandra Theatre (with appreciably more spacious seats). Father John Misty attracted bearded bros and hipster-types on the younger-end of the age spectrum who were able to afford the more-costly-than-average tickets.

Opening for Father John Misty was Dams of the West—a solo project from Chris Tomson (perhaps more commonly known as the drummer from Vampire Weekend). Tomson played songs from his debut album Youngish American—a mellow, droll, rock record produced by Patrick Carney of The Black Keys. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Dams of the West opened up for Father John Misty as Chris Tomson and Josh Tillman share so many similarities. Both artists started out as drummers in other bands (Vampire Weekend and Fleet Foxes) before breaking out into solo careers. They also share an acute sense of self-awareness and knack for dry humour. But whereas Tillman contemplates the meaning of life from a theatrical, grandiose perspective, Tomson analyzes his life from a domestic mundanity. During the performance, Tomson was joined onstage by a bassist, keyboardist, and drummer. In between songs, Tomson was wry, abrupt, and awkward. For example, he seemed embarrassed by the redundancy of having to introduce his band’s name when it was already projected behind him in big letters (but truth be told, the font and background colour were quite similar and hard to distinguish so I’m sure the introduction was appreciated by many). Tomson later went on to describe some of his more popular songs like “Death Wish” and “Tell the Truth” as “songs you might know, but also might not”. For their penultimate song, they played a cover of Alan Jackson’s “Chattahoochee”, a fun, honky tonk, country ditty. Towards the end of their short set, Tomson joked that if he knew he was going to be opening for Father John Misty, he would have taken better care of himself.

Father John Misty started promptly at 9 pm and played the first eight songs of his newest album Pure Comedy in chronological order (apart from “Leaving LA”—a thirteen minute self-aware diatribe about L.A. culture, his appearance, personal relationship to music, among other topics). He began the set with “Pure Comedy”, a song about humanity, evolution, and stupidity of religion. Whereas Father John Misty’s second album I Love You, Honeybear tackled the theme of love, marriage, and relationships, Pure Comedy revolves around the current state of the human condition—the idiocy of politics, need for religion, slavery of entertainment, addiction to social media, left-wing idealism, and so on and so forth. However depressing and cynical the overarching message may feel, there are small glimmers of hope sprinkled throughout which makes the album seem a little less nihilistic.

Last year at NXNE Port Lands Festival, Father John Misty entertained and captivated the audience with his strong stage persona and charisma. While Tillman has become “a little less human with each release/ closing the gap between the mask and me”, his performance seemed relatively unchanged as he continued to flounce about with the same flamboyance—shifting between confidently dancing around stage and uncomfortably crossing his arms or putting his hands in his pockets during more introspective moments. Tillman kept banter to a minimum, encouraging the crowd sit down at certain points (because “that’s what seats are for” and why they purposely had the show at a theatre rather than a “concrete box”) but also stand up (at the appropriate points during the encore). In the quiet moments in between songs, when crowd members started to hoot and holler, Tillman commented that he hoped those were sounds of joy rather than anxiety. He later added, “everything terrifies me, so I joke”, which seems like an accurate insight into Tillman’s thoughts behind the music and how the persona of Father John Misty came to be—using humor to mask more somber themes.

The music itself and the sound at Royal Alexandra Theatre was phenomenal. Father John Misty’s voice was forceful and clear as he switched between singing and playing the guitar. He was accompanied onstage by about fifteen instrumentalists, which included a full string section accented by a couple of brass instruments. Father John Misty played for almost two hours straight and delved into older songs from I Love You, Honeybear and Fear Fun. It was a long and ambitious set list with five songs for the encore. Like any pleasant experience, I anxiously awaited the end that I didn’t want, but knew would eventually come.

Photos and review by Janine Wong.

Check out some of Father John Misty's music:

"Pure Comedy"

"Total Entertainment Forever"

"Ballad of the Dying Man"

"Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings"

"Nancy From Now On"

"I Love You, Honeybear"

And from Dams of the West

"Flag on the Can"

"The Inerrancy of You and Me"