Shaping up to be an amazing weekend on the island. Here are the new bands just added.
SEPTEMBER 6th
The Kooks
The Fratellis
Against Me!
MGMT
Shudder To Think
Airborne Toxic Event
SEPTEMBER 7th
Silversun Pickups
The Wombats
Danko Jones
Sons and Daughters
Robyn
From the top of my head…..
-some festivals are really about standing in lines…. waiting to just stand in other lines…
-there is such thing as a $3.50 bottle of water and a $6.00 can of budweiser
–MIA is sexy
–Bjork is phenomenal. Highlight of the saturday performances. As well, each of her songs are 80% accessible, 20% wtf?
-I’ve finally warmed up to Interpol‘s newest release Our Love To Admire and all I needed was to see them play all the new stuff live. There’s something about Pioneer To The Falls, love that track.
Get it here or check out this orchestral version here.
Apparently I have procrastinated in posting my thoughts on the Virgin Music Festival from this weekend past. Chris has left me with the opportunity to post about the Dears, the Hidden Cameras, and Eagles of Death Metal. Lets get to it shall we?
The Dears put on exactly the show one would expect of a bombastic Montreal Art-Rock sextet, given to melodramatic, pining tunes. Dark, cynical, irreverent and just a tad pretentious, they happen to give any listener a decent insight into what life is like for anglos huddling under an ice-shrouded Montreal landscape in the dead of winter – all year round. That isn’t to say I have any problem at all with the music the Dears produce. As much as reviewers hem and haw around his obvious Brit-pop vocalist semblance, some disdainful, others reproachful; the talent of front man Murray Lightburn to craft songs that describe the darker side of life while being uplifting in their sound is fairly remarkable. Currently the band is touring North America and Europe in support of their 3rd release: “Gang of Losers.” I suggest checking out the tracks ‘Fear Made The World Go Round’, and ‘Death or Life, We Want You’, available through Red Blondehead, or the video for ‘Ticket To Immortality’ available on the band’s own website… I also happen to have the album so if you enjoy it, let me know, yanno?
The Hidden Cameras – I didn’t enjoy them that much on the mushies, others might have. If you want to hear more on my not so positive opinions of the band or their live set, feel free to e-mail me but I won’t bother posting them in here.
Eagles of Death Metal – a Josh Homme of QOTSA side project that he drums for under the pseudonym “Carlos Von Sexron”, but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t there for the festival – played to a half-decent crowd at the Future Shop stage and singer Jesse Hughes played up his role as the campy 70’s rock singer, swearing profusely between tracks like he’d just been released from prison to play the festival. I enjoyed the set, but I’d like to take a moment to relate one of the more bizarre conversations I can ever recall being involved with.
While sitting drinking Bud Light (so gross, so watery, so not worth $5.50) in the Future Shop Beer Tent area we struck up a conversation with two guys who had made it onto the Island to see Muse. They then indicated they had zero interest in seeing the Flaming Lips live set as they had seen them at SARS fest and thought it was “the worst live act they’d ever seen.” This was subsequently one upped by the comment that Retread A “hated all Canadian Music”… which was then trumped by Retread B reminding him that that wasn’t true, he actually had stopped liking Canadian Music “ever since I Mother Earth and Edwin broke apart.” Bizarre? Entertaining? Who knows, maybe it was just the Mushrooms… but I’m pretty sure other people can verify what I remember hearing.
In summary I’d just like to say that as corporate and over the top as the festival seemed on the surface, it had a lot to offer – excluding decent beer.
Check out this event happening right now in Toronto. The Canadian Music Cafe is a series of daytime showcases at the Rivoli intended to program live music events for film people attending the Toronto International Film Festival. Supported by a slew of different organizations and repping artists/bands across all genres, its a real opportunity to showcase Canadian talent to music supervisors.
Yesterday, DJ Champion stole the show. You might have seen him at V-Fest. He’s drawing huge right now in Montreal, soon to be packing dancefloors near you. Four guitarists on stage, an amazing female vocalist, bass player and the DJ (on two laptops). He was essentially a conductor, guiding the band through huge builds and drops.
Check out the track ‘No Heaven‘ from his myspace page.
Good:
Muse is a phenominal live band. They had the biggest crowd for their set, probably because Starsailor was their competition playing on the other stage. Pumping out great new tunes like ‘Starlight’ (who was playing the piano on that one?) and ‘Supermassive Black Hole’, the crowd approved and showed their affection by jumping up and down in large bunches. I always find it amazing when 3-piece bands can sound like 5 people on stage. Maybe it had to do with the sick gear that guitarist and singer Matt Bellamy was switching up every song.
One of the best tracks live was ‘Knights of Cydonia’, the last track off the new record. Really awesome video for this one (unicorns+robots=westerns?).
Bad:
Beer lineups. We can’t avoid them. We can only try and deal with them.
Good:
Wintersleep was another highlight of the day. Even though they had an early set (2pm) on the smaller stage, a good crowd came out to catch a short set by the band. Playing a mix of old tracks (‘Jaws of Life’, ‘Nerves Normal, Breath Normal’) and new (‘Ghost?’, ‘The Murderer’) the crowd looked/danced/rocked on in good fashion. It was drummer Lowell Campbell’s birthday as well, probably extending the crazy drum solo in ‘Nerves Normal, Breath Normal‘ as a birthday present to himself. It was a great present to us.
