Saturday, March 25, The
Marine Club, Vancouver
This was one in
a series of gigs put on to promote Vancouver Special, a local
music compilation released to raise money for an AIDS charity. Tremolo
Falls' contribution to that disc is nice but suggests they might be
one of those poe-faced post-Mogwai instrumental rock bands who plod
endlessly through dreary Slint pastiches.
It
turns out that TF do the surging, atmospheric thing really well and
even dare to imbue their songs with old-fashioned things like energy
and vocals. Their set undulated between quirky Pavement-esque songs
and slow-building Yo La Tengo-style instrumentals. In both modes aesthetic
sense, intelligent inventiveness and improvisational verve were all
readily apparent. Still hardly original stuff but well above average.
Unfortunately, it seems the Falls have split up and only got back together
to play this one last gig.
Let's hope The Radio follow their lead. It seems mean-spirited to slag
a local act but good will can only go so far. A band operating around
a notion of tongue-in-cheek retro cool taken entirely from Austin Powers
movies would try the patience of the most tolerant critic.
Their 60s-styled easy-pop ditties horribly conflate irony with sarcasm.
Not sophisticated enough to suggest it's ironic that a group of intelligent
college kids should choose to sound so cheesy, they aim for "so bad
it's good" status. How else could you explain the ham-fisted stumbling
from chord to chord and three-way harmonies in which everyone is off
key.
One song contained a "bum, bum, bum, bum..." refrain sung entirely with
bum notes. Now that's irony. Sorry guys, I'm sure you're lovely people.
Which is more than I can say for Jerk with a Bomb, who fairly radiated
malevolence. Great! Whereas TF were good and The Radio bad, these Jerks
showed us the ugly mark of real talent. They gave an astonishingly forceful
and confident performance that put them on a whole other level from
the other bands on the bill. Moreover, they presented a sound all their
own, making comparisons hard to come by.
Perhaps The Bomb are a Canadian Ween, with their idiosyncratic two-piece
line-up (The Silo guitar/vocals, One Easy Skag drums/keyboards) bad
metal/good country obsessions, sly nastiness, eclectic/unfashionable
influences... But that doesn't capture their widescreen country-punk
sound, which swings along on a free-wheeling strum'n'twang chassis shot
through with LOUD rasping vocals and shards of dissonant keyboard. TS
and Skag do for country-rock what The Pogues did for Irish folk and
The Bad Seeds do for torch song - soak it in punky bile and boozy disfunction.
The boys can't be as angry and inebriated as they appear, though. After
all, they were nice enough to contribute to that charity compilation.
Now, the least you can do is buy it.
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