Live Reviews

Zygiella 3

- by E.W. Farr

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(2008-04-28)

On  Thursday night, I tried to rally some folks from the Indie Rock Dinosaurs Association of Canada (IRDAC; pronounced “eer-dak”) to swing by the Rancho Relaxo with me . Three said they were in. I’ve been going to the Rancho quite a bit lately. Dan Wolovick has been doing a lot of good things over there for almost a year now. I’m starting to think people are taking notice and there’s a nice momentum building around the shows at this bar.

Anyway, one of my “associates” bails. He got home late from work and had to get up early the next day, so we were down to just three of us, including myself. I thought “Ugh…it’s going to be one of those nights.” But I didn’t really mind. I really just wanted a chill-and-watch-a-show kinda night anyway. So as a word of caution, this is the kind of mind frame I was in before Zygiella III even began.

What is Zygiella? Check it out here: www.zygiella.com -- it’s good stuff run by some good people. In short, it’s a music community website, like MySpace, but with a much more interesting layout and philosophy. I’ve just wasted too much time already to go into great detail here.

www.zygiella.com/theliras

My two remaining “associates” and I grab a beer. We’re talking, just small talk, nothing too important on a Thursday night, when The Liras take the stage. The sound of their watered-down, Killers-inspired music starts to get on all our nerves pretty quickly. They’re dressed like The Killers crossed with some H&M version of Joy Division. (Fuck me! I just realize now, while re-typing my hand-written notes, that these guys hail from Moncton, N.B.!). 

From their website:

“The Liras toured the east coast like a pack of wild, ravenous dogs for two years. They recorded an EP with a former "Super Friend", Charles "Roasted" Austin, played with a few of their heroes such as Sloan, The Trews and The Joel Plaskett Emergency, were invited to the East Coast Music Awards in Charlottetown PEI…”

This can’t be the same band I saw tonight. Even the tracks on their MySpace page are okay. And you can hear an east coast influence. But the band I saw at Rancho Relaxo had none of that. I mean none at all! They sounded and looked like an uninspired Killers cover band playing The Killers’ C-sides that never left the studio’s cutting-room floor.

Let me put it this way: The Smiths are to The Killers what The Killers are to The Liras. But at least The Killers are ripping off a great band. But to rip off a band that is already a watered-down, shit-sandwich version of a great band? I just don’t get it. Why would you do that? Well kids, The Liras do. I hate to be a dick about this, I really do, but they should stop. The lifeless and derivative music made us all so agitated it was ruining our conversation. And like I said, it wasn’t earth-shattering stuff we were discussing. We weren’t on the brink of a solution for global warming. It was just your average Thursday night chitchat! Sometimes I like watching shitty bands more than good bands. There’s just a stronger sense of wonderment in the experience.

www.zygiella.com/blackhatbrigade

Next up was a band I had seen before called Black Hat Brigade. These guys are nice dudes that like playing music together. You can tell by the way they react to each other on stage – and that counts for a lot in my book. They have fun but they’re not goofs. You know what I mean? They played a good set, too. I didn’t feel like it was as good as the last time I had seen them. But the vibe in the house was quite different then. The audience tonight was much more subdued, and either unwilling or unable to really let loose.

The lead guitar line from the song “Limbo” is really good and may be one of the catchiest hooks I’ve heard all year. Their set climaxed with the soundman, Spock, joining the band for an instrumental jam that went really well. Spock plays flute and he’s a solid guy. The new song they tried after this was a bit shaky and never quite came together, but it had a cool synth-type riff that hints at a good song in the future. They ended the set on a high note with the song “Swords,” which has a great climactic ending.

BHB has a Wolf Parade/Frog Eyes/Arcade Fire thing going on; lots of instrument changes, yelping vocals, and tons of percussion. But they’re not doing it to be showy, and although the influences can be strong, they’re finding their own sound. And when they hit those high points it really is good!

www.zygiella.com/thediamondteeth

The third – and final – band of the night was The Diamond Teeth. I wasn’t expecting much from these guys. I had listened to them on Zygiella.com and I thought they were okay, but nothing great. My buddy growled that they sounded like a million other indie bands he had seen growing up in the early ’90s. I missed a lot of that stuff. At that time I was into Euro dance music. Yeah, I said it! Euro dance music…oh and Rush, too. So to The Liras: take my comments with grain of salt, will ya?

I liked The Diamond Teeth, though. They just had a certain charm that only comes from being young and full of piss and vinegar. They had good songs as well. Nothing life altering, but they were good. They sounded a lot more like a band influenced by the ’90s east coast music scene then The Liras, that’s for sure. The second guitarist started the set by telling the two-dozen or so people left in the Rancho that they were about to “rock our world.” Normally, I would hate this type of thing, but the way he said it and the look he had on his face just made me laugh. Maybe it was nostalgia for a time passed, but I liked these guys. All young, hairless faces (okay, one impressive moustache), out-of-tune crappy guitars, missed chord changes and pure rock energy. And they didn’t really sound like a band I could name right now. They were kind of like Sloan mixed with the wild energy and goofy nature of the Minutemen minus the technical prowess. They just did their thing, told some bad jokes, played fast and loud and loved every minute. You couldn’t help but like them. They played the perfect length of a set for the night, too. (Attention all bands: set length is so important!) They even mixed in a few slower songs that worked really well in the overall dynamic of the set.

As an added bonus they had some really great handmade T-shirts for $10. I bought a sweet v-neck version and it looks wicked.

It was getting late, so I walked home and stopped into Tim Horton’s along the way to order a medium Iced Cap and Maple Dip donut. It’s been a while. I sat down to write this and enjoy my food while listening to some Red House Painters on my iPod. A fairly well-dressed man was hunched over in his chair sound asleep. He looked about 58 years old and had ear buds on. Drool was almost pouring out of his mouth on to his leather jacket. There were at least half a dozen people in various states of slumber all around me. Tim Horton’s at 1:30 a.m. in the Big Smoke is a strange place to be writing a show review. I thought to myself “Things could be a lot worse, man”. I switched from RHP to The Stooges Funhouse for my final walk home. Maybe that seems like a weird pairing, but good music is just good music. Right?

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