So it’s night three of Canadian MusicFest, and I’m avoiding black cats like the plague. Call me superstitious, but this Friday the 13th business is making me a tad neurotic. I’m accident prone as it is, consarn it, and I don’t need Murphy’s Law meddling with my meticulously planned club crawl agenda!
Climbing up the steps to the Silver Dollar Room, my heart skips a beat after I see what looks like Jason Voorhees, but turns out to be a remarkably pale gentleman in leather. Thankfully, once I’m inside, Montreal’s Little Scream is there to quell my fears with her celestial, mantra-like lullabies. Plink-plonking away on a dusty electric guitar that looks like it’s been languishing in an attic for years, she coos confessional lyrics with an arresting, Cat Power-like country twang. At times, her whispers morph into throbbing yodels as she squashes her distortion pedal, unleashing a hailstorm of grimy Who-esque riffs while stomping along with her right foot. Her style is intimately raw; so raw she doesn’t even have a Myspace page. It’s a shame, but this lovely Luddite makes hearts flutter nevertheless.
In lieu of a wormhole, I hitch a taxi to transport me to Rok Boutique in the limited amount of time I have (“Beam me up, cabby!”). Once there, I’m greeted oh-so-politely by Molloy, a British quartet specializing in naughty angular-electro-dance-rock. Fronted by a feisty Debbie Harry type named Jez, these chaps (and chapette) channel Devo’s dissonant harmonies and the Spice Girls’ saccharine stickiness. Just for added quirkiness, they augment their fuzzy synth lines with alien-like warbling noises from a circuit-bent Texas Instruments Speak & Spell. It’s a winning combination; bodies are swaying to-and-fro while the Jez throws them bawdy zingers like “I get so wet I can’t stand up.” Oh, behave!
Over at Holy Joe’s, South American troubadours Cassim and Barbaria are treating me to their groovetastic mix of Krautrock, 70’s Motown soul and Brazilian psychedelia (also known as Tropicalia). I’m the only person in the room, however, and while it’s interesting music, I’m not really in the mood to be Canada’s ambassador to these guys.
So I swoop over to the Velvet Underground, where Toronto metal vets Anvil are laying waste to the crowd. With all the buzz surrounding their new critically-acclaimed documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil, the weathered 50-somethings are finally getting their lucky break. Barreling through “666,” “Jackhammer,” and the timely “This is Thirteen,” the aged rockers seem to have regained their youthful spunk; frontman Steve Kudlow even ventures out into the audience, treating the band’s hardcore faithful to his greased-lightning guitar glister at point blank range.
At some points, though, the band sounds a bit too young, regressing to a hormonally-raging teen stage. Before launching into “Computer Drone,” Kudlow begins listing an unhealthy number of porn sites off the top of his head, eliciting a befuddled crowd response. “Over 10, 000 porn videos for free!” he tries reasoning. “Endless jerk-off sessions, man!” Admittedly, the song is about being addicted to online porn, but still. Yeesh.
As I stroll up to the Horseshoe, I experience a sinking feeling in my bowels that’s a reaction to both a chili cheese burrito and a gigantic queue trailing out of the venue. While in line, I turn inward to find true peace and avert my mind from thoughts of epic failure. Then I remember I have a media pass, so I cut the line and saunter inside.
When the Handsome Furs stalk onto the stage and peer into the crowd, they seem perversely amused that sweaty bodies are pressed air-tight against each other like a scene from Soylent Green. They rip into the 8-bit bounce of “Legal Tender,” Dan Boeckner letting loose his Gary Numan-ish wail while spouse Alexei Perry has epileptic convulsions over her drum machine and keyboard. Throughout this set consisting predominantly of cuts from their sophomore disc FACE CONTROL, it seems as though these two are channeling days of pent up sexual tension into their performance. “Talking Hotel Arbat Blues” sees Boeckner rabidly attacking his squealing Fender Telecaster like a starving man tearing apart a chicken, while “I’m Confused” sees Perry bounce around manically with one leg in the air. Elsewhere, “All We Want, Baby, Is Everything” finds the audience singing along to this jubilant-yet-searing electro-pop PDA. Boeckner describes this band as “basically Wolf Parade without the guy that everybody likes and no real instruments,” but tonight it sounds like an amplified sex throb, and that’s a good thing.
It’s inching closer to 1 AM and I’m going to have to high tail it if I want to make it to Circa in time for A-Trak’s set. I pop the Kanye-backing DJ’s “Running Man” up on my IPod and giddily sprint down Queen, deliriously happy that lady luck’s on my side tonight. I sashay through the superclub’s lineup and wave my media pass at the burly bouncer, only to be stopped dead in my tracks. They don’t accept those past 11pm, he says. Well, bust my buttons!