Canadian Music Week’s not at the stamping-out-renegade-extra–festival-day-parties stage of its existence just yet, but it’s surely a sign of success when you start attracting unofficial parties. (And a sign of organizational moxie when you bring renegades into the fold, like Dan Burke’s NeXT show on Saturday night.) So perverse as it is, my Thursday started at a non-festival-sanctioned gig, the Unfamiliar Records showcase at Wrongbar.
Vanessa Fischer has an amazing voice and a stage presence that keeps your eyes glued to her — or more precisely makes you avert your eyes because she keeps seemingly making eye contact with you and only you. This alone can make for a riveting show, but Lioness, http://www.myspace.com/lionesslionesslioness the new trio she shares with drummer Jeff Scheven and bassist Ronnie Morris (both ex-controller.controller) is not the vehicle Fischer deserves. In 2008 nobody wants to hear that tired-ass dance-rock beat no matter how many buckets of eyeliner and all-black outfits it sold in 2003 — in fact, one of their songs basically is The Rapture’s “Out Of The Races (And Onto The Tracks)”, or at least the verse part, with Fischer singing over it. The rhythm section need to find a schtick that isn’t played out; it also wouldn’t hurt Fischer to switch up her vocal rhythms a bit rather than 90% long moans. The last two songs of their set were furiously busy and infinitely more effective than the first part, enough to place Lioness firmly in the “band to watch” category, but they’re not ready to graduate from it just yet.
Not that being trendy is a necessary requirement of greatness. Nobody’s really rocking the uptempo twee ‘80s sound these days, or at least nobody’s doing it as well as The Airfields. The quintet had recruited their previous bassist to stand in for their absent current one, so most of the songs were drawn from their earlier material, but there wasn’t a noticeable difference — they tore through a selection of their jangly but still raucous tunes with a harder edge than you’d imagine from their very fine full-length Up All Night. Singer/guitarist David Lush’s voice was borderline inaudible (which, let’s face it, is part of that sound) but while his distinctive-looking Vox Phantom guitar drew stares, it was when he busted out a 12-string Danelectro for a gorgeous, ringing turn on the criminally catchy “Prisoners Of Our Love” that the room seemed to start spinning. Possibly our city’s best-kept secret.
After heading to the Cameron House for a Colin Munroe set that never materialized due to illness, I took a chance on The Acorn http://www.myspace.com/theacorn at The Horseshoe and was met with a pleasant surprise: a solid live band. Responses to the Ottawa sextet’s Glory Hope Mountain disc were polarized into “Best Album of 2007” and “what is this twaddle” camps. But in the flesh, Rolf Klausener’s voice sounds less like a lilting troubadour’s and more like a rousing, hollering folk singer’s, and his band — especially their guitarists, at times swelling to three — bring a stomping intensity to their show that made you almost wonder whether it was the same group. Wisely drawing on Glory as well as their previous releases to run with only the most concert-friendly cuts, they ended with a rollicking version of “Flood Pt. 1” that showed off their capacity for barn-storming.
To cap the night, it was back to the Cameron for Haligonian duo The Superfantastics, whose sugary but no less raucous tunes would be the ultimate Platonic examples of the early-‘90s Halifax sound if they hadn’t been written about fifteen years after the fact. Singer/guitarist Matt MacDonald and drummer Stephanie d’Entremont weren’t quite as rhythmically tight as they are on their new Choose Your Destination EP or their full-length, Pop-Up Book (whose vinyl edition comes with download codes for the disc as well as some DIY artwork that goes a long way to explaining why they were voted Best Merch by Halifax alt.weekly The Coast) but give them a few months of solid touring and songs like “Back To The Future III” will likely be as precisely-rendered as their lyrics are whip-smart. Check them out at Criminal Records at 5pm Saturday, along with Julie Doiron, Calm Down It’s Monday and Dog Day.