North By Northeast is a test of endurance. Just how many psychedelic folk collectives from Barrie can you withstand in a 3-day period? How fast can you get from Koreatown to Parkdale with only ten minutes to spare before that British post-punk band’s much hyped set? And more importantly, can you get there on a bicycle when you’re drunk and the singer-songwriter onstage at the Rivoli refuses to put away his ukulele?

I started my night with “Ted Leo and his Pharmacists,” as they were billed by another alt-weekly. His brief set at the semi-packed Mod Club featured a series of blistering alt-rock anthems featuring the odd slinky ska bass line and a minimal punk guitar solo or two. “Timorous Me” was bouncy and sweet, while Leo’s vibrato on “Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone?” charmed a crowd half-full of Converse shoe reps. I wonder how the notoriously political Ted Leo felt, flanked by five Converse shoe signs on all sides of the room as the company’s tame-looking CEO introduced him onstage. Maybe they paid him in high tops.

A rigorous touring schedule, having their car stolen in Vancouver and a MTV Canada appearance have apparently been good to The Coast, a band who were introduced to me in residence at U of T as “those hot guys who work at Urban Outfitters.” They have the gristle and road stories to back up their reverb-drenched melancholia, producing one of the most seamless, heartfelt live shows going in Toronto right now. With the brief addition of a female backup singer and extra guitar player, tracks like “The Moon Is Dead” and “Killing Off Our Friends” grew manifestly in scope. It was staggering, and it was only 9 pm.

It was a stressfully orchestrated hop, skip and jump over to the Rancho Relaxo for Medallions, former controller.controller bass player Scott Kaija’s new project. Sometimes when they say, “don’t quit your day job,” they mean it. Uninspired multi-part harmonies, occasionally coming from a drummer who should really be the singer, as well as lyrics like “at the age of seventeen/I’m on fire” contributed nothing to a formulaic mix of bass-driven to and fro within a new wave mess of blandness. Note to Medallions: just because one guitar player wears a leather vest and insists on Elvis-Costello-style knee-bends, that doesn’t mean you have an image. Work on it.

If you’ve been wondering what the Brian Jonestown Massacre and Division of Laura Lee might produce if they collaborated in Gothenburg, look no further than The Oholics. A series of visceral psychedelic rock songs were well-received by a (dancing!) Toronto crowd at the packed Silver Dollar, as Dan Burke stacked bottles of 50 for the band by the side of the stage. “Lucy Leave”, an ode to the late Syd Barrett held all the garage sass of the Kinks while the “we get along” coda to “Step Inside Your Mind” was too infectious for me not to break out in a celebratory shimmy. You couldn’t help but stare in wonder at The Oholics, whether at the grunting, heavy-set bass player with badly dyed black hair, their childlike lead singer (whose pack of cigarettes was visible in the pocket of his polo shirt) nervously smacking the sides of his jeans, or the tambourine player sporting a caftan and Prince Valiant haircut and who decided not to wear any shoes. They’re sure to be huge.

Midnight was marked by a set from U of T’s The Vestaloynes clad in matching Sgt. Pepper uniforms and white sunglasses. Front man Spencer Evoy sure is good at imitating Iggy Pop, cocking his hip and sneering in a low-slung drawl introducing each track, “This song is about bowling…it’s called Bowling.” While the crow appreciated the shtick, I would like to see more maturity from the Vestaloynes, who were like Bowling For Soup with an MC5 aesthetic. A live rendition of Eric Carmen’s “All By Myself” by guitar player Ben Reed on keyboard came close.

These New Puritans are the future of music. In the future, all lead singers wear t-shirts made of broken gold feathers and sing with their eyes closed, lazily snapping out the rhythms in their head. No instruments are played live; instead they’re looped, piling the original sounds on top of each other over and over, transmogrifying them into something else entirely. Pretty blonde girls who barely acknowledge the fact they are playing live contort these sounds through Apple laptops. And the crowd remain divided — a cluster near the front violently bang into each other to the sound of songs about the meaning of numerology (no one writes love songs in the future), while those near the back drink beer and complain. I was amazed how well Beat Pyramid’s icy, post-punk, electro-frenzied songs played live in the strange stage environment of The Reverb. They seemed ready to bare teeth. A lot of people probably listen to bands like Crystal Castles and These New Puritans’ records and wonder how the hell you can dance to them, but once you hear the latter’s samples of a musket firing and bubbling bass drone done live, it’s involuntary.

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