Courtesy of Luke Champion

Sometime shortly after CMW the weather became unusually beautiful and I suddenly woke up a week later realizing I hadn’t accomplished anything. Well, it gave my thoughts some time to stew at least. And during the festival, I’d teamed up with my talented photographer friend Luke Champion hitting the scene hard. Here’s an outline of our adventures.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010
The Wilderness of Manitoba – The Painted Lady
Wednesday night I set out to the Painted Lady to see The Wilderness of Manitoba. I’m not a huge fan of the painted lady for a musical venue; it can get really crowded really fast and can be difficult to move around in. Knowing that, I quickly found a place behind the wall-mounted mixing board and its sound man and settled in. I absolutely love the sound of their acoustic instruments together complimented by vocal harmonies. Their music spoke to a wide range of emotions while keeping up with their own sound. Some of it was quite haunting, in an Elliot Brood sort of way. But part of the uniqueness to their sound, I think, came from the dissonances in some of their vocal harmonies, which had a lasting effect on me.  They did a great job and I was glad to catch their show.

Courtesy of Luke Champion

Rating: 4.5/5

Vivian Girls – Wrongbar
This was a refreshing show to see. It’d been a while since I’d seen a full female band, let alone one that could rock a show like this. But Vivian Girls made most guy bands seem like a bunch of pussies.  Grunge has been gradually re-emerging in different forms during the past few years and here it came with a shiny indie-surf style, often times with late 50’s and early 60’s style drum beats backing it. And yes, I know they’re from Brooklyn, but their sound is undoubtedly West coast influenced in a number of ways. They interacted really well with the crowd, even permitting some drunk ass to continually hop on the mic and puke out a few unintelligible lyrics. The lead singer rewarded her jubilant fans, in proper punk-grunge form, by chugging from a 40 oz. of Jameson whiskey and spitting it all over them. Verdict: awesome.
Rating: 5/5

Courtesy of Luke Champion

Thursday, March 11, 2010
Parlovr  – Sneaky Dees
On Thursday night we were at Sneaky Dees, but not for wings, poutine or their king’s crown nachos. The first band we caught was Everything All The Time, who are amazing. If you haven’t seen them yet go see them already. But I wasn’t there to review them. Our band of interest, Parlovr, hit the stage around 12 a.m.  They were youthful, energetic and fun, and had an admirably animated stage presence; probably the best I saw during CMW. It’s so rare these days to see a live band that doesn’t act like they’re the coolest thing since birth control. Their music matched their presence in quality. It was catchy, melodic, grimy and raw and the energy it created reminded me of being 14 years old, crowd surfing at a grunge concert. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a huge crowd, but that didn’t seem to phase them, a reaction which can be a sign that they’re great performers or an indication that they just love what they were doing. I think it was both.  Fortunately, I know that they played the next night at the El Mocambo to a sold out crowd. If they had also been chugging from a bottle of whiskey I might have to have given them 6/5.
Rating: 5/5

Courtesy of Luke Champion

Friday, March 12, 2010
Diamond Rings – The Silver Dollar Room
Friday was a bit hectic. We found out that no one could get into the Arts & Crafts showcase at Lee’s Palace, so we made our way to The El Mocambo, which also happened to be at capacity. After a number of minutes of listening to people with media passes complain, we headed up the street to the Silver Dollar Room. We lucked out; Diamond Rings was just about to go on. This is the project of one man, John O., and I have to say, I was really impressed by this multi-talented solo performer. His beats and melodies were simple yet composed in such a way as to relate original sounding songs. That being said he certainly has strong influences; the most evident is Bowie, especially with respect to his glam-rock appearance. The music also reminded me of Bowie, mixed with vocal stylings similar to those of Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Fields. The performance was ‘glamboyant’, yet aggressively energetic and fun. John O. has a great presence. I think that the intensity of his movements somewhat took away from his ability to nail some of his vocals, but it was great.
Rating: 4/5

Courtesy of Luke Champion

The After Party – Magic and Bonjay
At around 2:30 a.m. we hit an after party at an amazing new underground venue called the ‘the syndrome’  in the heart of the Ossington-Queen West party scene. At that point I was wasted, but I feel like I have to say something about what went on there, because it was the most fun I’d had all week. First, Grahmzilla was DJing with Magic hitting the stage after at 4 a.m. followed by Bonjay at around 5 a.m. I won’t get into details, because my memory is a bit fuzzy, but I was so impressed with the music there. Check these artists out. In the future, I’ll make sure to review them when I’m not on another planet.

– Ross Gower.