CMW part two: Hey CN Tower, Up Yours!

Toronto is dead at night. The streets are empty. Maybe there’s a small crowd outside some bar or another, but the distance between is barren. I walk through Kensington market. Everything is closed, gated. It smells of weed and rotting fish. A place like that should be alive at night, not a ghost town.

We start the night at the Horseshoe. It’s dark. Dim lights, black walls – rock and roll. It’s Cindy’s first time there, and she’s quite taken with the place. I think the radio is playing when we walk in but turns out it’s the Immaculate Machines. Kind of like the Smiths if they were cute instead of depressing. Three piece: guitar, keyboards, drums; well rehearsed thee part harmonies. They’re slick, but something’s missing. You could tap your foot to it but that’s about it.

Next up is Dog Day, they’re a strange picture. On the far right the bass player looks to be about ten – no slight to her, she’s good. Especially considering she’s not much taller than the bass. They’ve got that late 90’s Canadian pre-indie sound. Sort of like that whole east coast thing, or maybe the first Treble Charger album. There are some interesting hints of keyboard at the beginning of some songs but unfortunately (for the first five songs) the rest of the instruments drown it out. The keyboard player looks like she’s about to cry but once she gets back into it she starts taking pictures of the audience without missing a note. On the whole the band has a nerdy cuteness, they’re good but nothing special.

Sloan is playing nearby so we decide to go find out what time they’re playing. There’s a thin sheet of ice on the sidewalk as we walk through the disserted Kensington market, this time it smells like weed (the next time it will smell like rotting fish). They’re not playing until 12:20 so we head back to the Horseshoe to see Plants and Animals.

“Hey CN tower, up yours!” Cindy announces on the way back. We talk about how much we hate Toronto.

We arrive just as Katie Stelmanis is finishing her set with a dark, dissonant cover of Aretha Franklin’s, “You Make Me Feel (Like a Natural Woman)”. It’s noisy and the drummer mostly just pounds the toms, it’s good. I’m sorry I missed them because they seem like they might have been the most interesting band of the night. But I don’t really know.

Plants and Animals come next. I’m not really sure what to say about them. I want to say, ‘they defy easy characterization” but that’s just a copout. In my notes it says:

Defy easy characterization with their

It just ends like that, I didn’t even finish the sentence. I was going to write something about their sound but I never quite figured it out. There are hints of the 60’s; some 70’s prog influences. They’re very “indie”, very “Montreal”. Not surprisingly because they are from Montreal. There’s a tongue in cheek hugeness to their sound and stage presence. They’ve got some intense rock-outs but everything’s always very melodic. The crowd cheers pretty nicely between songs but only a few people are actually moving, everyone pretty much just stands still. I don’t think it was the band, no, I think that’s just the Torontonian uptightness. In a similar move to Katie Stelmanis they end on a Nina Simone cover. It’s got a psychedelic touch and is surprisingly good. I want to interview them, but I don’t get a chance to talk to them. I want to go to the back alley and ask if we can interview them. Cindy thinks it’s a bad idea and that we should go through the proper channels, namely requesting an interview from CMW, or requesting the band, their label or p.r. directly. I figure we’ll just go ask them and do the interview right now. But they seem a little sketched out when we approach them (in the alleyway), but they’re nice and tell me to send them an email.

We head back down to the Supermarket in Kensington market, this time it smells like rotting fish (I wish it still smelled like weed). The venue is small, maybe 300 people packed in (Cindy thinks it was more like 200). We can hardly move the crowd is so thick. They start the set with a couple songs off one of their first seven-inch singles. “I don’t think we’ve played that since 1994.” Says singer/bass player Chris Murphy as the band wraps of “Starting With a Push” the second song of the night. The play “Take Good Care of the Poor Boy” off 1999’s, “Between the Bridges” before launching into a track off their upcoming ninth album. Despite the fact that half of the band has gone grey, they still rock like it was 10 years ago. But, especially on the newest songs, the band has lost much of the east-coast innocent charm that made them so enjoyable. While it’s obvious Sloan wishes they were a rock and roll band it’s never quite worked for them and while the newer songs aren’t bad they don’t stand out like the older ones.

The crowd knows it. While they cheer nicely for the new song, its nothing compared to the wild reaction to “Everything You've Done Wrong” off of 1996’s “One Chord to Another.” The song has the crowd moving, hands in the air, singing along to every word.

Sloan looks comfortable on the small stage but it’s obvious they’re used to playing much larger venues, this is their neighbourhood despite hailing from Halifax (and being known for it) the band has lived in this part of Toronto for years.

Around three quarters of the way through the set Murphy puts down his bass and drummer Andrew Scott picks up a guitar and takes over on vocals. The results are mixed. Ad then it’s over at a festival where bands are normally limited to 30 minute sets, Sloan doesn’t get much more than that, but they do get to play an encore – one of the only bands a rarity at CMW. It’s short, two songs. Singer guitar player Patrick Pentland’s vocals are a little off on “The Good in Everyone” which takes away from the song but the band, who have undoubtedly played the song thousands of times, are tight enough to prevent it from being ruined completely. They follow it up with, “She Says What She Means” they play it sloppy but they’re obviously having a good time and so is the crowd. We leave the Supermarket hot, sweaty and satisfied.