Images in Vogue and The Box at Revival Bar

On Friday, November 22nd, two of Canada’s early New Wave stars played a double bill together at the luxe, warmly atmospheric Revival Bar (783 College St.) in Toronto. These bands have been out of the scene in recent years, but have lately reformed for occasional gigs. The crowd at Revival is full of solid supporters, lifelong fans and friends, and the vibe is happily electric.

As kids of our own era know, these two bands (each different but complementary in sound) represent a very exciting time in our nation’s music history. The early 1980s was a fertile time for young bands in our cities; the intercontinental, breezy, cool “Hollywood North” of Vancouver, the well-established, gritty rock and roll city that Toronto then was, and the specific aura brewed out of Montreal and Quebecois French culture, a place that visitors always describe as very European and very different from everywhere else in Canada.

Images in Vogue were one of our first video stars. Not only were new wave bands pioneering new sounds and instruments (a sound represented as well out of Canada as anywhere in the world) but there was a new demand for video content and a sophisticated appreciation for filmmaking techniques in cities like Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, where we had our own film industry. Suddenly bands needed to have a clear image not just for an album sleeve or a gig but one that needed to read well for television, on repeat. The bands that mastered the growing pains of the early music video world are few, but top among them were Images in Vogue, and The Box (and The Spoons). In the video era, these bands were able to translate their ideas through the tricky video medium, another hurdle to the rocky road bands travel to get their music out there.

Images in Vogue mastered the image: Dale Martindale achieved the goth / new wave / arty hair all others only dreamed about, and even made it look natural on him. He accompanied this, for a time, with large black framed glasses which rendered him some kind of early cross between Morrissey and Robert Smith that all the girls fell for. The video image and the looks of boys became foregrounded at this time (for better of for worse) but then as well as now, what stood the test of time was the music. Voice. Tunes. Melodies. Vibe. Images in Vogue, with “Lust for Love”, “Call it Love”, “Save it” and “So Careful”, crafted catchy tunes that stayed with us forever, carried on the unique and gorgeous vocals of Martindale (which only in hindsight do we realize had clear tones of Bowie).

Images in Vogue put in time with four EPs before their album release, In the House (1985) which charted in Canada and won them CASBYs for Album of the Year and Group of the Year in 1986. They achieved something that the era was grappling with industry-wide: how to be alternative and cutting edge but also popular enough to warrant label interest and that of the masses. All of this is at least ten times as harder to achieve in a country as large and spread out as Canada, as it is in the U.K. and the U.S.

The Box were something different, but also tapped into a trend of the global, and rapidly international zeitgeist. In that period, we had Nena’s “99 Luftballoons”, sung all in German (later re-recorded in English, an inferior version) the staying power of Blondie’s “Rapture” and “Sunday Girl” with their nods to downtown Manhattan ‘bedroom French’, and real accents being allowed to enter into the once-flat Americana of rock and pop music. British bands were starting to sound British, and French music was now curious, cool, dark and heavy, in the form of exactly one band: The Box.

Jean-Marc Pisapia (an early member of Men Without Hats) formed The Box in 1981, and would go on to steadily assault the charts with a string of hit albums, singles and videos. For us, the best example of The Box sound is the unforgettably chilling “L’Affaire Dumoutier (Say to Me)” which recounts, in French-only dialogue, journalistic-narration, and the sung chorus, a murder of a woman, the surrounding media circus, and the role of insanity in the murder. In similar fashion to Nena’s deeply atmospheric cold war remoteness undercut by a young, passionate and vividly alive voice suggesting everything we longed to know about cold war Germany, Pisapia’s vocals offered a crash course for the curious in Francophone attitudes, voices, and stories.

Like all music needed to be to break through at this point in time, the music was cool but accessible, if on its own terms. In “L’Affaire Dumoutier”, the band acts out the plot of the affair, like bands are so often required to do in their videos, but here they seem natural, compelling, and like a trailer for a movie we wanted to see more of. Their faces are interesting, the accused eyes’ hollowed and his face gaunt, the police detective full of road-weary sadness.

The Box is a great band whose work holds up today, and tells timeless stories that also point to an exciting time in Canada’s music landscape.

At Revival, Images in Vogue emerges as strong and fresh as ever, with “Call it Love”. There are rows of seats set up for the performance but everyone is standing at the front and surrounding the stage. People are dancing, selfie sticks (?) are bouncing, and the energy is happy. (How I loved the dancing merch table girl…) One never knows what to expect after so many years, and rust on vocals and instruments would be understandable and forgiven, but there’s no need. Dale Martindale sounds 22, album perfect, and the full band is on point. He plays to the crowd like a natural front man, one who is at home on stage, any stage, and ought to be there in a sustainable capacity. As the opener the set is slightly abbreviated but leaves us wanting more, more, more. (This reporter gets star struck meeting with Martindale. I’m twelve again. He tells me that tonight he’d worn a shirt from one of the band’s videos on stage. Understandably, the white tux from Lust for Love was not deemed appropriate.)

The Box comes out and runs through a full set of their classic hits that still enjoy radio play today. There’s some guitar on guitar action as singer Pisapia leaves the stage to mop his brow, looking every bit the same cool police detective character out of the “L’Affair Dumoutier” except grinning wildly, feet away from his audience, enjoying the show himself.

The room feels friendly and spirited, and both the venue (which also serves as an event space) and these bands should be sought out whenever the opportunity presents itself.

We kids who only knew this music through our televisions knew nothing of industry, of struggle, of the brutal nature of trying to be an artist in those days or now, we saw only a sheen of high, black hair, fresh faces, and VJs inventing a new form of entertainment and journalism that was supposed to be as lasting as any other that resides on TV, but is now a relic, locked down in some vault somewhere and reduced to memory and frayed VHS snippets. But now we who loved and love music know better. We know that bands were people, most of whom, had to re-enter the world and make an ordinary living, that all those video spins did not profit them, only the advertisers, the owners, and us kids bopping at home. So to see these bands who conquered all of that and can come out now and rock us like this, is a reckoning, even to those of us invested in the recognition and celebration of our own, misunderstood, mistreated 1980s musical history and culture. We have these wonderful artists walking among us. We should give them more to do. They are worth it.

The Images in Vogue and The Box show at Revival was to benefit Ronald McDonald House Charities, Canada. Listen to Images in Vogue on their website, where they are also offering a deluxe box set. The Box has announced a Closer Together tour for 2020 – 2021.

Words and photos by Jacqueline Howell

Adorable: The Band You Love To Love, Live in London

There are few occasions when an audience is aware that this gig is the last gig; that after tonight, a band will never perform these songs again. Most of the time such decisions take us by surprise – we realize we’ve not seen so-and-so play in a while, look them up, see that they have decided to ‘take a break’ and retrospectively realize that the last time we saw them, really was the last time.  

Not so with Adorable, who earlier this year simultaneously announced that they would be reforming to play again, whilst being clear that these gigs – 25 years after they last performed – would not be heralding a new beginning but would instead denote a closure. These dates were not to signal a coat-tailing of the continuing popularity of the ‘90s revival movement which so many of Adorable’s peers have indulged in, but would mark a taking back of control, as singer Pete Fij remarked when first promoting these shows: ‘when we originally split up in 1994 it was because of dwindling sales, press indifference and a label that didn’t want us anymore. 25 years on, we’re planning on going out on a high – to play some shows that are a celebration of our time together, and exit this time on our own terms!’ 

After initially announcing just two dates – one at Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire, the other in London – the band were overwhelmed by the response they received and quickly added three more nights between the two cities. This was to be a brief two-town tour before the four band members again split up and returned to their ‘normal lives’. 

Adorable formed in 1990, on the back of Baggy and the rise of Shoegaze and a couple of years later signed to Creation where they released their two albums in quick succession. Whilst the band’s career in Britain did not take off as might have been expected, in part due to the destructive power wielded by the whimsical music press, the chance of a fresh start in the States beckoned with a signing to major label SBK and a 30-plus date tour. Here too however, Adorable were blighted – this time at the mercy of SBK’s laughably inappropriate/sadly ill-advised (take your pick) marketing campaign, which tipped them as ‘the band you love to hate’, a goading torment which still stalks Fij to this day. With the rise of Grunge and Britpop, the musical landscape within which Adorable had thrived was shifting and by 1994 it was – apparently – all over.  

For those of us who identify with musical sub-genres of the early ‘90s and who can chart a lifetime’s memories of loves and losses to the records we bought and danced to, bands like Adorable have been deeply missed and remain they ones by which we choose to define ourselves: to use a hackneyed but apt phrase, they really do form the soundtrack to our lives. Whilst Fij went on to form Polak and more recently recorded two beautifully brittle and emotionally raw albums with Terry Bickers, Adorable’s songs and their ability to transport us back to those smoky dimly-lit venues have remained a powerful force and so with these dates being announced, the opportunity to be a part of it for a final time, was too important to pass by. 

It is of course impossible to know how Pete Fij, Kevin Gritton, Robert Dillam and Stephen Williams must have felt in the run up to and duration of these gigs – buoyed on by the enthusiasm of the crowds, even before they stepped on stage but also aware that this would be a final chapter and that however powerful the reception, there would be no repeat. This is part of the paradox of course and one which serves to make these dates unique.  

After two nights at the social cooperative which is Yorkshire’s Hebden Bridge Trades Club, the London venues provide a less austere comparison, with Friday and Saturday night’s sets coming from Bush Hall – a chandelier draped, mirror-bedecked Edwardian dance hall; and Sunday’s from The Scala, a majestic Deco ex-cinema, proudly standing amidst the squalid, messy hinterland of Kings Cross.  

The stage lights are dim and fuzzy and there is something about the intimate, beautiful venues which don’t prepare us for the power of the wave of noise which pours through us as Adorable take to the stage and the ferocity with which they hurl through their back catalogue. With the passing of the years, it was easy for the music press to dismiss Shoegaze as an inconsequential, dated musical genre, overtaken as it was by the more bombastic sounds of the late ‘90s. But hearing these tracks again live and the wall of sound that these musicians produce, we can’t help but acknowledge how vital this connection between musician and audience is, recognize the talent of these performers and also, sadly, realize how brief their hold on fame really was – two years and two albums. 

This does not sound like a band who have not played together for a quarter of a century, nor is the material outmoded; indeed the music they produce remains visceral and shocking in its intensity, an incredible world of feedback and shimmering distortion that catches the breath and holds the audience en-rapt. It is no surprise of course that Shoegaze has made a comeback and that a new generation is experiencing it for themselves and there is a bitter-sweet irony in knowing that were Adorable recording today, their story may well end rather differently. 

The audience know what is coming of course – ‘Sunshine Smile’, ‘Homeboy’ and ‘Sistine Chapel Ceiling’ all get their turn and the band lurch from track to track with barely a pause. As ever, the screaming beauty of ‘Submarine’ and ‘Road Movie’ are clear highlights for me and the only moment of respite is granted during Fij and Dillam’s gentle guitar and vocal duet of ‘Summerside’ a melancholic paean to broken love. On Sunday night, as Fij stands back from the mic to utter the track’s final words ‘killing the love from one another… one another.. .one another’, Dillam turns to him and spontaneously places a tender kiss on his cheek and I feel my chest constrict with the sad beauty of this movement. I feel like a voyeur, witnessing the connection between these two men, a moment so intimate and private, which seems to speak volumes about the journey which has led to this instant. 

During his tours with Terry Bickers, Fij plays the garrulous and charming raconteur, spending as long setting up the story behind each song as he does performing them, whilst his ex-Creation colleague looks on with the taciturn restraint of a tolerant uncle. Here however, whilst equally in his element, we see a different character in the singer’s persona – controlling the stage with stern growls and gesticulations, wielding his mic stand and screaming out his words. If ever a front man epitomized the definition of a brooding stage presence, it is here (I am fully prepared for Pete to laugh); and it appears to me that he has found a cathartic outlet, an expression of anger and venom, perhaps a final laying to rest to the demons which blighted his band’s demise and which have haunted him to this day. 

There are barely any phones on display on Sunday night, the audience is collectively enthralled throughout the set, united by an awareness of the fragility of this final moment in their beloved band’s history. The intensity is such that when the quartet return for the encore and announce that they need to re-play ‘Favourite Fallen Idol’, rather than finish on a mistake (third time lucky as it turns out), our laughter is a nervous release of the tension we hadn’t realized we were feeling.  

The set ends with Fij reminding us that the intention of these dates has not been to make a fresh start but to ‘rewrite history’ and as ‘A To Fade In’ fills the room, the lyrics deeply resonate with those of us who have gathered, audience and musicians alike, to pay homage not just to a moment in time, but to the people we all were, to the hopes, dreams and stories of a generation and to remind us to grab that moment while we can, because we too may have another chance to re-write history: 

I don’t want to be faded skin 
I don’t want to fade out 
I want to fade in 
I want to fade in 

Can you see me? I can’t see myself 
Can you hear me? I can hardly hear myself 
And I don’t want to be a faded memory 
All I want is to be me.

Sally Hamilton

Photo by Dave MacIntyre from Hebden Bridge, Night 2

Peter Hook and The Light Live at the Danforth Music Hall

Peter Hook and the Light’s tours have grown with a clear sense of devotion and a work ethic that won’t quit, since hitting the world stage seven years ago. You’ve had to be there, and there could mean so many places where long time fans feel the same way: devoted to the New Order catalogue unfolding sequentially through each tour, and gobsmacked at hearing Joy Division’s music live after so many years, in all its urgency, grit, and singular power.

One cannot help but note the storied career of Peter Hook while the usual suspects – Toronto’s best music fans – who by now finally mostly know each other, against local custom – wait and discuss competing biographies and tours with the devotion of British football fans. For this is our football. Our only sport: music and its peaks and troughs, tragedy that courses through this story’s origins and even us kids like a marble vein, and the resistance to grief that New Order invented out of ashes, their improbably going ahead to New York in full shock and despair (and commitment) and discovering the saving powers of early dance club music, which they absorbed fully into their blood stream and packed in their duffles home to England, is like Camelot to us 80s kids. There is no story like the New Order story, and while it’s often sad and feels so public and yet personal to millions, it never, ever gets boring, in large measure thanks to this man and what he’s lately built.

Tonight Hooky has brought us Technique and Republic, as well as a full separate closing set of JD songs. The set list feels raw and new, considering they’ve been touring it for months elsewhere and our stop is almost at the extreme end of the run. Lead vocals are traded off between Hook and (Monaco band mate) Pottsy, who has added much to the show since he joined, with his better-than-the-real thing Bernard Sumner vocals that thrill and delight some very tough customers who memorized every note decades ago. There seems to be a few moments of confusion about who and when sings which parts, but no matter – these shows, songs, instruments, and Hook’s sheer will never have rust on them and never will, and their authenticity is always so refreshing to see that it works. The format Hook has chosen for these yearly tours is a risky one: instead of playing the tried-and-true hits, of which New Order has so many, and perfecting a formula that might be an easy one, he starts over each time with an intention to recreate full albums and see where the night takes the band.

Full albums were never arranged to be performed live at all, and not in album order, that trend that has become the (no doubt maddening) formula in the recent years of our formative music’s live resurgence. Technique is one of New Order’s very best let it play albums, but unfortunately for this writer its tracks are light on signature Hook bass lines and truly blinding moments of euphoria that we’ve become so spoiled to enjoy this close for some years now. It’s an addiction, the best kind. And we are used to getting so much of the pure stuff. It’s not a point of pride to say one misses the Substance tours, as nothing on earth can compare to that playlist, culled as it was from the best and most popular of a decade that shaped our very heartbeats and lives there still. And no real fan stops there.

Because the moments always happen. Second song “All the Way” hits in brand new ways, with its clear, pure poetry, written by a young man that resonates more with years on us:

It takes years
to find the nerve
to be apart from anyone
to find the truth inside yourself
and not depend on anyone

A surprising highlight of the evening is the rarely (if ever) played “World in Motion”, helped quite capably on guest vocals (we hear) by a mate of the band’s young son (well done, lad!) And while the crowd dances and bops and hollers for allsorts, there’s one particular glowing moment of private joy where we stand, in the form of “Regret”, which is a song that sparked love that is now in its 25th great year. It is a monument for just us two, who’ve been closer than we ever could have dreamed to this legend and now stand swaying at the back of the room.

The music of classic Technique and better than you may remember Republic is all much missed and holds up so gorgeously. The Hook shows over these years of true graft that new and hungry bands should envy and aspire to have seemed to build a solid group of us returners as well as continuing to awakening new/old fans who were under the misapprehension that our music was from a bygone time and lives only in YouTube now. This, friends, is not nostalgia at all, not a blip, but offers powerful encouragement. The word of Hooky’s stunning shows has spread so delightfully in the old-fashioned manner – hand to hand and word of mouth, that it’s become something of a resurgence of the immediacy of our 1980s culture itself, hard as that is to quantify. You had to be there.

Jacqueline “Forever and a Day” Howell

Music Travel Diaries: The Cure, Daydream, Pasadena & L.A.

By Jacqueline Howell. Photos by Dave MacIntyre with Jacqueline Howell.

In our new series about traveling for live music, we’ll discuss live music that forms the basis of our travel, feature in-depth or capsule live music reviews of shows and festivals and review these unique experience of travel done our way: off the beaten tourist path, loosely planned wherever possible, and with appreciation for local culture, flavours and random discovery.

Pasadena is an appealing L.A. suburb which is probably best known to outsiders for its Rose Bowl and for my generation, the site of Depeche Mode’s legendary 1989 concert / live album / concert film Depeche Mode 101. “Good Evening, Pasadena!” (shouted in our best Rock Star) was the defining theme of our months leading up to our first-ever trip to the West Coast. We could see that Pasadena seemed somewhat walkable (something we are used to at home and the great benefit of all safe, walkable cities) and had all the conveniences that make travelers comfortable and the transition easier, but with a too-easy familiarity that makes the need and effort to find “real culture” of a given city a more deliberate one. There’s Starbucks, as it often is, in strip malls and in satellite form at major hotel chains that are the same everywhere as a matter of branding. There are the chain restaurants that blanket the globe, and there are uniquely American ones, regional and California ones, and there are real places – mom and pop shops, diners, what we think of when we think of finding America. More on those later.

We visited for a short trip built, like most of our trips are, out of a combination of writing and photography and a very short vacation. In our loose plan to see at least one new festival in a new place once per year – which evolved this year to mean several trips including one especially to see The Cure in a new city / one-day festival of Robert Smith’s own design – the L.A. Pasadena trip was to be even more unique for us, combined with a reunion with an old friend from back home, and her daughter we’d not seen since she was small. All of us are big fans of the Cure and so the trip was planned as a reunion and celebration of all of these milestones, and for some, a correction of time too long away from live music.

For the day-job having music traveler on a budget, you find that you are naturally driven for reasons of time and economy away from the norms of international or even typical vacation travel. While conventional thinking (much of it leftover from an earlier time when trips were always thought of as once-in-a-lifetime, an almost aberration / lottery-win) would dictate that Canadians must do three weeks and propel themselves on fumes to conquer all of the U.K. and half of Europe (or not at all) or that a trip to California MUST include the brutally expensive and highly-specific sort of exhausting fun of Disneyland, Universal Studios, Star map tours, and the reportedly seedy & sketchy downtown stretches of the Hollywood Walk of Fame X 8 or 10 days, there is another way, a better way, for folks like us. Our kind of travel also allows for a moment of radical rock star weirdness to friends and co-workers who live differently. “You’re going to California? For FOUR DAYS?” That look alone is worth the jet lag. (Sorry to disappoint, but I have no answers for jet lag, and my jet lag is another story shared with me, one stoic traveling companion, sometimes passing strangers in random airports, and more intuitive Uber drivers.)

Pasadena Daydream was announced in April amid a steady stream of announcements from The Cure who’ve been on a beautiful 40^th Anniversary buzz they’ve shared with their fans in far-flung & more expected places for the past year and a bit. The Cure lives outside of time, adhering only to the 40^th in their fluid, spiderwebby way. Around now was the first time we played a gig as The Cure. This is close to the release date of that record or single. (A band races to play 10:15 Saturday night at that time). And, one feels in her bones, a number of quietly acknowledged and rarely spoken private milestones beheld like contents of a locket by one of the most romantic bands left alive, who thrive and are in their finest form in decades despite any of the ravages of life, or time.

During the second year of the anniversary period, The Cure is still on a beautiful, elegant, and quietly ass-kicking roll. They were always different, and they still are, now with the keys to their own kingdom. They produce their own music, on their own schedule. There will be a new album, sometime soon. When it’s ready. Hyde Park was a legendary day in July 2018, and it was made into a globally screened concert film by Tim Pope, which the whole world of Cure fans watched on the same day, as close as possible to the anniversary, of the anniversary show (you see?) We will always treasure that we were at Hyde Park in London last year with 60,000 others singing out loud, and this year, in the cinema reliving it (by kismet, no planning needed) with Toronto friends who also attended Hyde, who love and pursue Cure shows both at home and anywhere else they can afford to go.

When you start to indulge the strange little voice inside that beckons you forth to do offbeat, tourism-free, bursts of music-based travel, you get the nagging in your gut that often must be ignored (though Scotland seemed like the magical one, maybe) and occasionally is given into. You run, or pretend to run, on a clock and a map that is radically different than the one you were shown as a child. You listen to signs and invent the same, and so you have to use care with such invented mysticism and calls from the universe. Sometimes the universe seems to be shouting. Occasionally it warns you to stay home. It runs free of life’s ups and downs and the unforgiving inflexibility of airline commitments. It’s a bit of a risky way to live. But it’s living.

Due to traveling with friends who were getting their first passports, old friends who (along with myself) always liked to obsesses over details as a way to look forward, the plan for Pasadena was different than our other music trips as a couple and the simplicity of answering only to ourselves and our weird, self-invented photo-journalism ways. All spring, I indulged myself in endless hours looking at suitcases and backpacks (for carrying on as well as a festival day bag) and mapped out where IN-and-OUT Burger and Target were, only to end up with my old (fine) suitcase and in the end, missing ample chances to try the Double Burger with Animal-Style Fries. My friends joining us have less travel experience but are yet more focused, becoming able packers and clear pre-planners – with foreign airport transfers booked months ahead while I laze into my usual Uber mode.

The Pasadena / Daydream plan is the sort people need to get through a long, dark spring in the northern part of the world, where short days and inconsistent weather including snow, ice, sleet and cold rain feel like a seasonless purgatory for 8-5 workers. And it gets us through. My friend and I find each other late at night in chats that need only the same Cure gifs we overuse as private shorthand or a line of a song to set our tired hearts right. And we all feel romantic too – not that we’d ever admit it. New tattoos to mark the occasion are planned, and in some cases carried out. Some of us can just never decide, or should maybe stick to T-shirts. All summer, while The Cure snakes through Australia, Japan, and headline almost every major UK and European festival at a pace we can only marvel at, we stay close to home and look forward to the end of summer. Pasadena Daydream will mark the official end of a band’s summer season, and at the precise end of summer.

And so it unfolds.

Here are the most important and most romantic things I take from that trip, that was over planned for the good of our spirits and under executed due, in part to jet lag; that led us down magical roads of stardust while we never saw any hand prints in cement at all; and where the Hollywood sign was just a distant blur in the smoggy fog spotted from a freeway, captured in a photo I had to define as “alleged”.

Pasadena Daydream is a smaller, two stage, well-curated line up of bands who make sense together. The scale and scope of the thing is one that ought to, and I think will, set the new bar for what festivals in North America should be aiming for and a format that can be scaled logically within most budgets whether in rock clubs, city parks or stadiums. Look at what The Cure did, organizers in Canada and U.S., and even modest capabilities. We dream of being part of such new festivals here at home, where we truly need to embrace the very British “one-dayer” in all its perfection. It must be noted that the promoter / administration at the Pasadena venue (getting in during record high heat waves on melting tar) has been widely criticized by attendees, and rightly so. We’ve been to a lot of festivals – mostly, but not only at home – and never seen such disorganization, lack of signage or void of people in charge of making sure customers have the few arrows to what they need to enjoy themselves or be wrist-banded correctly to access areas, a gap in organization creating rough and avoidable situations for too many. Time is money, and too much of it is spent in lines, full stop, to enjoy the first half of the day. There are long lines everywhere, VIP seems oversold and inconvenient, and it becomes difficult to enjoy any of the day’s offerings besides the bands themselves. We’ve avoided complaining about festival logistics in the past, but the things we and others experience here are especially frustrating both as they are easily correctable and also because they serve to undermine the good aspects of the day and take some time to recover from (physically). Logistics like this do a disservice to the bands and the name atop this whole thing, something all of us fans are protective over and believe in unconditionally, too.

The festival occurring on two stages, on the other hand, is executed very effectively. Here, it’s apparent that the people in charge of this side of things are more than qualified. While the always excellent and tireless Twilight Sad has some frustrating sound problems during their set, most of the rest of the day goes smoothly, and while internet service is patchy, attendees and a few media-types are able to exclaim about the excellent time had, notably at the reunited Throwing Muses, who bring an impressively devoted draw who’ve waited for this as well as followed Kristen Hersh’s extensive solo work.

Unwilling to travel anymore, we settle for the rest of our day with views of the main stage, where Deftones, Pixies, and The Cure deliver lengthy, flawless performances and crowd positions are found and held onto for dear life. We work out an awkward, mobile-less field system of landmarking with our friends, knowing I sound like my father back in another century, but putting in the time so I can at least find my oldest friend doing her one of a kind dances to “Caterpillar Girl”, which she is. I think, then, and later, of my friend Craig, who once united three groups of us in the pitch dark in a mass of thousands with no landmarks at all but with blinding lights and pyro coming from a faraway Prodigy stage, somehow intuiting a certain garbage can and eyeballing metres like the skilled tradesman he is, working a miracle of boy scouting, helping Dave find us all the way back there from the photo pit where he shot his bucket list band while dancing compulsively. Such achievements are what help define these experiences, when the frustrations, the money splashed out, and the sunburn fades away. These little wins make us real, proud music people.

One can evaluate the success of a live show, in a certain sense, by the churn of the crowd. The churn is minimal on this beautiful evening, especially as the sun starts to relent and Pixies deliver a headline-worthy epic set of 25 songs. I say this as a Kim Deal / current day Breeders and early Pixies devotee, they kill it. “Wave of Mutilation” is still my anthem in my heart. Find me another such line that you can dance through a crowd so (obscenely) happily uttering aloud: (sung breezily, without a care in the world):

“They think I’m dead, but I sail away…on a Wave of Mutilation….Wave of Mutilation….Wa-a-a-a-ve. Wa-a-a-ve.”

In moments like that, your enemies are more than just thousands of miles away and behind you. They are in another orbit, and you are free. The Cure, in their quietly vampiric-romantic fashion, through planning this day as they did, tonight honour their contemporaries, Pixies, with an almost co-headline length set. It has all been done, one thinks, to remind all who remember outside of time as we true music believers live, of the triumphant 1989 Prayer Tour, when Pixies opened for The Cure on their US dates through the shimmering, meteoric heat of the instantly iconic Disintegration. At home, people who forget or wish to believe that the best is behind us for alternative music (or for culture) circulate The Prayer Tour poster online for likes. But we are free of nostalgia. We are all here, tonight. In the hard-won moment. Despite health concerns, fear of travel, sadness and stresses waiting back home, or the constrains of money itself.

One of the only drawbacks of Hyde Park (like Bestival Toronto before that, when the sun had the bloody nerve to beat down on Robert, Simon, Roger, Reeves and Jason, each clad in defiant black and gravity immune hair) was that the time of early /midsummer they occurred meant our heroes had to appear before the earth turned to meet them at the appointed time of dusk-where-dark-falls within minutes. Magic hour. But tonight (as me and my friend obsessively figured out a month ahead of time) the fading season is at last ideal for The Cure to take the stage.

This is a band who needs no extravagance or welcomes-to-the-stage, but we are in the age of necessary high-calibre screens and we appreciate the attractive effects, and tonight for our first time live, we get to see these things done to full effect (reportedly Bestival Toronto in 2016 was an early test / debut for the new feature, one interrupted by weather and sound issues outdoors, as well as having a limited impact due to that infernal daylight). Everyone, now, standing at every corner of this large golf course-by-day, can enjoy some sort of view. Everyone gets the full show, even if getting close to the stage is just a myth for most of us who like to eat, drink, move and get merch. The Cure is perfect tonight, the set not unfamiliar to those of us who’ve imbibed to near-overdose all summer on the joy of official live streams and secreted BBC footage, watched and cheered from our homes in midday from across time zones with dregs of old wine in hand at solo parties before the triumphant shows in Sydney, Glastonbury, and Rock en Seine.

This is the capsule of emotions and memory I write post-show through jet lagged ( / panic attack) tears, for social media in a writer’s sleepless hours. I have learned to find the romance in life, all of life. It took me ages. We who found all this music long ago in the unromantic circumstances of young loves, follow the sounds of romantic music like a beacon. There can be no regrets. Enough of all that:

Trip comedown well underway, even while still here, as friends leaving early am. We’ll never forget you, Pasadena, your lovely warm people, The Cure’s music ringing as perfect & timeless as ever in the dark summer night, our special reunion with our dear friend & her beautiful daughter and your palm trees.

Nothing is perfect. Travel is hard. Nervous excitement is exhausting. Some caterpillars bite (true story) real, authentic Diners (and the people who understand real food) still exist. American people are good & full of heart, and almost every single local person we’ve met here has the kind of faces Tr*mp & co. would disgracefully target. Shocking. Real America will not be bowed by hate or politicking. We heard none, we felt none, we were in a safe place – while a part of my mind finally admitted much relief that no shots rang out, in a large gathering such as it was. Whether in range or in earshot, it would have destroyed me.

When your hotel room is positioned just like your childhood front doors were for 20 years with your friend you are seeing for the first time in a decade, it is a sign.

Home is in your hearts. Like love, Music is immune to time, age, trends, loss or polar ice caps melting. It is tribal, transcendent, primal, religious. There are 100 ways to enjoy a festival, none of them wrong. Many of them bumbling, costly, time-wasting. It’s OK. You were there. Your very own words brought your own new group of near strangers here, now. And nearby, swirling around you, are eight-year-old wild-eyed children playing hide-and-go-seek in the dark in the crowd during the music that defines your personhood, which makes you finally relax, ignore your programmed tension and be fully present, in that magic. That’s what you’ve been looking for since you were their age, and before, it seems. That’s what you will keep. A souvenir, worth all of it. All of it! Those kids are not a strange family of four like you thought but really total strangers who had become a gang for a moment in time (not) lost in the dark. They insist with their peals of laughter that they can’t hear inside their giant ear protector headsets, this music of their parents’ youth the backdrop to their own burgeoning lives, that your worries are but a sand trap, everything will go on and real life is organic, sustainable, innate, stubborn, messy and beautiful.

And through this trip and all the best laid plans I am reminded that kids often want nothing more than endless hours in a bathwater warm swimming pool in the endless sun. For we rarely get strong, endless sun in the north. A pool that is almost private. It’s never, ever warm as bathwater in our north. Teens are right to maximize their time in the sun and under the moon, they are banking it for the long Canadian winter not far enough ahead. They are pretty smart.

Here are the unplanned discoveries we made in Pasadena and our short time going through downtown LA en route to LAX:

ANDY’S COFFEE SHOP: 1234 East Colorado Blvd. Pasadena

Located on a quiet stretch of the old Route 66 that runs through Pasadena, we visited Andy’s twice for full, hearty, traveler-fueling breakfast, avoiding the hotel restaurant & fast food chains. This is a classic, authentic diner and a place where locals eat. The prices are reasonable and the menu is large, as are the servings, and the coffee is of course, bottomless, a detail almost forgotten in today’s climate. Andy’s offers all manner of classic diner fare and was the perfect place for morning after Huevos Rancheros. While the dish is a staple in the few diners that remain in our part of the world, Andy’s felt truly authentic, with style and fresh tortillas to spare. Like true diners and the best authentic eateries everywhere, Andy’s dining room and kitchen are run by long time restaurant pros who’ve worked together for a few decades. It felt like home.

CANTERBURY RECORDS. INC.: 805 East Colorado Blvd. Pasadena

A man who’s stayed with records through more than a few music format changes tells me without apology: “We don’t have T-shirts or any of that stuff.” I’m a hopeless tote bag collector and now slip mats have become an easy and useful souvenir, and they have none of this stuff for sale. We’ve stumbled onto this record shop, a real one. Two large rooms carry a wide inventory of original pressings and quite on point reissues from the range of genres only possible for older record collectors and surviving record stores. I’m drawn by a range of very inexpensive Christmas albums from earlier eras I’ve never seen, but we ultimately buy a handful of well-priced reissues to fill holes in our collection.

AMOEBA MUSIC: The World’s Largest Independent Record Store: 6400 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles

Obviously. Amoeba is a LA institution where you are as likely to find your favourite touring musician shopping as to find ways to spend all your money in minutes. The place defies description, and photos don’t do it justice. It overwhelms. It’s simply everything we miss and have almost entirely lost in the world, certainly in my hometown, and that cannot be replaced even if vinyl were to come back strong forever. It is an endlessly layered but organized hall of wonders, with added-on rooms opening up around corners and with all the old film and music posters for sale to the height of very high ceilings you’ve missed since they silently disappeared, a place chock full of memorabilia, rare out of print music books you didn’t know existed but you need urgently, T-Shirts, and music, music, music. Visit one of their three LA area locations while you can.

TREJO’S CANTINA:  1556 N Cahuenga Blvd, Los Angeles

Around the corner from Amoeba Records sits actor Danny Trejo’s joint, Trejo’s Cantina. Trejo has a few taco spots including one at LAX Terminal 1, as well as a coffee and donut business, and the Cantina has a delightful casual vibe and intimate atmosphere. Most importantly, the tacos are delicious, traditional, varied and you have no choice but to try one of everything and then try a few more. My favourite was the Carnitas, and Dave loved the Beef Barbacoa best. The O.G. Margarita is perfection. The servers are friendly and laid back (as should you be) and rumour has it that Trejo pops in pretty regularly and is happy to say hello tableside, as he did with us. You win some, and you lose some. The trip feels appropriately Hollywood. Trejo’s brand, simple, well made and utterly downtown L.A. is poised and perfect for wider expansion, and would surely be a hit worldwide. It would shake my hometown to its core.

Special mention: We made our first trip to Trader Joe’s, the amazing grocery store of that region, for supplies. The cashier happened to notice my partner’s T-shirt, featuring The Twilight Sad’s newest album cover art. She says, out of the blue, “I love your T-shirt. I always thought it looked like a picture of Robert and Mary Smith.” “Get out! Me too.” I say. She asks us what brings us to town “A festival at the Rose Bowl…” I say. “DON’T EVEN!” she cries. “I’m dying to go to that and I’m stuck working. My favourite bands!” Oh how I wish we could have brought Arin along. By the time our groceries are bagged, we’re hugging goodbye. This was the mood we found in Pasadena. Friendly, open, and pure.

Pro tip: Unlike where we’re from, Uber in L.A. sometimes subcontracts out calls to outside companies. This was a surprise to us on the low-speed chase to always, always, traffic snarled LAX, where our driver entertained, chatted, and used the politest techniques we’ve ever seen to get other drivers to co-operate, and because of him we got there instead of hitting the road shoulder in desperation like other travelers. As Uber is cashless and the tip is entered on the app, this type of driver deserves a proper cash-in-hand tip. On the upside he said he’s paid hourly, so maybe it works out well for them.

With thanks to my partner and my travel companions, all the nice people we met in L.A. and Pasadena and our fellow music fans, especially the one with “The Smith / “Smiths” Tshirts featuring the hero of that sunshine-y day.

Ride Live at The Danforth Music Hall

Ride takes the stage at Toronto’s jewel, the Danforth Music Hall, like visiting old friends. This is one legendary British band who never forgets us, not in the period of recent global shoegaze resurgence or once they began recording new music again in 2017, with return visits on both album tours since. This venue feels a bit like a secret, where so many great British bands we could largely only long for in the 1990s as we pored over back pages of NME and Select magazine, have found their way regularly in recent years.

They enter to “R.I.D.E.” beginning a nineteen song set confidently with two more brand new ones: the shimmering “Jump Jet” and the infectiously jangly, harmonious and optimistic “Future Love”, rounding out their opening set with the eternally fresh, still urgent call to creative soul action: “Leave Them All Behind”, its extended outro firmly setting tonight’s musical mood. We are in for a treat, with classics and new tracks seamlessly mixed, a range of moods and sounds blended together with mastery, and all of it united by Ride’s iconic harmonies and tight-as-a-drum rhythm section.

The new record (the band’s sixth) is the extremely well received This is Not a Safe Place, their second new album in two years (2017’s Weather Diaries was their first since 1996’s Tarantula). Six new songs are played tonight, including one for the very first time (“End Game”). There’s the blistering, driving and psychedelia-tinged “Kill Switch” the exciting driving dance beat of “Repetition” and “Shadows Behind the Sun”. “Eternal Recurrence” sounds as if it could have emerged from any era of this band, and all the new music is stunningly impressive. It is the sound of a band – still united today with all four original members – who still have much to say, who won’t be pigeonholed by genre, era, or scene – the hallmark of true artistry.

The rather foreboding yet presciently titled This is Not a Safe Place speaks to this precise moment of late 2019, at the close of the first twenty years of a new century, so far from the defiant optimism of the 1990s we remember. The title suggests: Don’t get too comfortable. Stay alert. Be ready to move. It seems to connect to 2017’s Weather Diaries, then a darkening global moment when we were, perhaps, still looking for signs mystical, tribal or elemental, to save us. Ride’s new message is received clearly by the realest communities, global ones, a people united by music, values, critical thinking ability, and taste. Music is still a powerful form of protest, of rebellion, and of activism. It shakes us awake from the 24-hour news scroll, and fortifies our spirits for the daily onslaught, the next bad headline, or the gloom that’s come to rest on our shoulders too permanently. This album and its messages are sure to top the best of lists for this year as well as inspire both emerging bands and Ride’s contemporaries alike to create something new, urgent, and fearless in 2020, in defiance of all the noise.

The rest of the set is judiciously spread across the strong back catalog, including: “Chrome Waves” “Chelsea Girl” “Twisterella” “Drive Blind” and “Vapour Trail” (custom designed to ricochet you like a DeLorean back to whatever age you were in 1990).  The crowd may not be too familiar with the weeks’ old new album yet, but they are committed and enthusiastic throughout. It is always heartwarming when lager louts don’t push forward for just their favourite old song, but a crowd settles into some sort of harmony for two hours. It is the ideal, and somehow, in the alchemy of rock and roll, it’s influenced by the artists themselves.

Shortly after the show, the band casually reconvenes at a nearby pub, itself a local institution that still welcomes new and traditional music to its small stage. Here, music talk is avid and casual, all barriers removed, as Ride’s harmonies still run through our heads and a few keen-eyed fans suss them out for a shy hello. The band are gracious, chill, and the epitome of cool, standing right there at a neighbourhood local, at ease with all of it: life, music, us, and the road, their home away from home.

Jacqueline Howell

Photos: Dave MacIntyre

Lowest of the Low – AGITPOP Release Party at The Danforth Music Hall

Lowest of the Low AGITPOP Record Release party, Danforth Music Hall, Toronto, May 31.

It’s a spring Friday night in Toronto and the Music Hall is packed full of Lowest of the Low fans. People who know this band’s 1991 debut record word for word. We’ve grown up with it. It holds a very special place in our Toronto memories (and beyond) and it has the power of great, singular music to transport its fans back to our younger selves. Not a few of us are here with the same ones we’ve been listening with since the 1990s, when bands had lots of time to bake, albums were played until they became our own anthems, and time moved slower.

Shakespeare My Butt, is, as the irreverent title suggests, an energetic twenty-something that’s equal parts bookworm and upstart. It was not common at the time for Toronto bands to take pride and ownership in this city, still then, deep in its insecurity complex and far too susceptible to American and British media, music, and notions of what cool was. But Lowest of the Low did that. They sang about making out late at night on Bathurst Street. The simple drunken joy of a tin of beer at the east end’s Only Café (a legend, already, back then and an institution by now). The Carlaw bridge appears. These are not references for the tourists, they do not pander to the American radio market, and they mean nothing to people unfamiliar with our neighbourhoods. They are community references, and references now belonging to fans of this band.

The album is Canada’s own George Best, the much-lauded classic Indie British record by The Wedding Present from the same period which documents, in sometimes excruciating detail, the cycle of first love through open-hearted, ripped from a diary verses. Both albums took hold of their respective cultures.  Shakespeare My Butt is an edgy album, featuring a then very bold use of profanity and frank talk of sex, both things that fuel young lives.

Bands with iconic albums slow-brewed over our formative years have an uphill climb when releasing new music today. There will always be the nostalgists, the “play the hits” louts. But the release of new music for our important 1990s (Canadian) bands is a big milestone today, and one well worth celebrating. The set weaves old and new rather seamlessly, with a lot of thought given to the set list and where to place the sure fire hits. But the Low needn’t worry. The new material is wholly their sound, still full of activism, boldness and the gritty love of those in need that their band name speaks to, with a well done accompanying video display that weaves historic civil rights march footage with the contemporary and the local, as seen as a backdrop on “The Barricade”.

Friends are brought out, filling the stage with a horn section and a bongo drum player. Guitars are swapped madly as the band runs through songs with the same energy as the records, and with Ron Hawkins in the rarest of voices, one ever-clear and unchanged across 25 years. A wonderful moment comes when Hawkins places his microphone in front of a woman in the crowd to ask her to tell us a story. She doesn’t hesitate. She’s ready. She mentions back in the day, CFNY 102.1 The Edge, hearing the song they are kicking into, having gone through a rough time and how it helped her through it. It’s a perfect soundbite of a story we all can relate to. Ron lays back on the stage, the microphone above his head, like he’s at home on his bed in that time travel world of last century on a long distance call over a cord stretched from one room to another. He looks utterly at home. He says speaking of CFNY…

Dave Bookman’s death of last week is still right under the surface of this city’s skin. Hawkins says some perfect words up to the rafters and beyond about Bookie, that he’s here, that “we’re just gonna keep on doing what he would do until he tells us to stop”.

The Low demonstrates that they still have their finger on the urgent pulse of what matters. Tonight the front row (in our end of the room) is solely comprised of petite, devoted women, who get to see and hear a rallying cry from one of our clearest voices for their rights, which are being challenged as we speak, even in 2019, half a century after the civil rights movement.

And it’s a fight that needs to be fought at every corner, even in rooms as friendly and warm as this one.

All standing room rock shows bring out the possible tension being shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers, in an unregulated area which relies almost totally on non-dickish behavior. Here, as in past Lowest of the Low shows, the room is quite an even gender mix (more than in many rock shows). One complete star of a fan is at the barrier on crutches. You gotta love music fans with all your heart. But one man emerges, looking to “good-naturedly” push and bully his way to the front. He is large, and uses his size to get his way, along with an uncomfortable jocularity. For we are not all jocks. We all have the right to enjoy a show in our own way. Majority rules, I guess, and in this part of the room (which happens to be the front row, stage right) there are quiet couples and women giving each other reasonable space. Until one man elbows, high fives and points his way to the front during, predictably, one of the hits. He even pats a stranger on the head. He’s alright when people go along with his ploy to push in front of others, the oldest trick in the book to the seasoned gig goer, but when he meets any resistance (even being ignored) he turns ugly. He disappears halfway through the show, a relief.

Tonight’s show closer is the melodic, honest sing along, “Rosy and Grey”, which talks about the simple pleasures of life on the margins / for the young. The fleeting freedom of the EI check (Unemployment benefits / “the dole”) meaning one can pay for a round of drinks. Regrets and reminiscences. The cheeky line about oral sex which is part of a couplet that is actually one of the most romantic in Canadian music history. This is The Lowest of the Low. The album became a phenomenon because their punk sensibility and fearlessness about their content broke through and said what everyone was thinking, told the truth about what young people (and hell, older people too) were doing and how we were living. And it holds up today, is enshrined as a classic album, as much as contemporary music ever can be in this country, these days, by a bands’ own bootstraps and the goodwill of fans willing to buy a box set.

Jacqueline Howell

Photos: Dave MacIntyre

Gigantic All Dayer Vol. 5 – May 25th, Manchester Academy

Back for its fifth outing on a drizzly Saturday in late May (well it is Manchester and it is a British bank holiday) comes the Gigantic All Dayer: a rollicking celebration of indie favourites from the 80s and 90s. Combine a clutch of bands, DJ sets courtesy of Pop Will Eat Itself’s Crabbi, ample real ale, and plenty of ageing indie kids eager to rediscover their youth and you have the perfect opportunity to step back to a more carefree time, if only for a day.

Jesus Jones – Phone pic by Gavin Morgan.

Placed early on the bill but filling the venue immediately, are electro-rock favourites Jesus Jones; Mike Edwards as lithe and energetic as ever, snappy in fitted shirt, instantly energizing the crowd with the collection of hits we’ve all been waiting for. Having released sixth album Passages in 2018, the band have been touring extensively – they played Brazil earlier this month – and are clearly energized by the enthusiastic early afternoon crowd.

“International Bright Young Thing” “Real Real Real”, “Who? Where? Why?”, and 1990’s “Right Here, Right Now”; the latter, an apposite choice for those of us Brits who are suffering from Brexit malaise and a sense of trepidation at what the future may bring. A song inspired by events across Eastern Europe in the late 80s and influenced by the band’s experiences whilst touring in Ceausescu’s Romania in 1989, it can’t help but feel like a warning to us all – thirty years later and the message of those optimistic youths still strikes a powerful chord.

Jim Bob – Phone pic by Gavin Morgan

Gigantic favourite Jim Bob, resplendent in sparkling jacket and red sunglasses to match his patent Doc Martens is here to rattle out Carter hits; accompanied solely by acoustic guitar and ready wit. The crowd love him and readily recite back a litany of quick-fire droll lyrics from the band’s back catalogue, echoing exuberantly: ‘in a bar Johnny drinks, Johnny drinks, Johnnie Walker’ as he launches into “Prince in a Pauper’s Grave”. We hear an amusing (and probably apocryphal) tale of band rivalries between Carter and The Bluetones, from back in the day when such stories shifted copies of NME and Melody Maker off the shelves; and as one we joyously chorus back the words to the band’s 1992 anthem to the outsider: ‘The gypsies, the travelers and the thieves, the good, the bad, the average and unique, the grebos the crusties and the goths and the only living boy in New Cross’.

The Bluetones – Phone pic by Gavin Morgan.

Next up, John Peel protégés, The Bluetones, with Mark Morriss rocking his own brand of devastating geography teacher chic. Having reformed in 2015 after a four year hiatus, the band have toured extensively as well as the continuation of Morriss’ solo outings. You only have to listen to them belt out such beloved indie-pop classics as “Bluetonic”, “Cut Some Rug”, and “Marblehead Johnson” to be reminded what a enchanting band The Bluetones are, providing confidently skillful musicians, incredibly catchy tunes, shrewdly self-deprecating lyrics and Morriss’ charismatic, ready wit. The latter’s onstage banter as ever charms his crowd, self-effacing asides lampoon the band’s heritage as being relegated to Heart FM radio fodder, as he mock-laments the releases that ‘no one’ bought. “Solomon Bites the Worm” and “Never Going Nowhere” are joyful reminders of a time when alternative indie-pop entered the mainstream and ruled the air waves, and the set comes to a powerful close with “If”, a wonderful sing-along crowd pleaser from second album Return to the Last Chance Saloon.

The Wonder Stuff – Phone pic by Gavin Morgan.

So, on to festival circuit favourites, The Wonder Stuff, with a new line up to join Miles and Erica and tie in with recording their next album: bringing back sorely-missed and much-loved Malc Treece on guitar with Pete Howard on drums and Mark Gemini Thwaite on bass. The anticipation in the room, fueled by beer and excitement, is clear and when Miles Hunt arrives, suited in 1940s style high-waisted trousers and natty braces, the room erupts with a roar. It feels unbelievable that it’s thirty years since Hup but this is a set of crowd-pleasing hits rather than an album outing and the band tap into the crowd’s energy perfectly, as “Mission Drive” commences the set. This is one of those special performances – the symbiotic relationship between band and audience causing the momentum to build with each song.We know every word, we anticipate the next track, stage and audience full of smiles, the atmosphere elated. ‘Donation’ sounds particularly vehement and scathing tonight and the crowd sings along to every word as ‘Ruby Horse’ leads into ‘A Wish Away’ and ‘Unbearable’, followed by a rambunctious outing of ‘Give Give Give..’ The superb set comes to a close as always with a fiery and powerful foot-stomping outing of ‘Ten Trenches Deep’; fast and furious, Erica’s violin scratching staccato sounds as the crowd stamp and clap their approval.

Echo & The Bunnymen – Phone pic by Gavin Morgan.

Tonight’s final act – I hesitate to say headliner, as in a sense all performers today bring equal weight to the bill – gives us Echo & The Bunnymen. Following Miles Hunt’s post-punk outfit was always going to be a big task for Ian McCulloch, hardly the most Echo & The BunnEchloquacious of frontmen. It takes a while (and a lot of to-ing and fro-ing from the crew) for the band to appear and by this point the euphoric energy created by The Stuffies has dissipated somewhat, making me wonder at the prescience of the billing order. But Mac is in good form tonight, reassuring the crowd that he is in a ‘fantastically good mood’. There is a lot of rather incoherent mumbling and at times it feels as though we are watching a technical display of musicianship rather than a festival performance but nothing can deny the beauty of hearing these songs live – as fresh now as they were thirty, even forty, years ago. The crowd adore “Bring on the Dancing Horses” and “The Cutter”, and when Mac announces ‘this is the best song ever written’, we are treated to a tender rendition of “Killing Moon”, the band illuminated by a cerulean glow, dreamlike and Gothic; a perfect finale to a day which has united us once more in a shared love of what must surely matter most – the power that music holds to captivate and bring us joy.

Sally Hamilton

The Twilight Sad in Toronto, May 16th 2019

The Twilight Sad: Toronto, Velvet Underground, May 16th, 2019.

The Twilight Sad have returned to Toronto with their latest album It Won’t Be Like This All the Time. 

The Sad have built a fanbase here, as elsewhere, over many years, playing the circuit of gritty rock clubs and halls that we are damned lucky still exist. They’ve played the big stages, having opened for The Cure across their massive North American tour in 2016 (locally headlining Bestival Toronto that year). We first caught the Kilsyth band in 2010, as part of an exciting bill of up and coming Glasgow bands that were gaining wider recognition. At that time, the riveting stage presence of James Graham was something this not-yet-writer found overwhelming. Long distant, then, from the happy days of similarly sized concerts from bands who came over from the U.K., I was rusty, out of practice. It turns out I had been asleep. If I’d ever been at front of stage in my youth in the 90s, an alcohol and convivial haze was half the point, the precise memories sketchy and full of youthful blank spots. And stadium shows, pre-big screens and big sound, were wishful thinking, all of us sitting in the cheap seats, light blue plastic they were, all of us thrilled just be be there, at all. None of the nuances of performances, nor even full confirmation these were the same people from our posters, was really possible.

So seeing The Twilight Sad on an intimate stage before a passionate crowd was something I wasn’t ready for in 2010. Graham’s stage presence is by now, famous to all who’ve been in those rooms and festival fields. But I’d never been around (or close enough) to see an artist give it all from his marrow, eyes white and rolled back, body possessed, clothes melted, singing from somewhere primal, somehow looking good doing it, but doing everything that repressed cultures are told will get you labeled. I lived in a land defined by measured lawns of puritanical social codes and tall poppy syndrome. I had forgotten (never seen up close) that true art and bloodletting performance is rare, special, what music fans wait for or may never get to see. That they aren’t something of flat, priceless images from the 1970s, you-missed-it, New York. But in 2010, I had not yet learned to hold myself un-self-consciously in a crowd with full ease and abandon, even alone, not needing liquid courage anymore, finding my religion in the chords of our few stalwart, saintly poets who miraculously return to us year after year, despite airports and border patrols having not one art-loving bone in their entire structures. I hadn’t swayed, eyes closed, beyond the need for visuals, photos unnecessary, phone away, in a place of transcendence that artists build with their audiences, each of us a vital part, a temple constructed and dismantled in 90 minutes anywhere the bus can take them, or us.

Now, Velvet Underground, a former nightclub / bar haunt of ours, has been refurbished and decluttered as a central downtown site for excellent club-sized gigs, and is run by people who still value links to important bands from overseas. I’m ever aware of the history of even this new paint, our limited and fragile Toronto landmarks, and the great fortune that conspires to enable this lifestyle at all, when there is a movement in the corporate, corrupted media arena that tries to convince all of us who know better around the world, that guitars and real music made by hands and voices is something dying, retro, uncool or obsolete. It’s all lies. Rock and Roll still has enormous, incorruptible power to threaten the establishment no matter how the establishment shakes its ass or how much smoke and mirrors they trot out to soulless arenas. We go on.

En route to this gig, The Twilight Sad updates their fans on their tour from the road. A necessary cancellation due to illness for the lead singer means doctor-ordered rest for two days, in order to be able to make Toronto’s show. Then, the airline loses essential band equipment. At the gig, Graham, a man of few words but much sincere feeling, tells us that the band were the guests of Border Services for three hours today. Getting to Canada is not easy, and the bands who make the effort mean more to us then ever.

Now to the gig. Due to unavoidable delays we arrive midway through Kathryn Joseph’s set, regrettably, as it’s clearly not to be missed. The crowd of The Twilight Sad fans is silent, respectful, enraptured at this lone figure curled over her keys performing her award winning debut double album Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I’ve Spilled. Toronto Bros have been chased out of town with pitchforks: this is why we (forever) need more female representation up on our rock stages. Joseph commands the room with a syrupy voice full of life and heart, her evocative, clean lyrics repeated until I see the story unfurled before me of this specific love, this pain, this universal dirge we must grapple with as humans. No talking is permitted by strangers who’ve adopted a code unusual for Toronto gigs, a single, withering dirty look as effective as a young mother to her child was, in my day. It’s impressive in every way. This is her atmosphere, one made by music alone, and it is a perfect complement to the Sad. Joseph is a fellow Glaswegian and support for their whole tour. Don’t be late.

As expected, James Graham emerges in full physical force, perhaps front loading his energy in case his still very ill throat and body lets him down later. He touches his chest like you do when you need your nana-nurse, and yet his vocals never flag, causing worry amongst a devoted crowd who care about him even more than their night’s entertainment. He’s earned it over years of hard graft, and great music. The set is a full one, as the rest of the room drips sweat in the strange mid May humidity of Toronto that swings up and down by 25 degrees in a few hours. We know and empathize with persistent flus and colds around here, and we aren’t even trying to sing.

The set moves through seven songs from the new album It Won’t Be Like This All the Time and finishes with an emotional wallop: “Cold Days From the Birdhouse”, followed by a cover of Frightened Rabbit’s “Keep Yourself Warm” in honor of the late Scott Hutchinson, a friend whose death rocked his community of fans as well as his music family. We must all keep ourselves warm. We must keep each other warm. Alive. It is a war cry against the darkness we must fight. The final song of the gig, “And She Would Darken the Memory”, which has been in the set since 2007, is a mic drop moment of modern music that tells everyone that real music is the farthest thing from dead, like many great and organic art forms has just been badly treated by an industry. But music is not an industry. And so, in free-fall, the music that can flourish now is only, ever, art.

This band, back in 2010, was too big for the stage I saw them on, in my town that I believed then did not let people stand to their full height (or reach beyond it). They gave the same, major performance and sound that would enable them to fill The Cure’s massive stage as support for the massive, historic 2016 North American tour, a record-breaking route that carved a map like a joker’s smile, taking a continent to church in three-encore sessions. By then, the Sad were more than ready. And they are still perfect on the rock club stage where fans get the best of both, like it was a private party. This band can do anything and has only grown with the opportunities they’ve been given – for how do you not learn from the best, and the biggest changes? The Twilight Sad is a band now in full flight, who must be seen live at every opportunity. Nobody moves from their spot. Most of us have a perfect, tight view, even eye contact. Shouting distance. Trust.

Jacqueline Howell

Photos: Dave MacIntyre

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Live with Cigarettes After Sex

When I told a work colleague that I had never been to a Nick Cave show, the reaction was immediate and in all caps.  “YOU HAVEN’T SEEN HIM LIVE?”  Followed by “Oh Man.  He’s the best.  He really plays to the front of the audience”.

What I didn’t quite understand at that time was how much he played to the front of his audience.  I had always assumed Cave was a stoic performer that put on a quality music and vocal performance but kept audience interaction to a minimum.  A “thank you” here and there, then on to the next song.  Maybe it was his tall, slender and always immaculate appearance that gave me that impression, but I couldn’t have been more off the mark.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds walked out to an anticipation-filled crowd at the Scotiabank Arena Sunday night.  The venue was set up to be more intimate than a typical arena show; the stage was moved forward to the centre-ice line in front of a standing-only floor space, the upper seating decks closed, so there wasn’t a bad sight line in the place.  It was also the last night of the Skeleton Tree tour, so an added electricity was in the air.

Starting off with “Jesus Alone” from 2016’s Skeleton Tree, Cave stepped over the gap between the stage and a surprisingly narrow catwalk, so he could get up close and personal with the front row worshipers.  And as lithe as a cat on a fence, he moved along clutching the hands of adoring fans while he sang and locked eyes.  So, this is what my colleague meant about playing to the front of the audience.

On stage, The Bad Seeds were a marvel to behold as well.  Warren Ellis can pull sounds out of a violin that rival the best heavy metal shredders and does so with a manic fever on stage that immediately switches to an absolute calm while he blows grief out of a flute and makes your eyes well up.  It’s a roller coaster ride in every sense.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds performed a mesmerizing two-and-a-half hour set with too many highlights to reasonably list, but personal stand-outs included “God Is In The House”, “Shoot Me Down”, and the gut-wrenching “Girl In Amber”.  During the quieter moments, I was both shocked and impressed by the respect of silence paid to Cave.  These are dedicated fans here tonight.  No chatter heard in an arena?  Complete attention paid to the man on stage. It’s wonderful.

Opening the night was El Paso’s, Cigarettes After Sex.  Enveloped in dry ice, the three-piece led by Greg Gonzalez, played an ethereal set of dreamy ambient pop songs including “K”, REO Speedwagon cover “Keep On Loving You”, and “Affection”.  Gonzalez’s hypnotic vocals mixed with swirling shoegazey guitars and deep bass chords made for a nice precursor to the Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds experience.

Dave MacIntyre

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Cigarettes After Sex

Graham Coxon Live at the Mod Club, Toronto

Graham Coxon, the guitar player and founding member of Brit Pop giants Blur, performed his first ever solo show on Canadian soil last week at the Mod Club.  Armed with only a pair of guitars, one of which was played for a single song, and a pedal board, Coxon created a feeling of intimacy that felt more like watching a friend play songs in his living room than a night out in a rock club with one of the most accomplished musicians to come out of England.

Appearing shy and uncomfortable, Coxon opened the evening by announcing he had had no idea why he agreed to even do such a thing as a solo tour and that at the time, the dates seemed so far away and nothing to worry about.  His dead pan humour and delivery had fans laughing throughout the evening adding even more sense of personalization and intimacy than the stripped-down setup alone.

The character transformation that occurred when Coxon began to play was instantly perceptible.  There was no discomfort or awkwardness evident when he began to strum.  Watching a master of his craft this close up and without the distraction of a band was a marvel to behold.  Making use of pedal loops, Coxon played off his own strumming to create elaborate layers of guitars and even percussion recorded and looped from slaps off the guitar body.

The majority of the setlist was made up of Coxon’s work as a solo musician, of which he has released an impressive eight full-length studio albums.  Highlights included “That Someone Ain’t You”, “Don’t Believe Anything I Say”, and “Brave the Storm”.  Blur fans were treated to versions of “Miss America” and personal favourite “You’re So Great” during the encore.  A fantastic version of Blind Faith’s “Can’t Find My Way Home” was also performed.

The Mod Club was Coxon’s only Canadian date on this tour but fans in the United Stated can still catch the tour until the final show on October 1^st.

Dave MacIntyre