Earth Hour shut off the lights at the last Siesta show. Doesn’t matter, a thousand flashes lit Foxmoulder. There’ll be lossless reproduction of the whole night once the photos are compiled, starting with Fox explaining themselves. Gender issues and video games don’t need explanation if you’re clear enough, but the moment reminds them to breathe.

We walked down to Front St, we passed 30-somethings en route to clubbing. Big deal, plenty of arrested development at Siesta too. The LCBO is still open. The enterprising would’ve raked it in, pawned off drinks to all ages. Instead, we got a six pack and missed Violent Future.

Kremlin stretched their set, and why won’t he turn up the guitar? But they’re still in the good column. Purity Control abandoned, I hope for only the night, too much of their noise selves. The internet is stuffed with their spray-painted Beg for Absolution, but only with the hasty addition of the initially forgotten I. The paparazzi was too kind, they also omitted the fume-fueled make outs.

School Jerks boiled the room, two depths of hair, sloppy, and screaming at vegans, managing to keep the mic close enough to not crash. It held together until the fire started. No handle on what was happening, but it got extinguished, and offered a clean opportunity to leave. Less a sweater, but it was liberated anyways.

We got out of the street car and walked up to the Silver Dollar. Hunx & His Punx were already going. Wall-sized paintings of cosmetics cozied up the set of perfect pop to make your coworkers uncomfortable. It was a soothing, carefree unwind from the intensity of Siesta’s wake, then early Sunday pizza.

Urban Blight, School Jerks, Purity Control, Violent Future, Kremlin, Foxmoulder at the last Siesta Nouveaux show, and Hunx and his Punx at the Silver Dollar, March 31, 2012.

Tyvek at The Shop at Parts & Labour, March 23, 2012

I’m stupid, got tickets to Tyvek, took the night off, and didn’t think about having to get up at 8. Late last call, Tyvek on at one, as if we’re sticking to schedule. I met up with a friend and discussed the lack of Weeknd scandal, then walked into Parts & Labour at 11:50, Cell Phones just finished.

Outside, a regular from my friend’s work explained, (open beer about to be confiscated), that, “yeah, the guy in charge of the kitchen [not P&L or my friend’s work] is vegetarian, so he forgets about the meat but he’s a real nice guy. I brine the meat in shit and write him long notes as small as I can write, because I hate computers and typewriters make me want to puke all over myself.” Imagine that less coherent.

My fourth time seeing Tyvek, they’re back to three pieces. The Nothing Fits volume is gone, and Fast Metabolism is the merch table darling. They never abandoned their American it-was-easy-it-was-cheap desperation, but the last four years are peeled back, and maybe they’re imitating their younger selves. Detroit is in ruins, why not keep on the same debt punk circuit, making the right poor decisions? They’re a charmingly anachronistic reflection of the times, while the real sub-prime collapse soundtrack is being made by kids on laptops with parents underwater.

Atlas Sound at Lee’s Palace, March 6, 2012.

Making up for my teens, I met a work-friend outside Honest Ed’s. His friend had a bottle of whiskey, so we ducked into an alley and someone yelled at me for pissing beside their car. With the whiskey, his friend pulled out coke and by the time we decided to head into Lee’s Palace she was too sick and fucked to get in, and he didn’t have ID. They spent the show puking and might-as-well-be-underage listening from behind Lee’s.

Bradford Cox walks on and someone mistakes their Atlanta institutions and smashes a bottle. He covered My Sharona for an hour in Minneapolis last night, so everyone requests it. Marfan syndrome, past-slim, and loose outfit, death is inevitable.

The set is all loops, read: real-time scaffolding dismantling tight pop songs into tedious explanations of method. Harmonica comes into the third song and Atlas Sound is channelling anthemic Americana, supplanting his imminent death, suggesting suckers’ll be remortgaging their homes to see him in thirty years and their kids’ll whine he’s boring as Springsteen, and couldn’t we put that money towards pizza instead?

A string breaks and, oh yeah, he forecasted the birth of punk.

“You guys have the internet in Canada? What is it, Wednesday? I like the latest headline you generated. I liked the last hit generating, ad-clicking content headline you produced.” He gets his electric guitar and puts on sunglasses and guzzles his beer. “Broken string results in train wreck. Click click click click click click cluck cluck.” There, (accidentally?) the first bars of Forming. “You didn’t read my biography, ‘cuz I’m a punk and I don’t give a fuck! I’m a boorish American Republican.” He stumbles into O Canada, then abandons the joke and plays a couple more.

He jokes about it, sounds bitter about it, but his persona and antics are more exciting and subversive than his music, not grittier enough than the vision of indie he wants torn down. Then there’s an encore.

“Thanks, gee, thanks, thanks a lot for coming again. Is everyone ready to party? I don’t want to believe that they want to party, Martin. That was not enough of a response. Oh, no, it’s happening again, one last chance. You’re so convincing. Maybe tonight you’ll get laid. Maybe it’ll result in a pregnancy. Maybe you’ll get an abortion or maybe you’ll have it and get a mortgage. You better dance as much as you can while your sex organs still self-lubricate. I take it back, I don’t want it. No! Are you ready to fuck? Get ready to dance your ass raw.”

The encore is noisy and danceable in a broken, grinning / wincing way, and not an ounce indie. Instead, heavy breathing and processed screams. Delicate temperaments start filing out. Is this tour self-sabotage? Weeding out folks who won’t indulge his standoffish whims? Are we watching someone reconcile who he’s become in front of the whole internet?

“Who is he? I remember the punk. Can still remember his smell. Never wash his clothes, no.”

The room keeps draining. This is acoustic punk, not what they came to see. He drops his guitar and screams and bashes drums. More people walk out. He’s not a genius, but it sounds like actual pain. Then it stops at once with a bright thank you. No one wants an encore.

Hey Toronto, I know that you’re not allowed to like both hardcore and any other genre, but Pissed Jeans are playing at Sneaky Dee’s, and I’m going to be in Vancouver, but I really think you should go. They’re not even THAT hardcore. It’ll be good. Even the openers are decent.
Pissed Jeans with Anagram and TV Freaks at Sneaky Dee’s, Friday, January 20th. doors at 8:00 / 19+ / $15ish

Weeks later, I’m posting this here instead of where it was going to show up. “I don’t know what I just read or attempted to edit.”

I walk into Whale Tooth’s press-kit-clear pub rock at the Horseshoe on Thursday, December 1. They’re stomping with seductive force; any cougars reduce themselves to torn hosiery and running mascara. The “we’ve-heard-of-punk” pop rock is tight, but drips with a naive, “we’re a real, hard-working rock n roll band” ardor that’s more deluded than gritty. It’s telling when singer Elise Legrow complains that the mall has Christina Aguilera on repeat. Are you the teen tearing into obvious targets, as if Britney’s decades of airplay are the last obstacle between you and your Joan Jett fantasy?

Do you have any other boring opinions? What gets Whale Tooth off? Facebook says: the Beatles, Bob Marley, Mother Mother, Tegan and Sara, Dylan, Pink Floyd—all the sophistication of supplementing your dad’s CDs with the smoother side of college radio circa 2005.

Am I out of touch or is everyone in those crowd photos tasteless? Whale Tooth is recommended for your friend’s mom who casually repeatedly mentions that she saw Heart when she was eighteen.

Crystal Stilts lurch onstage, Stooge decrepit, and blanket “Sycamore Tree” and “Through the Floor” in all the records’ somnolent reverb, but somehow even more exploding plastic inevitable. The friendly psychedelic backdrop doesn’t shake the feeling.

The set leans on the songs they’ve rehashed since 2008. Crystal Stilts have a mood and sound bred by balding men haunting the boutique record shop where you found that White Light / White Heat import. The low, bored vocals are drawn out through standing still impressions of her losing control. They have synth figured out. The swirling screeches marry phantom feedback and tape disintegration on the rhythm section’s loose leash. Are they the last refugees of ‘80s Velvet imitation chic, surfacing a quarter century late? Re: the lights: “They’re never supposed to see you sweat.”

“Love is a Wave” comes 11th, a playful pick me up after ten cuts of copacetic lethargy. Notes fade and everyone leaves the stage, amps left on.

The crowd that chanted for an encore from Whale Shit assembles scattered mumbles into enough noise for Crystal Stilts to “OK, we’ll play some more. Someone had a great compliment for us: ‘I checked you out. Some of your songs are really short.’ We’re going to play the CCR version of ‘I Heard it Through the Grapevine’.” Instead, the bass starts blending the building, and everyone starts swaying and nodding, pace, direction and intensity uncoordinated. It’s the appropriate, polite response, until the second song’s grinning misanthropic climax hits, the guitar juts out, synth fucks in circles, and feedback disrupts the comatose junk vibe. Nothing as conceptual as walking with Jesus, just guys listening to good records.

Crystal Stilts, Whale Tooth, and Doledrums at the Legendary Horseshoe Tavern, December 1, 2011

The stage bulged at the Horseshoe. Smash a guitar and pawn the keyboard, then flip a coin to decide if you’ll keep the sax or an extra guitar. A lot of people had fun during Young Guv, and a disproportionate number were holding instruments. The song-writing exists, but the polished pop rock is inefficient, bleaching away any power pop jags in the bloated ensemble. The saxophone added a droning persistence but the keyboard and three guitars only underscored that Young Guv is as inclusive as Toronto is eager to embrace an unspectacular live set from an artist known for solo singles.

Where I stood, The Men were physically painful to listen to. A Confusion is Sex shirt held the bass against an amp until The Men burst into a set of noise screaming in every direction away from hardcore. There might be parameters to their sound but they’re broad enough to sound hardcore playing a catchy song with vibrato arm-manipulated feedback, then dive into a proto-Birthday Party cover. My ears buzzed all Saturday, but I’ll endure it again in a heartbeat.

Release a couple widely-deemed-acceptable records every year for half a decade and see where you are. Thee Oh Sees find themselves in desperate need of an editor. The guy-girl vocals and delayed whoops don’t sound bad, but they aren’t fresh either. Classic garage riffs and Ramones progressions fucked up and affected are pleasant, but when they sprawl outwards six minutes each and the dance floor is balding in front of you maybe playing fast isn’t enough to be exciting. Adjustments begin with expelling the second drummer.

Thee Oh Sees, The Men, and Young Guv at the Legendary Horseshoe Tavern, October 21, 2011.

You feel GACK vs. Beard Closet in your guts. Not intestine-derived, it’s a physiological experience rattling the bits keeping you alive. Cold sweat breaks out, you’re sitting on the heavy machinery in the garage downstairs. It’s not industrial, the pieces don’t interlock, a factory isn’t in unison. The rite is harsh, but in a rugged approximation of something totemic.

The guitar dreams its way to a hypnotic melody between the full spectrum of noise, finding an amniotic wave. GACK grabs a thin microphone, alienating without the bulb of an SM58, and he screams, lost in the white noise. The piece is slow twists and evolving screeches instead of precise punches. Tinnitus replaces the set and everyone stirs from their trance, digestive tracts clenched.

A shell of style and attitude, marketable and partially pharmacological in construction obscures any ideology or ideas guiding Castle If. A beat is prerequisite, then elementary French drowning in reverb and apathy, sometimes the audience sitting around cross-sections of trees reacting to her helplessness as nothing happens. The set looks expensive, but sounds preset. The synth twinkling would only lose fidelity on a 20 year old Casio with sustain on high.

The songs ramble, stumbling onto an interesting sound, or an October motif. Being generous, it evokes Alan Vega and Martin Rev’s 1980 album, but it’s not stimulating, it’s vapid without being primitive, package it with a photo and sell it.

Normalcy infringes into terrifying territories, marching to a wedding drum machine, the opening chord’s interpretation sounds familiar to AM listeners. Melodramatic without glamour, gritty and confrontational through superficial adherence to convention. It would be more comfortable if she played with a slide, but instead we get blues and banal intensity, vocals staggering back and forth from conversational to horrific shrieks. I still can’t endorse this, but merit is there. As a two-piece the humour and the dynamic of deranged ennui is easy to see, “I know we all hate our moms.” Revenge Pregnancy*

I’ve never seen a band care less about musical notes than Aunty Panty. They’re an atonal bludgeon in swimwear and black eyes. They’re mad as fuck, they trade instruments too often, but you forgive them because it sounds good in either configuration. In the space between sounds you wonder if the racket is the least important thing. It’s something to be endured, but that doesn’t make it bad.

*Previously reviewed as a solo act under the name Satin Warship

Aunty Panty, Revenge Pregnancy, Castle If, and GACK vs. Beard Closet at Placebo, September 30, 2011

Minutes before midnight, the OPP wheezed down a brick staircase and in on girls in electrical tape spitting fake blood on themselves in front of inverted crosses with gay porn playing on the other wall.

It was nude beach paralysis; cops not sure what they can do, past flicking the lights. Everyone ignored them peaking around the corner, looking like literal pigs, while Dentata transcended their gimmicks.

The sound cut out and everyone filed outside and kept ignoring the fuzz. They shone their spotlight on the exterior of the building while we posed with the cruiser, and then everyone dispersed for half an hour before reconvening to get eyeliner-running-goth-girl wasted.

Dentata at the Dungeon, May 21, 2011.

The Canadiens are out, but Vancouver finally beat Chicago. En route to their OT game 7 disappointment, they won game 2 between White Wires and Vivian Girls. Watching the win on the Phoenix’s balcony was the highlight of the night.

On the Wednesday I saw the last of Modern Superstitions set at Parts and Labour. That was terrible, but Davila 666 played an inoffensive, leave-early set with lots of reverb and too many guitars that you couldn’t hear anyways.

You also couldn’t hear the CD changer at the Phoenix. After hearing Molested Youth’s grit made crisp at Wrong Bar it was lame to find myself in an expensive acoustic shit hole, and then the bands came on.

Vivian Girls were just punk enough for Lake House and Never See Me Again, but Wild Eyes and I’ll Tell the World were barely discernible from their bland new songs. Black Lips at least played Buried Alive but the weed and Molson atmosphere was still dismal. Welcome to life that sounds like sun tan lotion and mayonnaise commercials. Borrow some recklessness from Amy Winehouse when you give Mark Ronson back.

I’ve slid through to the other side. I made the jump, now I don’t just hate Indian Wars et al, I can’t listen to any of this. Not even Let it Bloom. Bye garage, enjoy the shitty vibes.

Davila 666 and Modern Superstitions at the Shop under Parts and Labour, April 13, 2011.
Black Lips, Vivian Girls, and White Wires at the Phoenix, April 16, 2011.

I feel like an alcoholic at a bar at 7:30. What should make me feel like an alcoholic was buying beer on the way to the show and drinking it alone in an alley.

How much salt goes with the “just can’t hate enough to keep being a band 04-08-11” scribbled on Molested Youth records? I don’t see any all ages kids while they set up. Their set is fast and animated, bisected by amp problems. Most of the songs aren’t memorable but they’ve nailed the snotty under a minute sound and they’re finished by 8.

Straight edge should follow Jonathan Richman’s She Cracked example. Stop eating garbage, stop eating shit, you’re already not getting stoned, now improve your diet! You’ve lost your edge over us free-loving black-lunged substance abusers if you’re on the verge of cardiac arrest. Some people are naturally heavier, but I doubt you were born to flirt with obesity. Whatever excess or deficit is causing these health issues is a lot more hazardous than the beer I drank at this show.

Thirty seconds into Rhinoceros guys are punching each other in the face. So this is the pointless spectacle that the hardcore scene is today? I’m saying more about what Rhinoceros represents than what they sound like, because they’re unremarkable. The singer sounds like he’s throwing up, but not in the demented Fag Cop way I would love.

Part way through the front man says, “straight edge, pot head, it doesn’t matter, have a drink, have a smoke, fuck a pussy, suck an ass, do what you have to do, have some fun.” From the circle pit two crusty girls start screaming “Two girls are gonna kick your fucking asses,” and storm out. The comment could be construed misogynistic, but the intention was clearly pro-tolerance. The girls keep trying to start shit all night and I see one of them later on holding a cold beer up to a fat lip. I shudder at how that could’ve happened.

Nomos’ drummer had to work, his flight was delayed, but now he’s in the air between Chicago and YYZ, so they’re skipped over for now.

Mother of Mercy reminds me of New World on Fire. There’s the same posturing, showing off, trying to look tough, checking off their list of hardcore moves, except the members of Mothers of Mercy are probably ten years older than New World on Fire were when I was getting threatening emails from kids in Chilliwack for not liking them.

Nomos’ drummer is stuck at the airport, so they’re not playing, but I paid $15 for this ticket, so I stay for several seconds of Sheer Terror. They formed in 1984, which tells me pretty much everything. On the walk home I realize it’s not even 11 yet.

Sheer Terror, Mother of Mercy, Rhinoceros, and Molested Youth, but not Nomos at Wrong Bar, April 8, 2011.