It’s been a crazy summer. So crazy I no longer live in Vancouver. Amanda and I have returned to Sydney, Australia for the foreseeable future…more on that later I suppose as the show reviews roll in.

But before we left Vancouver we managed to see some shows this summer. First up, we saw Florence + The Machine and The Walkmen at Deer Lake Park back in July. Amanda is a pretty big fan of Florence so this was a show that was definitely her bag. I went along knowing I’d at least get to see The Walkmen in support (and I swear I’ve seen them open for about 50 bands over the years). They played quite a bit of stuff off their pretty decent new record, Heaven. But, as always, the set highlight was a blistering version of The Rat.

Setlist
We Can’t Be Beat
Heartbreaker
The Love You Love
Woe Is Me
Juveniles
Blue As Your Blood
138th Street
Love Is Luck
The Rat
All Hands And The Cook
Heaven

And in one of those No Expectations = Pleasant Surprises situations, Florence + The Machine actually put on a pretty solid show. The music isn’t really my thing but Florence Welch GIVES it on stage. I really wasn’t expecting to see her gallivanting all over the place while belting out those songs. But she did. And her voice was pretty spectacular. Extra bonus points for the rain holding out for the entire gig…really thought we were going to get soaked at this one.

On August 8 we headed down to Seattle to see Sigur Rós at the wonderful Paramount Theater. I had been there once before to see Oasis back in (I believe) 2000, so it was a long time between visits. But it really is a beautiful venue.

Sigur Rós were spectacular as always. Prior to the gig I was wondering just how they were going to tackle Valtari live since the album is quite ambient and meandering (even by Sigur Rós standards). Turns out they’re handling it by playing very little of it. I was probably one of the few disappointed by the band playing just three new songs; I really would have liked to have seen them tackle a couple more (especially Valtari‘s opening track Ég Anda).

However, any disappointment with that was largely quashed by an incredibly powerful show full of some of the band’s most potent live songs. The band (sadly minus keyboardist/genius Kjartan for their 2012 tour) were accompanied by an extra guitarist and keyboardist plus strings and horns which gave every song details and ferocity that might have been lacking a bit on their 2008 tour as a quartet. I had avoided all setlists prior to the show so my mind was pretty blown when they dropped Í Gær in the set. I’ve always loved this song which had been played regularly in 2001 (though not at the show I saw) but not much since.

I’ve seen Sigur Rós quite a few times over the past ten years but this show was memorable even by their extremely high standards.

Setlist
Ekki múkk
Varúð
Ný Batterí
Í Gær
Vaka
Sæglópur
Svefn-g-englar
Viðrar vel til Loftárása
Hoppípolla
Með Blóðnasir
Olsen Olsen
Festival
Hafsól
———
Dauðalogn
Popplagið

My Last Show In Vancouver was kind of a perfect Last Show In Vancouver. It was late August, it was a beautiful day, and the show took place in the parking lot of the Waldorf. It really was a fitting way to end summer. And the fact that the lineup offered some of Vancouver’s finest bands just made it all the better.

Basketball were the first band I caught and they were much better than when I last saw them opening for Japandroids back in 2009. They seemed a lot more focused and together and they really don’t sound like many other bands out there at the moment – and that is always appreciated. Next up were Ladyhawk and they did their thing pretty damn well (their thing = being a great, gritty bar band). Some of the new songs sounded pretty solid and I’m looking forward to the new album. Take a listen to You Read My Mind from the new album No Can Do out in just over a week’s time.

But the main reason that my last Vancouver gig (for now!) was so great was the mighty behemoth that is Black Mountain. Giant riffs, proggy keyboards, and epic beards/hair, Black Mountain really are best experienced live and last month’s show was a perfect example. With the exception of Japandroids, I’m not sure I’d want any other Vancouver band sending me on my way to Australia. So thanks for kicking ass, Black Mountain.

Setlist
Mary Lou
Tyrants
Phosphorescent Waves
Old Fangs
Wilderness Heart
Buried By The Blues
Druganaut
Angels
Queens Will Play
Stormy High
Don’t Run Our Hearts Around
——
In Sequence
Let Spirits Ride
Roller Coaster

Download
Black Mountain – Mary Lou

So now A Reminder is back in Sydney where this little blog got started. And in the coming months Radiohead, Spiritualized, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor are all coming this way…so lots to look forward to.

I think my ears are still ringing.

Last night at the Rickshaw Theatre, Spiritualized once again managed to overcome pretty high expectations. While the show didn’t quite reach the heights of a show in Sydney I saw a few years ago, I was still impressed with Spiritualized’s ability to unleash such transcendent music in a live setting.

Joined on stage by four other musicians as well as two backup singers, Jason Pierce led the band through a pretty extensive tour through the Spiritualized catalogue (easy to do when you’re on stage for two hours and twenty minutes) with surprisingly little material from the new record Sweet Heart, Sweet Light (well, five songs is less than I was expecting, anyway). The band, as always, alternated between being locked together (the sultry groove of I Am What I Am) and totally cacophonous (the insane madness of Cop Shoot Cop).

Of the new material, I Am What I Am was really impressive – I LOVE the back and forth between Jason and backing singers (reminiscent of I Think I’m In Love) and, as previously mentioned, the groove is just fantastic. Mary, another new one, was also pretty impressive and featured Jason belting out lyrics with more passion than I’ve ever seen from him on stage before.

Walking With Jesus was another great moment as I’ve never heard such a long version of that song before. I was kind of disappointed that Lay Back In The Sun was dropped from the set a few weeks back but I was so happy to hear Stay With Me which, despite seeing the band live since 1998, I had never seen live. It was even more epic than I was expecting.

The band largely stayed away from SPZ’s earlier, spacier material but the Pure Phase double hit of Born Never Asked/Electric Mainline signaled the set’s transition from kinda slow (a couple politely received Amazing Grace tracks) to mind-altering. And packing in Ladies And Gentlemen, Come Together, and Cop Shoot Cop into the final portion of a set never hurts. Enthralling as always. And you expect nothing less from Spiritualized.

Setlist
Hey Jane
Lord Let It Rain On Me
Headin’ For The Top Now
Walking With Jesus
Oh Baby
Rated X
Born Never Asked
Electric Mainline
Soul On Fire
I Am What I Am
Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
Mary
Stay With Me
She Kissed Me (It Felt Like A Hit)
Come Together
———
So Long You Pretty Thing
Cop Shoot Cop…

Lost in the Radiohead trip a few weeks ago was Gotye’s impressive show at the Vogue Theatre here in Vancouver. I first wrote about Gotye back in June 2006 when Wally was still pretty unknown, even in Australia. During the years I spent in Sydney I got to know Wally a little bit so what has happened over the last six months or so has been kind of surreal. I mean Glee? A Billboard #1 single? Saturday Night Live? Just madness.

I saw Gotye a number of times while living in Sydney and while I definitely enjoyed those shows I always felt that Wally hadn’t quite managed to completely nail a Gotye live show – although this show came damn close. Translating sample-based music made at home to stages was never going to be easy but here in 2012 Gotye has the live show DOWN. Playing with four musicians (including Tim ‘Faux Pas’ Shiel) Gotye is now a full-fledged band on stage and it appeared as though they’d been playing together for ages.

Obviously, this review is a few weeks late so trying to pick out details ain’t gonna happen but needless to say Wally’s voice was bang on all night. Eyes Wide Open was a fabulous opener and hearing The Only Way live again was a real treat. I seriously never thought I’d be seeing a Gotye show in Vancouver, never mind at a completely sold out Vogue, but here I was in a room full of Canadians belting out Somebody That I Used To Know (in place of an absent Kimbra). It was weird. It made me miss Australia and my life and friends back in Sydney.

The visuals were a treat all night but they never took away from what Gotye was doing on stage. A number of the songs were stretched out a little bit in comparison to their recorded counterparts which made them feel more alive (this was particularly true of the songs off Making Mirrors).

By the time the show ended with a few uptempo numbers (you gotta after the slow burn genius of Hearts A Mess, right?) I was left not only missing Sydney but also incredibly impressed with what Wally’s done with Gotye over the past six years. While I was instantly impressed with Gotye, I never could have imagined this. And I’m sure Wally couldn’t have either.

Setlist
Eyes Wide Open
The Only Way
Easy Way Out
Smoke And Mirrors
State Of The Art
Thanks For Your Time
Don’t Worry, We’ll Be Watching You
Somebody That I Used To Know
Save Me
Bronte
Hearts A Mess
In Your Light
I Feel Better
———
Learnalilgivinanlovin

Every now and then you see a show and it is just perfect. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the best show you’ve ever seen but just the right band, doing the right thing, in the right way. Shows like that are hard to come by in shitty venues like the PNE Forum so I must admit I had my concerns ahead of last night’s Portishead show in Vancouver. An old arena/shed, the Forum isn’t known for being the best venue sound-wise but, somehow, Portishead overcame it. And sounded perfect.

I was not a huge Portishead fan in 1994. I think I was just a bit too young and a bit too into Pearl Jam and Nirvana to really grasp what Portishead were doing with Sour Times. A few years later when their second album was released I was firmly entrenched in my Britpop obsession and while All Mine intrigued me, I never really pursued the band. A couple years later I finally got around to Dummy and didn’t really look back. All of that is just a long way of saying I hadn’t been waiting the better part of two decades to see Portishead like many in attendance last night. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t pretty thrilled when Beth Gibbons, Geoff Barrow, and Adrian Utley (plus newbie Radiohead drummer Clive Deamer and a couple other musicians) took to the stage awash in Third‘s frigid-blue lights.

And from the opening drum crashes of Silence, Portishead were perfect. Beth Gibbons’ voice was incredible all night. Cowboys and Over were delivered in that distinctive (and vaguely creepy) manner Gibbons employed on the sophomore record and at other times it was at its most delicate. And everyone else was spot on as well: Barrow adding percussion and scratching throughout the evening while Utley exuded the presence of a man who could outplay most guitarists around but instead utilizes his instrument to bring the atmosphere or menace to Portishead’s live show.

The set drew heavily from 2008′s best record, Third including that album’s finest moments in The Rip and set closer We Carry On. Elsewhere the band went way back and pulled pretty heavily from Dummy and it was these songs that the very polite (and very stoned) crowd responded to most enthusiastically: Mysterons, Sour Times, Roads, and perhaps two of the show’s finest moments in Glory Box and the show-stopping amazingness that was Wandering Star.

The latter was performed just as a trio, with Barrow playing bass while seated next to Gibbons who, also seated, sang while being shrouded in her hair. Utley added some haunting guitar and the crowd was practically silent, transfixed in what was one of the more memorable live moments I’ve ever witnessed.

When you add in the band’s most recent single (the krautrock excellence of Chase The Tear, Portishead’s show really was perfect. The lights and visuals were effective and always added to the mood while the band themselves really seemed to enjoy themselves on stage (they were all smiles at the end of the set). There was literally nothing else I could have asked for. Not bad for a band I never thought I’d ever see live

Setlist
Silence
Hunter
Nylon Smile
Mysterons
The Rip
Sour Times
Magic Doors
Wandering Star
Machine Gun
Over
Glory Box
Chase The Tear
Cowboys
Threads
———
Roads
We Carry On

I was not planning on attending Sloan’s show Friday night at the Commodore but a ticket came my way and, while I haven’t paid much attention to Sloan records in about a decade, I still consider myself a fan so off I went. Plus, they’re a Canadian institution now, celebrating their 20th anniversary this year with a new record called The Double Cross which is actually a pretty solid little album.

I expected to be pleasantly entertained by Sloan and that’s pretty much what happened. They’re not world’s most amazing band but Sloan are still able to put on an energetic show. While they ignored a few of my favourite songs they played last time I saw them in Sydney, I enjoyed the show based largely on the strength of the new material. Chris Murphy’s Follow The Leader was a great opener but it then bled straight into Jay Ferguson’s The Answer Was You which was even better (bit of a Jay-fan myself).

Andrew’s set in the middle of the show was also well-received by the crowd; I loved Sinking Ships, one of my favourite songs off Navy Blues and a song I wasn’t expecting to hear. The band tossed in a few more from way back including a very shoegazey What’s There To Decide? from Smeared; it certainly doesn’t sit well with most of Sloan’s recent catalogue…which is what made it such a great moment in the show.

The main set was capped off with Beverly Terrace (another great Jay song off the new one) before Losing California. When the band returned for an encore they hit three biggies from different parts of their career: The Lines You Amend, The Other Man, and a suitably epic Money City Maniacs. Maniacs is still a stupid song with stupid lyrics which is probably why it sounds as great now as it did in 1998. Sloan, conscious of the Vancouver moment, even dropped their backdrop for the Money City finale to reveal a Canucks projection that elicited the obvious reaction from the crowd. All in all, not a bad way to spend a Friday night.

Setlist
Follow The Leader
The Answer Was You
Unkind
The Marquee And The Moon
Snowsuit Sound
Burn For It
Shadow of Love
Everything You’ve Done Wrong
Who Taught You To Live Like That?
Gimme That
She’s Slowing Down Again
Something’s Wrong
Traces
Sinking Ships
What’s There To Decide?
It’s Plain to See
Your Daddy Will Do
Don’t You Believe A Word
I’ve Gotta Know
The Rest of My Life
Beverly Terrace
Losing California
———
The Lines You Amend
The Other Man
Money City Maniacs

I had some holes in my setlist so a big thanks to Mikala over at Backstage Rider for her setlist, review, and photos.

Download
Sloan – Follow The Leader

Last night in Vancouver, Wolf Parade played what might have been their final show ever. The band is now heading off into Indefinite Hiatus land with no firm plans to tour or record. The band have stopped short of saying they’re officially breaking up but last night at the Commodore the feeling in the room was this is it. The band played furiously. And the crowd responded with complete adoration.

Since Wolf Parade were in town just last year, last night’s show wasn’t all the different set-wise. The band drew pretty evenly from all three of their records but it was arranged in such a way that every song seemed to better the one before it (or nearly every song). Opener Soldier’s Grin (one of my favourites off Zoomer) wasn’t super tight but after that the band just gelled and seemingly fed off the enthusiasm of the crowd for the rest of the night. Dan Boeckner in particular seemed touched by the love the crowd was throwing his way. His searing versions of Little Golden Age and Language City were two of the high points of last night’s brilliant show.

Which is not to ignore Spencer Krug. I’ll Believe In Anything was, of course, rapturously received while Oh You, Old Thing transformed into something much greater than its recorded counterpart. It was Spencer who announced from the stage that this would be Wolf Parade’s last show “for a shit shit shit long time” leaving open the possibility of the band returning in a few years. But he also pointed out how happy the band were that “this show” was happening in Vancouver, which, as Dan pointed out, is pretty much a hometown gig for the displaced to Montreal Wolf Parade. The sheer number of family and friends that watched the show from the side of the Commodore’s stage also seemed to indicate that last night might have been the last we’ll see from Wolf Parade.

And if that’s the case, so be it. The band went out like champions. The encore began with Dan dedicating This Heart’s On Fire to his father who was in attendance (in fact, his dad, touchingly, came out prior to the final song to hug his sweaty son and say a few words) before belting out one of my favourite Wolf Parade songs for perhaps the final time. Spencer followed it up with California Dreamer which Dan then topped with an absolutely ridiculously passionate take on Language City. The encore then ended with Spencer dedicating You Are A Runner to his father (also in attendance) which bled straight into a fierce version of Fancy Claps. The band then waved goodbye and left the stage…

…but the crowd refused to let them go so the band returned for “a shitty cover song” and invited the crowd up on stage to help them sing Bob Dylan’s Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door at 1am. It was a heartfelt and surprising final move from Wolf Parade who walked off stage to hugs and kisses from fans eager to be a part of the moment, of the occasion. If it was goodbye, it was a brilliant way to leave Wolf Parade behind.

Here are those final moments…

(Thanks to @AwesomeSoundVS for that!)

Or from a rather different perspective…

Setlist
Soldier’s Grin
What Did My Lover Say (It Always Had To Go This Way)
Palm Road
Dear Sons And Daughters Of Hungry Ghosts
Ghost Pressure
Oh You, Old Thing
Fine Young Cannibals
Cloud Shadow On The Mountain
Shine A Light
I’ll Believe In Anything
Little Golden Age
Kissing The Beehive
———
This Heart’s On Fire
California Dreamer
Language City
You Are A Runner And I Am My Father’s Son
Fancy Claps
———
Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door

A few photos from last night are up on my Flickr page.

Download
Wolf Parade – You Are A Runner And I Am My Father’s Son
Wolf Parade – Shine A Light
Wolf Parade – Call It A Ritual
Wolf Parade – Language City
Wolf Parade – Ghost Pressure
Wolf Parade – What Did My Lover Say (It Always Had To Go This Way)

Last night after I got back from Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s show at the Vogue Theatre I blurbed on Twitter that “Godspeed You! Black Emperor were monumental. 2.5 hours of world ending bombast.” And that’s kind of almost all I want to say. But the occasion seems to call for more.

Firstly, it was Godspeed’s first show on home soil (or in North America for that matter) in eight years. Secondly, I had missed my only opportunity to see the band when they were last in Vancouver in 2000. So for years I’ve jealously heard the stories of Godspeed’s powerful live show and downloaded live recordings in the failed hope of trying to simulate some sort of personal experience. And I wasn’t kidding myself, I really didn’t think I’d ever have the chance to see Godspeed on stage.

But then last night happened. From 8:50 until 11:15, Godspeed You! Black Emperor were transcendental and once I got comfortable in one of the horrible Vogue seats in the orchestra, I got lost in a live performance in a way that very, very seldom happens. Every single “song” was rendered more powerfully than their recorded counterparts and you could actually feel the music moving through you. Coupled with the eerie and at times apocalyptic projections*, I felt completely immersed all night and when the show ended I could scarcely believe it hadn’t just begun.

The set drew very heavily from 2000′s Lift Yr. Skinny Fists including the opening pieces which were the only “bright” notes in the entire show. Once the powerful Gathering Storm ended, the rest of the set soundtracked a landscape in decay. Albanian, a “new” song played a lot in 2003 which has yet to be recorded, was a menacing hell-beast and indicates that if the band do head into the studio this spring (as rumoured), the fruits of those sessions will be some of Godspeed’s most powerful material.

As the show slowly moved to its final epic statements, the band finally reached back to their first album with the portentous Dead Metheny and its most recent with Rockets Fall On Rocket Falls. Dead Metheny, in particular, was delivered with such intensity that I almost felt pinned down in my seat. The final piece of the night was BBF3 from the Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada EP. A fitting closer as it encapsulates Godspeed’s aesthetic perfectly: a field recording of a man becoming enraged, a slow build, and a thunderous climax that laid waste to any last shred of operating ear drums in the Vogue.

Setlist
Hope Drone
Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven
Gathering Storm
Monheim
Albanian
Chart #3
World Police And Friendly Fire
Dead Metheny
Rockets Fall On Rocket Falls
BBF3

* The projections were actually projected from two old school film projectors the likes of which I hadn’t seen since elementary school. The projectionist was busy all night, draped in reels of film as he set up each piece and even used his hands and a fishbowl at times to further distort the images.

The most pointless live shots I’ve ever taken of a band?

Some random notes about the gig:
- The setlist was the exact setlist the band played at their first gig back after the hiatus this past December in England.
- All the other songs the band have been playing on this tour are: Moya, Gamelan (another “new” one like Albanian), 09-15-00 (Outro), The Sad Mafioso, She Dreamt She Was a Bulldozer [...], and The Cowboy. Not going to lie, would have loved to have heard Moya and/or The Sad Mafioso last night.

If you’re keen to hear a recent version of Albanian, you can download a version from a show last month in Amsterdam.

Download
Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Albanian

Over at From Blown Speakers, Quinn has resurrected his once annual poll of the best/hottest bands from Vancouver. I helped out with a list this year and most of them made the final cut including Black Mountain, Japandroids, Fine Mist, and Apollo Ghosts.

Check out the list here and be sure to get out and support Vancouver’s local music scene.

Nick Cave and Grinderman…you can put your fingers in Vancouver’s biscuit jar anytime you like.

After seeing the Bad Seeds at a festival a couple of years ago I had extremely high expectations for last night’s Grinderman show at the Commodore. Unsurprisingly, Grinderman delivered. The intensity that Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey, and Jim Sclavunos brought to the stage was incredible and puts most bands to shame (and this from men in their 40s and 50s).

The set featured the entirety of Grinderman 2 in addition to most of the first Grinderman album so I don’t think anyone could have possibly left disappointed last night considering how powerfully both records translate live. The stripped down nature of Grinderman (in comparison to the Bad Seeds) lets the band get incredibly aggressive; the distortion on some of Warren Ellis’s guitar and violin playing, for instance, was almost violent. Even on songs that open in a state of relative calmness (like When My Baby Comes) end in intense sonic eruptions.

The bulk of the main set leaned heavily on Grinderman 2 and with good reason: its variety and genius are enough to carry a show on its own. But the inclusions of Get It On, No Pussy Blues, and Honey Bee, all some of hardest hitting stuff in the Grinderman repertoire, ensured there was never a dull moment. The only respite of the main set came in the form of What I Know which saw Nick Cave don an acoustic guitar.

One of my favourite moments of the gig came during Evil as it featured Warren Ellis sprawled on the floor with the mic angled down toward him. Between his screams of “evil!” into the mic he’d roll over to his effects pedal to unleash some destructive noise upon the audience.

The lengthy encore included four songs of the debut record but only after the performance of Palaces of Montezuma, one of my favourite songs of the year. The song had a bit more edge live and was less stately but it still managed to deliver in all its name-dropping glory. By the time the closing couplet of Love Bomb and Grinderman ended I was spent.

Just talking about the songs, however, gives you no idea what really happens on stage with Grinderman. Nick Cave is simply one of the finest and most engaging frontmen around and when he wasn’t saddled with a guitar he spent his time prowling the edge of the stage, directly engaging the audience. He even spent a lot of time on two mini-platforms along the rail surrounded by the hands of adoring fans. The man connects.

And special mention must also be made of Warren Ellis. The man is a musical genius who looks like an impeccably dressed hobo and spends most of the night fighting whatever instrument he happens to have in his hand at the moment. You know you’re doing something pretty incredible when you are just as engaging as Nick Cave.

So to sum up: AMAZING SHOW. Thank you, Grindermen.

Setlist
Mickey Mouse and the Goodbye Man
Worm Tamer
Get It On
Heathen Child
Evil
When My Baby Comes
What I Know
Honey Bee (Let’s Fly To Mars)
Kitchenette
No Pussy Blues
Bellringer Blues
———
Palaces Of Montezuma
When My Love Comes Down
Man In The Moon
Love Bomb
Grinderman

Photos of the gig here.

3am Revelations also loved the gig.

Vancouver, are you going to see Grinderman Friday night? If you’re not, you should be. Nick Cave is one of the most electric live performers I’ve ever seen and I cannot wait for these four Bad Seeds to roll into town this weekend.

The tour is in support of the stellar Grinderman 2 which is out now on Anti. It’s one of my favourite records of the year: full of fury, bile, and a song called Palaces Of Montezuma which is so good it hurts. The first single Heathen Child ain’t bad either…and the video is totally insane.

Download
Grinderman – Heathen Child (via)