With Toronto currently making its mark on the international music map, it seems fitting that the North by Northeast music festival celebrated its tenth anniversary this month. With 400 bands in 26 clubs over three nights, it’s a lot to take in-and while club-hopping is always fun, this year we decided to stick with the tried and true, and came away with some memorable festival moments.
THURSDAY, June 10
Lee’s Palace
Sarah Harmer- 11:00 p.m.
Sarah Harmer may be cutting a swath through the U.S., with glowing reviews from the likes of the New York Times following her from stop to stop on her seemingly endless tour to promote her latest All of Our Names disc, but she managed to squeeze in a return home to tip her hat to NXNE’s 10th anniversary.
The days when she would play small clubs like Lee’s are long over (she’ll follow up her recent Wintergarden Theatre triumph with two shows at that pinnacle of performance, Massey Hall, in September), and clearly, we know it-by the time she took the stage at 11:00 p.m. (following a strong set by local countrified oddballs the Fembots), all sorts of fire codes were being broken. Finally, a reason to be glad for the recently-raised Lee’s stage.
From the moment she launched into the jangly “Pendulums”, memories of Harmer shows past (including those with her old band, Weeping Tile) at the club came rushing back. She somehow just seems meant to play there, and she looked and sounded thoroughly at home, relaxed and beaming.
Her backing band, a group of hugely talented players, has taken some time to really gel, but months of touring have honed them into a super-tight machine, and they were obviously jazzed to be playing a grungy old rock club again rather than a pristine theatre. The set was far looser and much more fun than their April Wintergarden visit, where they played beautifully yet a bit tentatively. At Lee’s, Harmer and the band were able to just let ‘er rip for a rockin’ good time.
Harmer’s always been an interesting study in contrasts-the elegant songstress who’s really a scrappy indie-rocker girl at heart-and her lighter side came through at Lee’s, with a charmingly silly new song “Peanut Butter Toast” (think Harmer-gone-Raffi) and the hillbilly singalong “I’m a Mountain” capping the night for the final encore. She even slid in a deadpan “Don’t forget to vote, you fuckers!” before beginning the twinkling chords of dreamy crowd favourite “Lodestar.”
A really special show that reminded us that even as artists like Harmer continue to spread Toronto’s musical reputation abroad, their star shines just a bit more brightly right here at home.
FRIDAY, June 11
Reverb
10:00 p.m – Kate Maki
Say what you want about NOW Magazine, but damned if they don’t know how to throw a good party. The publishers of the mag are the ones who came up with the bright idea of creating a sister festival to Austin’s SXSW, and ten years and infinite comparisons later, their showcase is always a highlight of the festival.
At quarter to ten, the lineup to get inside the Reverb snaked worryingly far up the street, the stern-faced doorman impervious to pleas from industry weasels and skater kids alike. I somehow managed to get inside just in time to catch NOW cover girl Kate Maki proving why it was a brilliant move for her to ditch her schoolteaching career in favour of music. If last year’s alt-country It Girl Kathleen Edwards ditched the coyness, it might sound a little something like this. Bittersweet and rough-edged country flirting with rock and folk, all delivered in a 50-soaked voice. Borrowing Matt Mays’ smokin’ El Torpedo band for the evening was a smart move too.
11:00 p.m. – Nathan Lawr and the Minotaurs
Any band that sports ties on stage and gets away with it gets bonus points in my book. Then again, former Royal City drummer Nathan Lawr is nothing if not debonair. Sadly, my crush was instantly doused by a friend who pointed out that Lawr’s linked with none other than the aforementioned Ms. Maki. Super-cute talented couple-gag me.
Never mind-it’s enough to just fall in love with Lawr’s music. “We shall endeavour to rock you,” he quipped to kick off the set, and so they did in their own quiet fashion. His Minotaurs are an ever-changing bunch, but for this night included some Royal City denizens and a Constantine, and they fleshed out Lawr’s slow-burn noir tunes with gorgeous vibraphones, brushed drums, and quiet, insistent bass.
Lawr has a lovely, distinctive singing voice, and he seems to get better with every show-if he was a bit hesitant at stepping out from behind the drumkit during the first few shows following the release of his A Heart Beats A Waltz solo disc last year, he’s since become more comfortable with being the main focus. Clever lyrics, complex electric guitar playing, good stage presence-Lawr is definitely one to watch.
12:00 a.m. – Feist
The Reverb is a strange beast, a warehouse-type room that isn’t especially large, with odd corners and ledges that run along the walls. When the place fills up, those in the know scramble up onto those ledges and have a nice seat up high to be able to see above the mad crush on the floor. The old metaphor of stuffing things into a box came to mind as midnight approached and the club not only reached capacity, but exceeded it to a ridiculous degree.
The hordes were there to see Leslie Feist, the latest local success story in the ‘Yes, Virginia, Toronto is the new Seattle’ sweepstakes. Part of the extended Broken Social Scene family, dispatched to Paris to make her stunning new Let It Die album, you know the deal. And she hadn’t been home in almost two years, so anticipation was running high. Just one small problem-she was slated to play a massive homecoming show the very next night at the Mod Club (one sponsored by NXNE, but not actually part of the festival itself).
And so no one (other than Chart Magazine, it seems) could blame Feist for using the opportunity to play a (very) short solo set and plug the ‘real’ show. While NOW mag’s people couldn’t have been too pleased, it was a crafty move, and a thrilling if too-brief festival moment nonetheless.
Armed with nothing but her big red electric guitar, the tiny white slip of a girl sliced straight through hearts with her cracked-crystal voice that’s a wail one moment and a whisper the next. Her rendition of Nina Simone’s “See-Line Woman,” where she looped her vocals over a dance-y beat and bluesy guitar licks and then cut all the music entirely to sing a capella, is a triumph of sensual energy and sheer power, a classic for our times. An enthralling taste of what was to come the next evening.
SATURDAY, June 12
The Mod Club Theatre 9:30 p.m. -Feist
What can be said about this show? Brilliant, beautiful, inspiring… and that’s not even hyperbole. Leslie Feist spent her years in Toronto toiling away in bands (By Divine Right, Royal City, hHead) before striking out solo, and while everyone knew how talented she was, she still paid her dues playing to empty rooms the size of postage stamps. And here she was headlining the massive Mod Club to a beyond sold-out crowd that hung on every word she sang and every note she played.
There’s still the issue of how T.O. fans don’t know a wicked guitar solo when they hear one (Feist has been chewing out audiences about this for years)-as skilled a guitarist as she is a singer, Feist busted out all kinds of glorious solos, from the sexy, gritty showoff parts on “See-Line Woman” to the bouncy chords of her sweet “Mushboom” single. She uses the guitar like an extension of her body in a very natural, effortless way.
She doesn’t even really need a band, but for this show (which was part of a larger Canadian tour) was backed by a trio of “French garçons” from Paris on drums, keys, and horns. The horns worked especially well to flesh out the more baroque moments of Let It Die, as when rhythmic trombone provided the backbone for a swank take on “Leisure Suite.”
As if the music wasn’t transcendent enough, an additional delight was the inclusion of visual artist Shary Boyle doing live onstage projections-she used paper cutouts and pre-made paintings, as backdrops beamed onto the back wall of the stage. She even used paint and ink to create illustrations in time to the music.
The audience gawked as Boyle painted an image of a young girl’s face as Feist sang the traditional “When I Was A Young Girl,” and as the song progressed, Boyle distorted and smudged the image until it was completely obliterated by the end of the tune. Instead of being a mere decoration for the stage show, Boyle’s art worked arm-in-arm with the music to quite literally illuminate Feist’s delicate songs.
A truly impressive spectacle that will be hard to beat for show of the year.
