Seeing a show in a small, dark club when it’s still very very daytime-lit outside is a bit weird. If I’m watching a show while the sunshine (or overcast greyness) is laying itself over my back, I darn well want to have a big patch of grass to lounge on and a cold beverage or two. But these days in Vancouver, the lack of live venues instead creates the need to put shows onstage at really lame hours so that then that show can get ferried off abruptly to make way for a second show. So an unusual start time combined with a bunch of other big-ticket shows going on the same night made this a less-than-desirable situation for Longwave on their third visit to the fair city of Vancouver. They’ve always had interesting venue situations here. Their first show was at the Royal, which has since turned itself back into a top forty dance club on the Granville strip. Their second gig was at Sonar, usually reserved as a dance club anyhow.

I digress. Due to a pleasant and good-natured stint at a restaurant across the street from the club for dinner and interviews, I didn’t manage to catch the opening band. We all got back into the room and essentially, the gear was swiftly set up and the band hit the stage within minutes. While I was waiting, I became acquainted with a pair of guys, one from Australia and one from England, both of whom for some reason live now in Nelson, and were just down on a weekend trip. We discussed the aforementioned crappy Vancouver live venue situation, the Spoon show the night before, and the confusion they’d had between Longwave and Longview.

And then, on went the band. They played about an hour-long set, and surprisingly kept it a pretty even split between their new album, There’s A Fire, and their previous album, The Strangest Things. This was a pretty important point, seeing as the new album isn’t out yet, most people would be completely alienated by the latest material because they just simply haven’t had a chance to hear it yet. So this certainly served as a great album preview, and a lovely way to hook people into the slightly matured sound the band has developed since we’ve last seen them in this town. Yes, Longwave is back and swimmier than ever before. “All Sewn Up” - one of the older tunes - came to a head with a deliciously noisy ending before coming to a startling halt. The audience seemed stunned for a moment and the room was dead silent before finally erupting in applause and cheers. The crowd seemed a bit intimidated by the unfortunate sparseness at first, shying away from responding to Steve Schiltz’s attempts at conversation. He calmly took the cricket-sounds in stride though, laughing casually and sipping from his glass of red wine. But as the set went on, the crowd seemed to warm up a little, venturing further forward in the room and not being afraid of shouting out song titles and random woops.

New bassist Paul Dillon had some family in attendance, a fact that seemed to give him a mild case of the jitters. Of course some there’s always that inverse-proportion thing about how at-ease you are and how often things will go wrong. Somehow he couldn’t get his bass strings to behave. As he fiddled with that, Schiltz entertained through the lull with chatter about buying some new bass strings - or at least the A. Off and running they went again. You know, it’s beyond me how this band hasn’t garnered heaps more attention than it has so far. In the current landscape of music, they seem to be a perfect fit. I am itching to see how things will go for them once this album comes out and there’s a bit more of a push with the songs. Everyone’s really into this sort of stuff right now, so they shouldn’t have any troubles in that regard, and to boot, they have such a massive energy live. Schiltz is nearly doubled over half the time slamming his guitar repeatedly groundward to emphasize each strum. Guitarist Shannon Ferguson is a master of weird-sound-ology, flipping his hands back and forth and up and down the neck of his guitar and using this odd toy (which he’s used as long as I have seen them) to make this screaming squalling sound, during "Meet Me At The Bottom." The song climbs and climbs and climbs and then lets loose with a huge barrage of noises and atmosphere, topped by Ferguson hurling the guitar right up to his face, mawing away at that weird toy thing and forcefully throwing the toy gizmo across the stage, and stumbling over himself to create the most insane wall of furious squeals. Absolutely stunning.

I also must say, the band’s new drummer Jason Molina is incredible. He’s so quick back there, during some of those noisy outros you pretty much can’t even see his hands, they’re flying around so bloody fast.

As they left the stage for a moment, Dillon for the second time removed his bass and whacked it on the low club ceiling. They gathered stage side as the audience made an impressive noise for their return. They finally relented, asking for requests. Someone yelled out “My Sharona” and Schiltz obliged for a moment. Anyhow, they played some more, and then, that was that. They received a warm reception and were very quickly ushered off stage to make way for whatever was coming up afterwards. Strange transition period there, but everyone seemed in good spirits. Another night in Canada.

Elsewhere

By Andy Scheffler
Photos : Andy Scheffler
Published : June, 2005.