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And so it begins! It's back. Big Bad New Music West has returned after a one-year (ish) hiatus, closer now to its former regular early-May scheduling. This year's festival is far smaller than the prior couple (at least), but everything going along with it seems to have picked up a bit. NMW now has its own office. NMW has an official afterparty lounge. NMW has a shuttle bus taking people from venue to venue. NMW has media partners giving it a ton of crazy downloadable and listenable goodies. Cool. Baby steps - maybe we'll be back up to 400 bands next year, but the point is, before the festival's begun, it seems, in theory at least, to be put together with far more thought than I can remember it having before.
The first night of NMW 2006 wasn't much of an NMW night at all. Registration was open during the day, and with the brunt of the people probably not coming by to get their passes and all the free magazines and things like that til later days, it looked like the NMW brass was still trying to put everything together. There was a mad laminating assembly line going on when I arrived, and a few scattered band and media members standing around, cashing in on free smoothies while they waited for their passes to be located and pieced together. The only event that night was the 'premium' show featuring the Editors and stellastarr*. The premium shows are associated with NMW in name only, providing not much more than a bit of cross-pollination-advertising. NMW gets to look cool by hosting the Editors, and the Editors get some extra hardcore advertising through NMW's flyers and whatnot.
Stop # 1 : The only stop - Richards for The Editors and stellastarr*.
I missed the first band of the night - reports indicated it was not-too-left-field modern chick rock. A brazen gal flouting about the stage doing her best to be the next Karen O, and a lot of general mayhem and noise. But I can't vouch for that myself. I got there with nearly perfect timing to see stellastarr* though. I was waiting for this for a while, as they haven't been in Vancouver in quite some time. Pretty nuts how they've grown from their first small showcase at the old Royal club with citymates Longwave. And yet, the band members don't seem to have changed their clothes in four years. Drummer Arthur Kremer still takes off his shirt a couple songs in to reveal an electrical-tape asterisk stuck over his right nipple. Bassist Amanda Tannen still wears pretty shirts, casual pants, and chokers. Singer Shawn Christiansen still wears black velvet jackets and white shirts, hair spiked out rigidly. And guitarist Michael Jurin still wears loose casual black clothes with a haircut that makes him look like he should be part of the early 80's version of the Grapes of Wrath. But, they have a newish album, and a stepped up show that includes its own guitar tech, an impressive yet annoyingly-backlit lighting setup (Unclear whether this belonged to stellastarr* or The Editors, as the lights remained on the stage all night), and Christiansen putting his guitar aside for a couple of songs.
They played a lot of very well-received songs from their older album, as well as quite a bit from their new. Everyone seemed to be singing and dancing along happily, enjoying Christiansen's Robert Smith-like vocal quality (more throaty though) and jittery performance. The band's newer songs are more cohesively in line with the modern synthy guitar rock movement, although there are no keyboards and apparently no loops present in their live set-up. It would appear that the bizarre noises that sounded a darn lot like keyboards or extra percussion from time to time were actually effects put on Jurin's guitars by the cavalcade of pedals surrounding his feet. It's a sound the band seemed to be ahead of the times with when they sprung up in the early part of the decade, and they've pumped up that driving modern sound in a big way now. A huge chunk of that undeniable 'now' sound is provided by the exceedingly heavy bass generated by wee cute little Amanda Tannen. A small girl, she hides behind her flippy blonde bangs much of the time, but when her face is visible, it appears as though she is endlessly grinning. Happy to be on stage, or simply diabolical? You decide. The voices too comingle interestingly. The three folks along the front of the stage sing various parts. Mostly of course Christiansen, and interjections by a solo Tannen, who would usually sing something that consisted just of "aaaaahs" - however, there were a few times when, hearing a distinctly female voice, I would look straight up at Tannen, only to see her bopping around at the back of a stage nowhere near a microphone. A quick glance across the stage proved that it was in fact Christiansen issuing these high and soft vocals. Wild! The three of them though carry out some confusing three-person, multi-tempo round-robin interludes. All three of them are singing an entirely different set of lyrics at a different pace and pitch than the others. Intense effect.
Up on the riser, I could barely see Kremer. The flash of contrast of his tape-asterisk against bare flesh was often all that was visible between cymbals and through thick smoke and blackness. His ongoing tickity-tick and heavy kick were evidence enough of his being there though. Jurin collapsed to the ground a few times in a guitar-flinging frenzy, and super intense moments were had by way of those aforementioned songs where Christiansen set his guitar aside and simply sang. Bent over double, hands fluttering and jiving around his microphone (stand also bent double), he contorted his face and squalled, cried out and beat the music from his lips. He then took the mic out of its stand, fell to his back on the ground and started rolling about, curling up, raising his arms, stuttering his feet about in miniature seizures - truly chaotic. He sat cross legged after dedicating a song to the balcony (Eventually, the time comes when you have to dedicate a song to everyone in the balcony), picking up and whacking down the base of his collapsed mic stand to the stage floor. He looked tense and strained and utterly into it, grabbing at his head and putting his hand to his chest.
Some may say they have not changed much, that the show went on too long. I don't really agree. It was a very evolved show (aside from the clothes!) and the music has definitely taken a step from where it had been before. There were variants in the tempo, and the show itself is quite a new experience. I'm rather pleased. Not mind-boggled, but rather pleased nonetheless.
As for the Editors - well if you haven't heard the buzz about them by now, you haven't been paying attention to anything, plain and simple. The small group of folks at my back who I knew seemed to be all aglow with praise for them, everything from girly “I’m so in love!” to “It’s the best live show I’ve ever seen!” were flung out. Now I am not so familiar with them. I am assuming they have high radio play - I know one of my friends found out about them from a particularly music-savvy friend of hers. And another of the folks I know decided in the span of a day that they were the greatest thing since sliced bread, ever since being nearly granted an interview with them and immediately going whole-hog on the research. So they had a lot to live up to. And when they came out on stage, I thought, all right, British fellas. Good stuff. Then they started playing, and I thought, well this is all right but I’m not about to proclaim the second coming of Christ here. I think maybe it’s a genre that I’m just hearing too much of now, the poppy yet quirky British rock, that the band has to be utterly mind-blowing to catch me. It’s a saturated market, I’m waiting for something new, so in the meantime I seem to be getting very picky about which of those in the genre (which is a genre I generally like, by the way) I get really into. That said, they weren’t poor by any means. The singer has this tall, lanky way about him, fluttering his hands around nervously and birdlike, even when he’s just speaking between songs.
It looks however, as though it merely took a couple of songs for them to get going. The third and fourth songs, which I believe were “All Sparks” and “Fall,” were realllllly super good. Boppy, fun, energized, just plain good times, and/or gentle and ambient in an Elbow-ish sort of way. And I love Elbow. But after that, it sort of fell over again a little. I think the Editors have a bit of a Snow Patrol complex for me. The songs they do well are nearly incomparable, but the rest is a bunch of mediocre filler-type stuff. I can’t tell if they made the effort 100% through, if they ran out of steam after writing half the songs amazingly, or if they really did try but only managed to turn out 50% awesome. But, they were bouncy and jumpy and fun to watch, all limbs and Brit-cute, a modern sound that everyone obviously enjoyed, and so heck, who am I to say they need to do better? They’ve captured the hearts of many - I’m just too picky hah. But yes, they had a bunch of songs that were incredible. So hopefully they go that route in the future.
ElsewhereNew Music West websiteBy Andy Scheffler |
