I Heart the Music: Your Online Source for Live Music Reviews and Interviews in Toronto!

Everybody was excited for CHARTattack’s CMF showcase on Thursday night at the Horseshoe, and for good reason. Whipping together some of the best raw talent that Canadian music has to offer, the night consisted of performances by Magneta Lane, Amos The Transparent, Green Go, Hollerado, The Besnard Lakes, Great Bloomers and Arietta. It was a palpable plethora of the many shades of the indie music scene and (luckily) they all basked in the bright light of victory that night.

Amos The Transparent took to the stage first (we missed openers Magneta Lane). Here is a mid-level indie band capturing the hearts of audiences everywhere, probably because they play with so much of it. Kicking off their set with “Catch and Release”, you couldn’t help but venture to the pit in want of becoming part of this 6-member musical family. Going back and forth between their traditionally slower, almost emo-pop sound, to lengthened bridges and intensified jam sessions, Amos’ live performance is filled with nice surprises; layers of sound, beautifully held harmonies, pan-band vocals, call and answer sequences with the crowd, and even friendly sing-a-longs onstage with friends as seen during the tail end of “Greater than Consequence”, creating one of those inexplicable, tingly concert moments.

I don’t even want to review Green Go. I just want you to go see them, and by the looks of the audience, so do they! This electro-pop dance party machine is meant for the stage. Even the most brooding of hippies awaiting The Besnard Lakes couldn’t help but bust a move – no matter how teeny it was. A decidedly awesome, pumped up mix (think Arcade Fire meets Talking Heads meets Fujiya and Miyagi), Green Go has excavated their own super sound through duet-styled vocals, tons of synth, commanding lyrics, undeniable creativity, and a full band behind ‘em- including a really, really tight drummer. Turning the mainstream into electro (even the haters) one audience at a time.

Hollerado came out like fire with front-man, Menno busting out the windmill and immediately declaring “I’m outta tune and I fucking love it!”.  Their energy un-chartable, the drum solos possibly un-re-creatable, the fist pumps from the audience definitely un-stoppable, Hollerado make a sledgehammer to the head feel like a walk in the park. With hard riffs, incredible pace, tons of sweat, they still manage to deliver catchy melodies which, coupled with their straightforward lyrics, make sing-alongs and clapping sequences possible. These guys define power pop. The only thing missing were the drunk, shirtless babes whipping their sweaty bras on stage. The album does not do justice to the spectacle that is Hollerado. Go see them. Oh yeah, and the lead singer horked on himself.

The Besnard Lakes were next on the bill. Not much to say that hasn’t already been said about them, however the crowd appeared to dwindle a bit once they hit the stage..??

**this is the point where our photographer’s camera died. Sorry!**

Great Bloomers are hard to pigeon-hole. Not your typical country, rock or even alt folk, but rather a little of each. Throw in the piano and some beautifully-crafted melodies, mix in the refreshing hooks and the 5-member harmonies, add a little orchestral twang, and a pinch of grit of and you’ve got a splendid musical salad perfect for those interested in feeling good while digesting. From songs of foot-stomping quality (“Speak of Trouble”) to sounds reminiscent of old Broken Social Scene (“This Aint You”) but with stronger vocals, Great Bloomers are a band you’ll want to see again and again. Even though the crowd thinned out before their set began, both the remaining fans and the band fed off of this more intimate, highly pleasurable atmosphere.

As reviewed by Brittany Smith

photography provided by Renee Rodenkirchen

Black Hat Brigade is an eclectic fivesome homegrown right here in the GTA. And homegrown they truly are, with audible influences of Canadian greats Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene and an unnamed touch of East Coast sound that ties it all together. The band is made up of Rob Haughey (Keys/Guitar/Bass/Vocals), Justin Myler (Bass/Keys/Guitar/Vocals), Adam Peterson (Lead Guitar/Bass/Keys/Glockenspiel/Vocals), Dan Hurst (Drums) and Bryan Ward (Guitar/Percussion/Glockenspiel/Bass) – listing out the band members and the instruments they play appears a little confusing, but it all makes sense once you see them play live. To watch a BHB show is to witness a complicated yet fluid dance of instrument swapping, mixed vocals and old school rock ‘n’ roll. It’s the type of music both hipster kids and grizzled sea captains alike would enjoy stomping their feet and clinking their pint glasses to. iheartthemusic was able to talk with Justin and Bryan before BHB tookthe stage at the El Mocambo on the night of the release party for their sophomore EP, Fathers.

iheartthemusic: Where are you guys from, are you local Toronto boys?

Justin: Well, originally, I’m from Brampton, and so are Rob and Adam, who aren’t here right now.

Bryan: I’m from Pickering, that’s where I grew up. And Dan is from Burlington so we’re all kind of suburb kids.

iheartthemusic: You guys are from all over the place, how did you come together to form the band?

Justin: Myself, Rob and Adam played together in university. We all went to high school together, and I’ve known Adam since I was about five. Bryan and Adam were working at the CBC, and met over there. Bryan came out to one of our shows. We knew that he played a bunch of instruments so we invited him up on stage to play tambourine in one of our songs. We were all pretty inebriated and just asked him to join.

Bryan: …and I met Dan in College, a friend of a friend.

Justin: About a year after Bryan joined we had an amicable split with our old drummer. The next day Bryan bumped into Dan, and asked if he was still drumming. Dan said, “Ya, why…are you looking for a drummer?” He came to a practice and we hit it off.

iheartthemusic: So it seems like it was fate that brought you guys together.

Justin: That’s what we like to call it.

Bryan: It was written in the stars.

iheartthemusic: I like that a lot. So one thing that I thought was really interesting in reading your bio was this section here: “It could be said that the drug-induced children’s programming of the early 1980’s, overexposure to video game soundtracks, and the years spent partying in the bowels of dead end suburban cul-de-sacs might have had an influence on their song writing.” First of all, who wrote that?

Bryan: That’s the English Major, Rob.

Justin: Yeah, he threw together the bio, but we all sort of grew up in the ’80s playing video games, and you can see it in our music. We all have a little bit of ADD, which probably has to do with the video games. It’s why we have to switch up our instruments all the time. We get bored.

iheartthemusic: Any particular video games?

Justin: I was a Nintendo guy, Bryan’s a Nintendo guy.

Bryan: I still have a Nintendo hooked up to my TV. Normally after shows we all end up at my place and play Mario 3 at three o’clock in the morning. We’ll throw on other games, but it always goes back to Mario 3, that’s a staple.

Justin: We do have a song called “Castlevania”, which was not named after the video game, because I tried it, and I suck at it [laughs all around].

iheartthemusic: “Castlevania” is on your second record, the new one that’s out today.

Justin: Yeah, Fathers.

iheartthemusic: When was your first record released ?

Justin: It was almost exactly a year ago today. It was recorded at Sleepytown Sound in December, and it took six months to release. We were doing it all ourselves: artwork,  printing, mastering, and collecting money to be able to afford to do it.

iheartthemusic: Today is the CD release party for the new record, Fathers. How does this record feel different from the first?

Bryan: The new one is longer ['cause] it’s got more songs on it. A couple of songs on this album have been around since we wrote the last one. We felt that these songs all fit well together, and they all had a certain tone and feel to them, which is why we put them on this other EP. Also, I think the songs sound a lot fuller, and more thought out. When we recorded the last one, it was the first thing we’d ever recorded, and the first time we’d ever stepped into a studio. We just did it for ourselves. We thought, cool, now we’ll have something to listen to. With this record we know people other than ourselves and our parents are going to hear it. I think it’s also pretty true to our live sound.

iheartthemusic: Another cool aspect about the show tonight is that it’s part of the Pitter Patter Festival. How did BHB come to take part in it?

Justin: Keith Hamilton, who’s running Pitter Patter, we played show for him about a year ago, at the Boat [in Kensington], and kept in touch with him. We weren’t even supposed to be on Pitter Patter, because we were looking for a night to do our release. So Keith said if we wanted to put on our show as a part of the festival, then that would be great.

iheartthemusic: Let’s talk instruments, your bio lists the glockenspiel one of the instruments you play…

Bryan: Well a Glockenspiel is basically a metal xylophone. It’s got metal pieces instead of the wooden blocks. It’s a mallet instrument… Adam had a dream that he was Moon Walking across a glockenspiel and it played the craziest song he’d ever heard. The next day he came to practice with a glock. None of us had ever played it before.

iheartthemusic: So after this Pitter Patter tour you’re going to be playing NXNE.

Justin: We played it last year, but it was more lowkey. We didn’t have a lot of push behind our name at that point. We’re doing a show at The Drake with The Balconies, The Urban Aesthetics and a couple of others.

Bryan: That’s on June 18th. The next night we’re playing a free show at Yonge and Dundas Square, Mill Street Brewery is the sponsor. There’s going to be two stages, the Mill Street Stage and the main stage. Wintersleep, The Cliks and In-Flight Safety are on the main stage.

iheartthemusic: Do you have a current favourite Canadian band you want to tell our readers about?

Justin: Lots. I find what I’ve been listening to a lot lately is a lot of Canadian stuff, especially out of Toronto. Timber Tambre is someone that we’ve recently started listening to. Bryan actually turned me onto them.

Bryan: It was after one of our shows I think. I was like, “Justin, you need to hear this song.”  It was “Lay Down in the Tall Grass”.

Justin: Chad Vangaalen, Constantines, Broken Social Scene, Wolf Parade, Arcade Fire, Think About Life, Holy Fuck, The Besnard Lakes, Born Ruffians, Islands, Frog Eyes, Slim Twig, Women, Bruce Peninsula…Yeah, there’s lots of great bands out there right now.

iheartthemusic: Do you find that there’s a lot of support within the Canadian music industry? I’ve heard of it described as one big happy family, has that been your experience?

Bryan: We’re always helping each other out. Like if someone gets a gig, or a good slot at a show, we always try to get one of our friends’ bands on there. We’ll try to get younger bands (that aren’t as well known) really good opening slots. That’s kind of what’s pushing the scene right now; everyone’s helping each other out.

iheartthemusic:Do you have a favourite venue in the city, that you’ve played which holds a place in your heart?

Justin: I’d say for most of us, and for me anyway, Rancho Relaxo. We love playing there.

Bryan: We had our first sell out show at Rancho, which was the best thing ever.

iheartthemusic: And, as a final question, care to explain the Soylent Green comment from your bio? That your music is the “aural and visual equivalent to that final scene from the dystopian classic Soylent Green, when Charlton Heston’s character finally realizes that they’ve been eating each other all along”?

Bryan: Our music eats people.

Justin: At the end of one of our shows you realize your brain’s been eating itself the whole time.

Black Hat Brigade will be playing NXNE June 18th at the Drake hotel, and a free show at Yonge and Dundas Square on June 19th.

Interview by Nadia Elkharadly

Pictures by Omar Elkharadly

Bell Orchestre’s six members came together through various musical backgrounds – including via Arcade Fire, The Luyas and Snailhouse (to name a few) – but first and foremost through their love of music. Roughly translated to “beautiful orchestra,” Bell Orchestre are an instrumental band hailing from Montreal who are creating beautiful music. They’re known to retreat to the woods to make and write music together and to take their influences from not only different musical genres but everyday sights and sounds; these elements culminated in March with the proud release of their sophomore album, As Seen Through Windows. Their live show is both soothing and inspirational, allowing the music to speak for itself. iheartthemusic sat down and spoke with Sarah Neufeld (violin) and Mike Feuerstack (lap steel guitar) as they explained their origins, musical influences and how they are making a name for themselves without any words.

iheartthemusic: You’ve all come from such different backgrounds musically, how did this unit get together?

Sarah: It sort of slowly but surely all came together. It started off a little bit smaller with Richie [bass/keyboard/percussion], Stef [drums/percussion] and I doing some stuff for dance. 

Mike: Very gradually.

Sarah: Very gradually! It was just kind of object-based at first and then about five years ago we started playing shows and having a record as a band. That’s also when Mike got on board, who is a friend of Richie’s.

iheartthemusic: How do you approach composing music with six members?

Sarah: It is really collaborative.

Mike: It truly is. It’s hard for a lot of people to understand that.

Sarah: It’s very natural to us.

Mike: It’s very long though, but very natural. The biggest hurdle for us with writing is making time when we can all come together and work on stuff.

Sarah: It comes out of this organic process of living together and seeing what works and then crafting it from there.

iheartthemusic: Well you all must really get along then!

Mike: We do! We also know how to fight too. We are good that way.

iheartthemusic: I read in a previous interview that you are really inspired by your surroundings.

Sarah: Because we don’t write lyrics, the music tends to observe a little bit more from the physical space. However, it’s not like this song is really inspired by mountains so we think about mountains, it’s more like happenstance. We are drawn to writing in natural settings. Like Kav’s [trumpet/medodica] family has this beautiful place in Vermont and we spent a lot of the first album there and then we wrote a bit of this second record there as well. Friends of the family of Richie’s have this incredible house in the country as well, so we’ve spent a lot of time in the country doing “record retreats” and it’s also an effective way of getting manageable hours.

Mike: We can get together without distractions for days in a row and it’s really productive.

Sarah: And then it ends up evoking the surroundings, but maybe you wouldn’t notice if you weren’t there.

Mike: One of the fun things about it is watching the music respond differently when you listen to it in different surroundings. Even though our environment may have inspired us when we wrote the music, I think we would all hope that the environment of listening to the music would inspire the listener as well.

Sarah: Basically it is a sponge.

iheartthemusic: I love that!  You guys recently released an album. Prior to that one it had been a couple of years since you released anything, do you notice any difference in sound or mood from the last album to this one?

Sarah: The sound and the mood. [laughs] We recorded it mostly in one location in this studio in Chicago with John McEntire. His stuff has a trademark sound and that kind of combined with our aesthetic and also helped us push it further as well.

Mike: The combination of us doing what we wanted to do along with his common technique is what makes it fun for us. He does really clean stuff, but also really dry, precise detailed stuff.

Sarah: He just makes things sound really artful and he really did that for us. We wanted to experiment with a lot of percussion and he made all that come alive.

Mike: There is a lot of ambience in the recording, which again is not something that he usually works with.

iheartthemusic: You guys probably fed of each other.

Mike: That’s what was neat about the combination.

Sarah: We had this one time where Richie and I recorded in the hallway, not in the studio, with mics and were listening to all the traffic going by. We were able to work differently within that space.

Mike: That is a literal example of the environment affecting the music!

Sarah: Exactly.

iheartthemusic: Being an instrumental band, what is the crowd like at your shows?

Sarah: It really depends on the situation. When we are playing at a more artsy centre then it’s more of a classical crowd, but a lot of the times it is a combination of indie rock kids that have really open ears.

Mike: One of the exciting things about it is that it totally appeals to lots of different people. A wide variety of different musical backgrounds are attracted to it. Same with other languages, we can travel to other places and our lyrics aren’t an impediment because we don’t have any.

iheartthemusic: Yeah, I was watching your video blogs from your trip to the Baltics. It looked incredible!

Sarah: The response we got over there was amazing. People were really appreciative and really wanting to discuss a lot after; people really wanted to share what they had just experienced and tell their stories as well.

iheartthemusic: How did you end up there?

Sarah: This journalist, who actually does more political stuff, invited us there. She found us on the Internet through Arcade Fire. So she actually came to us for Arcade Fire and then spoke to Richie about Bell Orchestre and made some jab about us never coming to the Baltics and he was like, “well invite us, we’ll come”. She did and she made the whole thing happen on her own.

Mike: She isn’t even a promoter or booking agent.

Sarah: She works in radio so she knows a lot of people and the whole tour was set up more DIY then you can imagine. People just taking a week off work to make it happen. It was really beautiful.

iheartthemusic: From a performance perspective, what do you hope that people take away from your shows?

Mike: A CD! [laughs]

Sarah: I would say getting fueled by a show. Coming away feeling energized and just inspired. I think any artist hopes for that.

Mike: Some affect beyond just aesthetically pleasing; something deeper and harder to describe.

Sarah: A lot of people don’t know what to expect when they come to our shows, so if they are new listeners, a lot of the times if they like it, they come away feeling really surprised and then inspired. They think this is not what you hear everyday and then there is a door that opens for them.

Mike: If we can open that door and they walk away and we can leave the door open for a little while, then we’ve done our job!

iheartthemusic: I have yet to see you guys play live, but am anxious to be able to see how it all comes together without vocals. Has it been tough to market yourself due to the fact that you are strictly instrumental?

Mike: We don’t really market it. You use the same tools, but it’s an art project and we are fond of it. If it finds an audience then we will be really happy. We use the tools that pop acts do, but we are also exploring the tools that the jazz and classical world implement. All styles of music have their avenues and we have some sort of legitimacy on all of them. So what we lack in one area we can make up for in another.

iheartthemusic: Was it a conscious choice to not have a vocalist?

Sarah: Yeah, I mean it just kind of organically came together that way. We got together and started to play music for theatre and dance and when we came together to chat about what kind of music we wanted to make, we spoke about how we were inspired by classical music, as much as electronic music. It definitely wasn’t supposed to be a rock band with a singer and it still isn’t!

photography provided by Kristin M.

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