Woods of Ypres — Against the Seasons (Krankenhaus Records)
The five-song EP Against the Seasons was Woods of Ypres’ first foray into their world of summer black metal, a theme established by the subtitle, “Cold Winter Songs from the Dead Summer Heat.” Recorded in 2002 and released the following year, it’s now undergone a remix from producer (and current WoY bassist) Dan Hulse, who did such a great job on Wetwork’s album last year, along with classy new artwork. The music on this 30-minute EP shows a raw-yet-focused approach that formed the basis for the refinements and diversification of their superb Pursuit of the Sun and Allure of the Earth album from last year. Extremity abounds, emphasizing the blast and the rasp, while still leaving room for acoustic passages, melodic vocals and tempo shifts, sombre arpeggios mingling with fierce blasting (executed with more enthusiasm than perfection, admittedly)—the elements the band fully realized in the more varied songs on the follow-up album. The black metal influence is more pronounced here, recalling Satyricon, Immortal and Primordial—particularly the latter band’s fondness for triplet-feel tempos. I like the symmetrical running order of the tracks, with two shorter songs framing three epics. "A Meeting Place and Time" stands out for its memorable clean-sung passages, as does "Awaiting the Inevitable," which features some terrific riffs in its doomy intro and mid-song death-metal breakdown, complete with a patented Tom G. Warrior death-grunt! Great stuff. Considering that two-thirds of the band on this EP didn’t appear on Pursuit…, the sound and approach between the two releases are remarkably consistent. This is probably down to drummer/songwriter David Gold’s vision…a uniquely Canadian vision, I should add, tied intimately to our geography and the correlation between climate and emotion. (If ever a metal band could be diagnosed with S.A.D., WoY would be it.) The recording-in-progress reports for WoY III indicate that its musical direction follows this EP more closely than Pursuit…, making Against the Seasons not a curio of juvenilia like many debut releases, but a key work in the band’s young discography.

Turbulence
I’ve probably done twice as much flying in the last few years as I did in the previous 20, now that I have friends and other connections east of the Rockies. Still, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the ways of the modern air traveller. These people have powers of interpretation that I’ll never be able to fathom, much less ever adapt.

For example, in the departure lounge, when they announce pre-boarding for families with children and passengers who may need assistance boarding the aircraft, I’ve never understood that that is my signal to grab my things and jostle for position at the counter. I usually assume that there’ll be another boarding announcement for regular passengers like myself.

Similarly, when the plane lands and the flight attendant asks everyone to remain seated while we taxi to the terminal, I don’t take that as a cue to stand up and start pulling my stuff from the overhead bins. The seasoned traveller knows better, though. Having been flown to his destination at 550 MPH, he's now determined to shave time off his journey. It’s up to him. Every second counts. Some other a-hole out there might hail all the taxis!

I’ll hold off sharing the meat and potatoes of my Montreal trip—the specifics on new Voivod album and my interviews with the band—for now. I'll post a link to the Unrestrained! Web site once my write up is done. What follows are some general observations of the events leading up to the main event.

I arrived on Tuesday evening, and took a cab to the hotel. Adrian from The End Records and U! had set up his PR command post in our room, with receipts, forms, and Blackberry spread out on the desk. Not only was he setting up two days of Voivod listening sessions in Montreal and New York, but The Gathering (another band on The End) are also due shortly in North America, and mini-crises abounded. He came out for something to eat with me, though he had to watch the time carefully. Jason Newsted (who joined Voivod shortly after leaving Metallica) was due at our hotel in a couple hours. I’d never seen the Energizer so nervous or quiet. Jasonic operates on a different plane of fame and fortune than the usual metallers he and I deal with. Adrian wanted damn sure to be there when he arrived.

After dinner I met up with the gang from Toronto, who were noshing at another restaurant a few blocks down Ste. Catherine. I’d talked or otherwise been in touch with both Martin Popoff and Chris Bruni in the past, so it was good to finally meet them in person. Richard from Caustic Truths, Laura from Exclaim and BW&BK’s David Perri were there as well. Their food had just arrived so I sat and had a beer while they noshed. After we’d settled the bill we checked out Archambault Music and the magazine store across from the hotel. I was pleased to finally be able to find an issue of Signal to Noise (Dirty Three on the cover), a magazine that I first read about on Brandon's blog at Ground and Sky a while back.

We split up after that, with Bruni, Richard and I heading to a pub for a few beers. I had a couple pints of Guinness then went back to the hotel where I found a very relieved and chilled-out Adrian. Newsted had arrived and all was good. He and Away (Voivod's drummer) were listening to the final mix of the new album up in his room. Away came down and I shook his hand—I may have even involuntarily bowed a few times—followed by Jasonic a few minutes later. I’d had enough brushes with greatness for an evening, so I went up to my room.

After the complimentary breakfast Wednesday morning (superb overall, though few things are more upsetting than buffet eggs) I went for a walk to scope out the neighbourhood. My West Coast candy-ass nearly froze to death after being out for 90 minutes. I retreated to the hotel, where Bruni and Adrian were about ready to pack up banners and t-shirts for the listening party that afternoon. The venue was the upstairs 200-capacity room at Metropolis, an awesome concert hall on Ste. Catherine. We got a tour of the main floor, which features a 2500-capacity hall, which I can only describe as a cross between Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom and the Orpheum, if you can imagine such a thing. Just a beautiful place. Dream Theater are playing there later this month.

We hung up some Voivod banners, organized a reception table and sorted the commemorative t-shirts by size, and waited for the 30-odd invitees to arrive. Snake was the first band member to show up, followed by Away and Jasonic.

At 2:00 Jason introduced the album on behalf of the band, urging us all to stay quiet for the duration as a mark of respect for Piggy, their guitarist who passed away late last summer. Like I said earlier, I’ll save all the musical details for my upcoming piece for the U! Web site. I will say that the new Voivod album lacks nothing in terms of mystique, atmosphere and surprise.

Adrian organized the post-album interviews for everyone who wanted to talk to the band. I talked to Away first, mainly about how he saw the new album in terms of their past albums. The fanboy in me took over at various points, and we talked about Magma, his artwork, the Voivod character, and my favourite Voivod album, Angel Rat, which I’d conveniently brought a copy of for him to sign. Away’s one of the nicest guys you could ever meet, so amazingly modest and self-effacing. I’m looking forward to arranging a follow-up phone interview with him closer to the album release date (June).

(I actually wish Away had been a little more self-promoting, because on my last afternoon in Montreal I picked up a free local entertainment paper and learned, upon opening it up at the airport, that he had an art show on right then, featuring the original paintings of the first four Voivod album covers. I’m still bummed out about missing that.)

What I remember of my interview with Jason was his incandescent passion for Voivod. He’s the guy who’s going to see Snake and Away through these dark days and make sure nobody forgets about their band. And according to what Away told me, the next couple years will be busy ones. It sounds awful and wrong for me to say this, but it’s going to be a good time to be a Voivod fan. Hang in there, because the band certainly will.

After the event, the Toronto gang got back in the van and headed out. Only Richard was planning to stay on. He and I went out for dinner and compared notes. After a day of being repeatedly knocked on my ass, Richard floored me again by mentioning, of his own accord, the Laser Voivod concept, which is a long-running fantasy my friend Smash and I have nurtured. He had an interesting twist on the idea that I can’t mention here.

On the way back to the hotel, we wandered through the main HMV downtown, where I got a good chuckle out of one of their displays. It was something you’d only see in Quebec—Gentle Giant topping the music DVD chart with their Giant on the Box release.

I just got back from Montreal, where I got to hear Katorz, the new Voivod album, and interview Jasonic and Away for an upcoming issue of Unrestrained! More details about the trip later.

It was pissing rain in Montreal today, and out my window tonight I can see Vancouver-style snow (i.e., chunky precipitation) in the street-lights' glare. It's a "Meteorological Inversion," which is not a Voivod song title, but should be.

Someone once said of Louis Armstrong, "He was put on this Earth to make people happy." I feel the same way about the Kids of Widney High, whom a coworker introduced me to this week. I knew of them after reading an article in Answer Me! more than 10 years ago, but I'd never heard their work. I'll admit that it wasn't something I felt like seeking out. The sole purpose of "outing" this music seemed to be so that stoners could laugh at it.

Spinning Special Music From Special Kids (1989), Let's Get Busy (1999), and Act Your Age (2003) all day left me in a daze. The first album's hit me so hard that I needed prodding from my coworker to listen to it again and truly discover the raw, unflinching, devastating tunes it contains. I was interested (and my psyche was a little grateful) to hear that the follow-up albums are much more polished (almost as if Widney High had been auditioning students before deeming them eligible to enroll), and feature some undeniably kick-ass material: "Pretty Girls," "Christmas is the Time," and the unbelievably great "Life Without the Cow" [MP3]. It's as good as anything They Might Be Giants has ever done.

Of course, I got home last night and mentioned the Kids to fancylady, who launched into renditions of all the hits from Special Music.... Guess I'm late to the party on this one.

To see ourselves as others see us...

Nick Terry reviewing The Devin Townsend Band's Synchestra in the new issue of Decibel:
"Apologies to any of our readers in Vancouver, but whatever they put in the water up there, you guys are fucked."

After watching our city's contribution to the Turin Olympics closing ceremonies, I couldn't agree more. That was supremely embarrassing.

BTW, Terry gave the record an 8/10, calling it "the perfect '80s Rush album."

Retrogressive Progressive Obsessive

Inspired by a thread at Doomed To Rock, I decided to pick some of my favourite progressive rock albums from the ’90s to the present. A lot of my choices reflect a time when I was discovering a lot of new bands and labels—the same time, funnily enough, that I first got on the Web. It was 1997. The "progressive revival" of the early '80s hadn't left me with anything but a few treasured Marillion and IQ albums. I'd become pissed off with indie rock's apathetic lack of craft and was enthusiastically catching up with the metal scene. Then, prompted by a few magazine articles and the much-maligned Billboard Guide to Progressive Music, I found a whole new vein of underground music... I got out my credit card and began clicking "Confirm Your Order." I got up to date in no time, and was overjoyed to hear that progressive rock was thriving, free from major label tyranny and the notion of having a "hit" that killed the '70s and '80s bands. The new bands were making music for all the right reasons.

For this list, I decided to stay within the boundaries of what I consider the classic prog sound, so a lot of these albums are unabashedly retro (I don’t want to get into the retrogressive progressive rock debate—I'll just say that the issue doesn’t keep me awake at night). Other albums on the list might push the boundaries a little more. As a general rule, I steered clear of heavy metal, which is often the most complex, progressive music in existence. Progressive metal albums like Gorguts’ Obscura and River of Corticone by Sacramentary Abolishment might have to wait for another list to get their fair dues.

In chronological order, then…

1. Landberk – Lonely Land (Laser’s Edge, 1992)
Right before Anglagard’s epoch-making debut album, Landberk arrived, a very different but no less remarkable band who released three studio albums then tragically vanished. Lonely Land is the English-language version of their debut album (some say they prefer the original Swedish version, which I’ve never heard). There’s nothing off-puttingly indulgent about their music, in fact it rocks in a gently headbangable way. Landberk prefer to groove rather than slam you around the room with dozens of rapid-fire changes. They’re accessible in the same way a band like Katatonia is. Their overwhelming melancholy is their own worst enemy—or most valuable asset, depending on your POV. Landberk’s sound revolves around Stefan Dimle’s barbed-wire bass, a swathe of Mellotron, and the stürm and twang of Reine Fiske’s guitar, whose seething tone I find so compelling I’ve sought out a number of his recordings, from the amazing Morte Macabre album, to the debut EP from Paatos, to his current contributions to the ultra-hip psyche band Dungen.


2. IQ – Ever (Giant Electric Pea, 1993)
After an abortive two-album major label foray, IQ added new bassist John Jowitt and old singer Peter Nicholls, and returned stronger than ever with…Ever. While their contemporaries Marillion fought to distance themselves from the progressive rock genre, IQ embraced it, favouring their audience with a string of quality releases up to the present day. As a result, they’ve found themselves the flagbearers of “neo-prog” a virtually meaningless, often pejorative, label that’s become common use in the years after Ever. I have a real soft spot for these guys, and Ever remains (ever-so-slightly) the best of their post-80s output—stately, confident, and dramatic.


3. Anglagard – Epilog (Private label, 1994)
These Swedes sent shock waves through the community (such as it was in 1992) when their debut Hybris was released. Much as Metallica took earlier metal influences and ramped them up to new levels of mania, Anglagard took the “good bits” of '70s progressive rock and built a better beast. The turn-on-a-dime epic instrumentals on Epilog are marvels of tight, intricate playing, dynamics, and melodic exploration. And the band's rich, organic sound—heavy on the flute, Mellotron and Hammond—must have been a revelation to ears longing for relief from the blocky, overblown production that ruled the '80s. They released only two studio albums, but their influence lives on in bands like Norway’s Wobbler. The crack cocaine of progressive rock, Epilog still delivers a satisfying jolt.


4. White Willow – Ignis Fatuus (Laser’s Edge, 1995)
This Norwegian collective’s debut album has a very pastoral feel, heavy on the acoustic guitars, flute, soothing Moog tones, and female vocals. Amazingly White Willow have kept it together enough to release three more albums, each with an increasingly extreme light/heavy dynamic. Ignis Fatuus has its aggressive moments, as heard on the fiery keyboard solo in “Lord of Night” and the powerful doom-crunch of “Cryptomenysis.” Elaborate madrigals like “The Withering of the Boughs” and “Now In These Fairy Lands” (quiet in the back, please) dominate the album, though, making for a pleasant (though never bland), listen located somewhere between Harmonium and Jethro Tull, suffused with melancholy that colours a lot of Scandinavian music. Don’t be deceived by the fiercely subtle nature of this album. Leader Jacob Holm-Lupo is down with the black metal, so he’s in touch with the dark side.


5. Spock’s Beard – Beware of Darkness (Radiant, 1996)
The Beard are loved and loathed equally, with “fanboy” and “progsnob” the discussion board epithets of choice whenever their music is debated. Whatever—they did a lot to rejuvenate interest in the genre in the '90s. Neal Morse is an ace songwriter, able to stir The Beatles, Yes, and Gentle Giant into an infectiously catchy prog soup. Sure, they’re sometimes sappy, and they’re not taking the music anywhere new, but when I want to hear something to pick up my mood, I put on the Beard. BoD gets the nod over debut album The Light (1992) and V (2000) for the presence of "The Doorway" and “Time Has Come,” my all-time favourite Beard epic.


6. Happy Family – Toscco (1997, Cuneiform)
Zeuhl-inspired instrumental madness from this Japanese quartet, who beat the tar out of their instruments for the length of this album. With songs like "The Sushi Bar (with bad face, bad manners, and bad taste)" and "He is Coming at Tokyo Station," the music really captures the feeling of a frenetic urban existence. I find it a lot more palatable than Ruins (the widely accepted benchmark for Japanese avant-rock craziness) because there’s more space in the music, more grooving, and more drama. This album flat-out rocks.


7. Present – Certitudes (Cuneiform, 1998)
Dark and twisted nightmare music from Belgians with ties to legendary chamber rock outfit Univers Zero. Present are far more guitar-centric than Univers Zero, with a sound approaching Voivod performing Philip Glass compositions.


8. Anathema – Alternative 4 (Peaceville, 1998)
Anathema went from being an okay doom metal band to an excellent hard-driving progressive rock band with this breakthrough album. The emotional overload and sense of continuity of these songs reminds me a lot of Marillion’s Clutching at Straws, and Vincent Cavanaugh’s vocal delivery recalls Roger Waters. My friend Smash and I logged a good many hours with this album when it came out, and it's never grown old.


9. Porcupine Tree – Stupid Dream (1999, Snapper)
Band leader Steve Wilson would probably have an aneurysm if he saw his band sharing space with certain others on this list, but what roundup of progressive rock from the last decade and a half could omit Porcupine Tree? Stupid Dream is just one of a string of excellent releases from these guys, probably the one that set the standard until their latest masterpiece, Deadwing. From orchestral pop songs to epic Floydian excursions, P. Tree has it covered. Wilson’s musical and lyrical depth is constantly amazing, and from a production standpoint, he makes some of the best-sounding records you’ll ever hear these days.


10. Kevin Gilbert – The Shaming of the True (2000, KMG)
Kevin Gilbert was an LA-based songwriter/musician and a member of the Tuesday Night Music Club, the songwriting workshop that unleashed Sheryl Crow upon the world. I would guess that the circumstances behind Crow’s rise to fame generated a lot of the bitterness that fuelled The Shaming of the True, Gilbert’s concept album about the dark side of the music business. (Gilbert passed away before the album was finished. Nick D’Virgilio of Spock’s Beard and others assembled the album from demos, live recordings and other sources—not that you can tell.) The story follows a promising young artist, Johnny Virgil, as he’s chewed up and spat out by the industry. The genius of this album lies in its songs. They're actually very commercial and radio friendly, ironically reflecting the hit-factory mentality that the album rails against. They’re a diverse lot, at times recalling Peter Gabriel's rhythm-based style (Gilbert once staged a full-length live version of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway). And check out the incredible vocal tapestry of "Suit Fugue (Dance of the A&R Men") and the scathing "Fun," which includes a memorable verse about a certain “Sheryl”. It’s an inspiring album—a labour of love and an incandescent purging of spite.


Shortlisted:
Morte Macabre, Symphonic Holocaust; Guapo, Black Oni; Anekdoten, From Within; Tiamat, Wildhoney; Djam Karet, Live at Orion

I finished work on the new issue of Unrestrained! last week. I still feel like I'm coming up for air, as the last few days of every issue get pretty intense. I talked to Norway's Green Carnation, Toronto's Martin Popoff, and Maple Ridge's Devin Townsend for this edition, so I'll try to post some interview leftovers in the coming weeks.

I'll start with Devin Townsend, who's just released one of his finest albums ever, Synchestra, with the Devin Townsend Band. It's a homespun yet epic record, full of surprises and nonchalant genius. He's a great guy to talk to, and I regret that I couldn't include the full scope of our conversation in my U! piece, which ended up being a sort of guided tour through the songs on the new album.

I asked Devin about the guests he had on Synchestra—guests like Steve Vai, who gave Townsend one of his first big breaks as vocalist on Vai's Sex and Religion album in 1993.

You’ve got Steve Vai playing a solo on the song "Triumph." You've mentioned before that it was sort of a renewal of your creative relationship.

"Yeah, and also closing the door on a 12-year cycle. It was 12 years ago that I did that Vai thing, which kind of launched me in some peculiar directions personally and professionally. I think I spent quite a few of those years in a combination of ruing it and blaming him. I think it took me 12 years to get past that and realize the opportunity that it actually was and realizing the friend that I’ve actually got in that guy. While a lot of people had the opportunity to go to music university to learn their craft, I had the opportunity to go to 'Steve School' and learn lots about the practical application of the music, like the touring and the management end of it and the production and obviously guitar and vocals...as far into it as videos and band dynamic and all this kind of shit. Being able to apply that to my own works has shaped me in a way that it’s hard to picture myself without [all that] at this point. So having Steve perform on a song lke 'Triumph' I think lets bygones be bygones. I mean, personally Steve and I have been fine since the second year after that, but professionally I’ve just been going down so many weird paths for so long that to get out of that cycle by having him appear on the record is really therapeutic."

Did you have any specific instructions for him on the song or did you just say "Go ahead and do your thing"?

"Yeah, the only specific instruction I had was 'Here’s the file—rock it.'"

There’s a female vocalist on the album too. Who is that?

"Well, Nick Tyzio is our sound man. He’s been our sound guy for Strapping Young Lad for a while now, and he’s a really good sound man and a really good guy. Because Synchestra has a pretty family-oriented theme to it I tried to find people who were within our circle, and Deborah is Nick’s wife. She’s got a really good voice and she’s got a lot of things that she’ll be doing in the future. She’s really talented, so it was good to be able to utilize her voice for this."

Oh boy, a trip to the post office to pick up stuff from The End Records.
Circulus—The Lick on the Tip of an Envelope That's Yet to be Sent
What the what is going on here? Surely it bears further investigation. Blackmore's Night, I challenge thee to a joust.
Canvas Solaris—Penumbra Diffuse
Instrumental tech-metal's where it's at for me these days. It's so seldom that I hear a metal vocalist who really contributes anything to the music, so do away with them, I say. Shrink-wrap sticker: "Fans of Spiral Architect, King Crimson, and Don Caballero will be challenged from the opening notes." I'm up for a bit of that.
Jesu—Jesu
Justin Broadrick's new thing.
The Gathering—A Sound Relief DVD
Shrink-wrap sticker: "...a must for any fan of Portishead [cool], Mogwai [righteous], Evanescence [D-OHH!], etc."

I’m still jamming on Sundays at the Sox house, where I’ve been bashing away for at least 15 years now. The jam room is the same as ever, a wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling tangle of patch cables, pedal boards, mike stands and cobwebs presided over by brittle posters of Geddy, Ozzy and Lemmy. Only the refreshments have changed. The days of homebrew and homegrown are over. Instead we’re downing Chai and bottled water and fresh fruit and cheese strings, all supplied by mother Sox, whom I’m sure is delighted by the straight-edge Sunday philosophy. We’re like friggin’ Aerosmith these days. Last time I was over, we had the Monk/Coltrane live album playing on the stereo as we passed the teapot around, and I heard Scum mutter, “God, what a bunch of nellies.”

We still play bloody loud, though, and, in the grand Sox tradition, we record everything. Getting a good room mix onto tape (or hard drive) wasn’t so difficult when we were a trio-plus-vocalist, but now that twin guitars have become such a big part of our “sound,” the huge swirl of frequencies has really muddied the recordings. I think turning down would help, but the guys love their Marshall stacks too much to do that. We’ve been using noise gates on the drum mikes to stop the guitars bleeding through. They definitely help, but I really dislike the resulting sound. Not only is every drum hit clipped a tiny bit, but the elements of the kit that don’t pack a huge wallop—like the high hat and ride cymbal—end up not triggering the gates and are inaudible on the recordings. Forget about playing grace notes or cross-sticking on the snare…it simply won’t register. Kick, snare, toms—boom-boom-tap—are about all that makes it through the gates.

So I worry, I complain, I bear with it. It’s not my room, it’s not my equipment, and I’m just the guy who gets to hang around with musicians…you know the joke. But as of last week, I feel better about the situation. Each issue of Decibel magazine features a lengthy piece about a “Hall of Fame” album, an extensive revisitation of some classic record that rounds up fresh interviews with band members talking about the good old days and how they really had no idea they were making a classic at the time, etc.

The Decibel folks have displayed good taste in their picks thus far, and I’m all over each issue like white on rice. In the latest issue, they consecrate Cathedral’s Forest of Equilibrium, a fantastically miserable album made by, it turns out, fantastically miserable young men. And what did Mike Smail, an American drummer who went to England to play on Cathedral’s legendary debut album, think of the end result?

“Well, I was kinda disappointed that there were absolutely no cymbals on that recording…”

Interior Design – Interior Design 03 (Canada Lynx Records)
Interior Design is Shockk’s solo project. He plays guitar in Mongoose and the on-again, off-again Roadbed, and is one of the most ridiculously talented musicians I’ve ever seen, much less hung out with. If he weren’t such a nice, modest guy, he’d probably be famous. With Interior Design, he applies his dexterous fingers to ambient music. I think this is his first CD, after releasing a handful of tapes over the years. It comes packaged in a DVD case with a hyper-elegant sleeve designed by SN Ratio (Simian of Supersimian—see below—who’s becoming Vancouver’s answer to Vaughn Oliver or Storm Thorgerson). Shockk deploys his mastery of beatboxes, effects and jazz licks on music that is a companion unobtrusive. At times this album sounds like Pat Metheny jamming with Boards of Canada. With the exception of “abrasion test,” featuring a touch of trumpet from Roger Dean Young, the music you hear is just the Shockker, his guitar, and machines. The rhythm tracks alone make for a fascinating listen (Shockk’s pretty handy behind a drum set and carries this over when programming beats), never mind his stunning guitar playing overtop—too well-placed and appropriate of tone to qualify as mere noodling. The songs are of a piece while maintaining their separate identities, and several of the longer tracks take some interesting directions. Track 10, “opaque,” nods to Roadbed in the form of samples of between-song banter from Roadbed gigs (if you listen carefully, this blog gets a mention). The distortion drone of “geometric” works as a soothing musical sorbet for a mid-album ear cleansing before the next piece gets going. While some might scoff at the idea that this kind of Ikea-core might be anything but sonic wallpaper, Shockk’s ear for detail makes the music work as both an active and passive listening experience. Bung it on whilst entertaining, or hunker down under the headphones, close your eyes, and start editing together your own private Koyaanisqatsi. A highly recommended accessory for good living.

These are the people in my neighbourhood, Pt. 2.
How the Tiger Got Lionized is the first album from the team of Super Robertson (scene kingpin and Supper Show impresario) and Simian Special (whom I know as Roadbed’s last drummer, but is a man of many musical projects), who’ve merged their talents to form SUPERSIMIAN! A couple of good Canadian guys making good Canadian music with a lineage from Neil Young to the Rheostatics and beyond. And, because my Canada is in the Commonwealth, I’d throw XTC into the cluster of references too. How the Tiger… is an aimable, spontaneous (spontamiable?) record, loaded with detailed arrangements and variation ’tween songs. There are a lot of vocals on this album—neither of these chaps is afraid of a microphone—which lends it a density that took me a few listens to penetrate and appreciate what was going on. Fortunately their vocal talents are more than a match for their extroversion. Sim’s a huge talent, with a voice that ranges from a direct, folksy tone to a falsetto that soars into the big sky. Super’s the king of rhythm and feel, able to wrest music from the most mundane phrase…not that the lyrics of SUPERSIMIAN are in any way banal. They’re rather brilliant, actually—filled with character sketches, natural phenomena, and local references. There’s even a tune about hockey for the ultimate toque ’n’ block-heater appeal. Favourite songs would be the Crazy Horse charge of “Bill Von Bacon Tell,” the barely contained abandon of “70s Rock at the Railway” (I’d like to hear this bashed out live sometime), and the amazing “Provincial,” a song I remember from the last few Roadbed gigs I saw, captured on this album in a live recording that trades a few duff notes for an incredible atmosphere. Magic. In fact, the band lineup on this song includes guitarist Shockk (whose latest release I will write about soon), making it a Roadbed reunion of sorts. The inclusion of a version of “Sun Rises,” last heard on Roadbed’s Last Dance at the Shock Centre, re-emphasizes the connection to Super and Sim’s previous band. Graced by Sim’s fantastic graphic design, How the Tiger Got Lionized captures some harmonious heroism from a pair of unstoppable characters.

I celebrated my 40th birthday last weekend with Fancy and friends, a lot of cake and a lot of beer. I've been reeling from the fun and the assault of complex sugars on my system ever since. I can't say I'm worrying too much about the age milestone. That stuff is for people who have regrets and amends to make. I mainly worry about how long my stretch as the luckiest person alive is going to last.

Super Robertson recently called me a fucking son of a bitch (I was being a smartass in his blog comments), and that's okay, although I'd like to amend his slur to fucking lucky son of a bitch.

I got lots of birthday presents; everyone's way too nice to me. I got some Tetley's beer glasses, gift certificates to Happy Bats Cinema and A&B Sound (I sense a haul coming on), the Mist King Urth LP by Lifeguards (Pollard and Gillard from GBV), the Criterion Withnail and I DVD (Fancy rolls her eyes), and season 2 of Reno 911.

And from Fancy, the little belter that she is... How do I describe this? She took my stash of concert ticket stubs (99 of them) and had them arranged and mounted inside a shadow box. It's beautiful. From Scorpions/Iron Maiden/Girlschool in July 1982 to Judas Priest last October, there's my goddamn life. Not a lot of personal and aesthetic growth there, but I've enjoyed it.

I have a lot of talented friends with new music out right now. First up...

Ross Vegas features my pals Smash on bass and Alec Macaulay guesting on lead guitar. The band itself is led by Tim “Hey Rock” Bourchier on guitar/vocals, whom I’ve known slightly ever since his old band, Rubicon, gigged with Roadbed and Stoke a few years ago. To be absolutely honest, Ross Vegas don’t play a style of music I actively seek out. Their album Flow is full of unabashedly commercial mid-tempo rock mainly based around guitar grooves and easy-to-grasp chord changes that’s designed to get people out on the dance floor. It's not my scene, but I can appreciate the talent and craft that went into the album. Tim has a versatile, soulful voice that’s neither boy-band vulnerable nor ridden with empty post-grunge angst. Every element fits perfectly, from the pristine recording and production by Jonathan Fluevog, to the assorted talents that Tim’s assembled here. Besides Alec’s tasteful string bending and Smash’s spot-on bass work, Rick Maksymiw (keyboards) and Sam Cartwright (drums) deliver like studio pros with performances that more than demonstrate their respective expertise. You know when you hear someone playing with impeccable taste and restraint in service of The Song, yet you know they could unleash a holocaust of shred if given the opportunity? That's the feeling I get listening to this band. Though, as I said, Ross Vegas aren’t my thing, the music on Flow is comfortable with itself, and that's a pleasure to hear.

Next up: How the Tiger Got Lionized by SUPERSIMIAN.

Think of the Children
As you might guess, I’ve made a few trips to A&B Sound for pre- and post-Christmas shopping. Lately they’ve set up big displays that follow
you all the way to the cashier, flaunting impulse buys for every age and taste. One of these shelves is marked “For Mom” and features the Bon Jovi box set, the new Brian Wilson album, and other mom-friendly audio/visual treats. Next to that display are racks of stuff “For Dad”—Sin City, the AC/DC catalogue, and the recent reissue/remaster of Van der Graaf Generator’s The Least We Can Do is Wave to Each Other. You mean people like me actually breed? If you know anyone whose dad asked for that in his stocking, call social services.

The VdGG remasters are actually pretty keen, and if I didn’t already own multiple copies of these albums I’d be snapping them up. The only reissue I’ve bought on sight is their third album, H to He Who Am the Only One (1970). I now own four copies of this record, sorry to say. But the new one has bonus tracks…spectacular ones! The first addition is worth the price alone—“Squid I/Squid II/Octopus” live and unhinged in the studio during the Pawn Hearts sessions in 1971. This is a 15-minute medley of early songs that formed a big chunk of VdGG’s live set up to the band’s implosion in 1972. It’s glorious to hear the band in full blow, just like you might have on the Six-Bob Tour. Listen to mad boffin Hugh Banton’s organ sing to the heavens then puke its guts out, or marvel at how he summons the heaviest sound in the universe for the rush to the song’s end. Reel from the unrelenting Guy Evans at the drum kit, almost willing the whole enterprise to fly apart while shouldering his rhythm section responsibilities with ease. Hammill in manic young man mode screams into the din, but for most of the track he backs off and lets his band do their thing. It’s thrilling to hear them play live in such a high-fidelity environment. Their BBC sessions captured some of the group’s raw energy, but lacked this recording’s ripped-to-the-tits spontaneity, and no bootleg from this era comes close sonically. The last song is an earlier take of H to He’s third track, “The Emperor in his War Room,” a gruesome, spiteful treatise on tyranny where a warmongering politician is visited by the ghosts of those he’s sent to death (“In the night they steal your eye from its socket/and the ball hangs fallen on your cheek”). Other than its spectacular lyrics and “War Pigs” worthy imagery (I think H to He is by far the most Sabbatherian VdGG album), this track is most famous for Robert Fripp’s guest appearance, sitting in on guitar. Although Fripp isn’t on this version, Jaxon lays down some extra flute where the guitar solo eventually appeared, marking this take as a carefully measured run-through for the heavier version that made it onto the album. Not something that’ll make you re-evaluate the larger work, but as an archival curiosity for fans, it’s gold. Keep it in mind for Father’s Day in case the old man really digs that copy of The Least We Can Do…

Angels of Light—The Angels of Light Sing “Other People” (Young God)
This is an uneasy listen. Michael Gira’s voice demands that you pay attention. He sings/speaks these 12 songs/stories right into your ear. I can’t play this record in the background. It feels rude, like walking out of the room in the middle of a conversation. The “other people” of the album’s title are the subjects of each song—“friends, heroes, and various other entities beyond my control,” says Gira in the liner notes. The people include “My Friend Thor” with his disturbing drawings (one of which lurks behind the CD tray) and alarming sex drive, and Jackie, “dissolving a dream of a world that’s too small for the secrets he keeps,” and, most alarmingly, the apocalyptic spectre of Michael Jackson in “Michael’s White Hands” where Gira rails like a preacher: “Michael bring the truth denied/Michael kill that child inside.” Gira’s backing band here is Akron/Family, a recording act in their own right, who provide consistently surprising arrangements using traditional/folk elements such as mandolin, violin, banjo, slide guitar, handclaps, whistling—and barely any drums at all. Paired with Gira’s acoustic guitar strumming, the music almost steals attention away from the vocals, a third party joining a conversation that gets more rewarding each time I put this album on.

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but a lot of the new bands I like are the musical equivalent of those societies for creative anachronism…you know, where librarians and computer programmers trade recipes for mead, don homemade chain mail vests, and have a bit of a joust on the weekend. Certain musicians take a similar approach to music, buying up old equipment and recording in analog to achieve their own vision of rock’s medieval period (i.e. 1974). Go to it, I say.

Norway's Wobbler are definitely of this ilk—a band desperate to be not of their time. As far as I can gather, lead guy and keyboardist Lars Fredrik Frøislie was born in 1982, for chrissake (the year that marked the official death of progressive rock with the release of the first Asia album), yet he’s buying up barnfuls of vintage keyboards and writing florid-yet-menacing 27-minute epics like the post-hippy brave new world is at hand. The songwriting on their Laser’s Edge debut Hinterland is wild and wooly for sure—reflecting more of an influence from the restless Italian bands than the more stately British prog originators—with only differing elapsed time to distinguish the three main tracks on the album. Despite that lack of discipline, I’ve gotten a huge kick out of Hinterland, probably because I was around in 1982, head in hands as “Heat of the Moment” oozed from the radio. Having survived that experience, I’ll always have time for the Wobblers of the world.

When I did an email interview with Frøislie for the next Unrestrained!, I had to ask him about his arsenal of vintage gear. Which keyboard is his prize possession?

“I guess it would be my first Mellotron M400, serial number 1652 from 1976. It has never let me down to this day. I got it from the national radio in Bulgaria along with about a dozen other vintage keyboards. I basically bought the old prog band Formation Studio Balkanton’s studio. It was converting into a folk rock studio, so the keyboards were just in the way.”

Whereas a lot of keyboard players chicken out and use digital keyboards with patches and samples on stage, Lars goes for the full Rick Wakeman, bolstered perhaps by one of those backbraces favoured by Home Depot employees.

“On the last concerts I’ve had a Hammond C3 with Leslie 122, two Mellotrons, MiniMoog, Arp Pro Soloist, Roland Ep-10, Clavinet and Rhodes. It was hell lifting and setting up, and we used my father’s truck without any roof (thank God it didn’t rain), since it was the only one large enough.”

So do Wobbler and White Willow (whom Froislie also plays with) have the Norwegian prog scene all to themselves, or are there any other bands we should know about?

“It has been growing over the last few years. Prog rock has almost been accepted in the media in Norway, so it’s not as uncool as when we started up. There are not that many symphonic prog bands like us, but there’s Anti-Depressive Delivery (heavy rock/metal prog), Circles End (Canterbury/pop), Panzerpappa (RIO) and Gargamel (retro).”

Live: Opeth, Gov't Mule, Suffocation

What's with all these great shows coming to town? Maybe the strong CDN dollar is making the trip across the border less painful for bands, or maybe local promoters are getting hip to the fact that bands with no airplay can still fill a room. All I know for sure is I've been to so many shows lately that there's been no time to report on all of them in any detail. Here's a typical week at the Commodore last month...

Opeth, October 14. I was all set to fly to Toronto for Day of the Equinox on the 14th when they announced Opeth would be playing Vancouver the same day. Their drummer would again be a no-show (making him 0 for 3 in Vancouver), but they had a guy in place who could play a whole set...sounded promising. With Ghost Reveries confirmed as my favourite album of 2005, I decided to stay in town and finally take in a full-length Opeth set. I’m glad I did. After opening sets from STREETS and Fireball Ministry, Opeth came out with the one song I wanted to hear that night, “The Baying of the Hounds”—I swear, it was one of the high points of my life. The set was packed with monster epics, save for the one selection from Damnation, “In My Time of Need.” The biggest surprise for me was “The Grand Conjuration,” which I’ve always considered one of the least interesting songs on the new album. Since Opeth previewed it at the Sounds of the Underground fest last summer, it’s become a vast, shuddering cathedral of sound. Forget the album version, or the “single” edit with video, the live version is the one to experience. A couple of other minor revelations: A) Michael Akerfeldt is a brilliant yet down-to-earth guy who was put on this planet to become a huge rock star, and watching it happen these past few years has been a real pleasure...and B) Vancouver’s relationship to heavy metal has undergone a big shift from its long history of dismissal and mockery. Not only was the Commodore absolutely packed, but the Georgia Straight actually ran a respectful, expertly informed gig review (by Lucas Aykroyd) the following week.

Govt Mule & moe, October 16. All the advertising for this gig led me to believe that moe would be opening, not alternating the headline spot with Govt Mule during the tour. Unfortunately, the Mule was already on stage when we walked into the Commodore. Their set was punchier than the last time they came through town, with an emphasis on their shorter, more rocking songs—“Blind Man in the Dark,” “Bad Little Doggie,” etc. A point of comparison might be their chosen cover song for the evening. Last year it was a sprawling “No Quarter”; this time they performed a fairly straight reading of “I’m So Tired” by The Beatles. Moe countered with Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion” (the percussionist replicated that song’s backwards cymbal effect quite nicely) early in their set to get the classic rock fans on their side. They didn’t have much else, unfortunately, besides crack musicianship and ease on stage.

Suffocation, with Cryptopsy, Despised Icon, and Aborted, Oct. 18. Back to the Commodore, an optimistically large venue for an uncompromising bill of brutal death metal. Belgium’s Aborted rocked hard in a nasty but accessible way. The kids in Despised Icon stuck out with their short hair and non-trad approach, although their tunes were as blast-happy as their tour mates. Their dual vocals lineup (two dudes pacing the stage screaming almost identically) struck me as a load of nonsense, but I don’t think Despised Icon earned the hatred that was expressed on the discussion boards after the show. Cryptopsy were back again with vocalist Lord Worm, who didn’t impress me last time when they played at the Brickyard. After seeing this show, I’ve come around to his whole deal. Lord Worm is not one to whip up the crowd; he’s got a low-key, subtly macabre vibe that takes some getting used to. While I better understand the ways of the Worm, I’m now less blown away by the material the rest of the band played. The whole set seemed to skitter by in a riffless maelstrom, with hyperactive speed canceling out the heaviness. Suffocation, pioneers in this whole brutal DM business, were the best band of the night. Terrance Hobbs is probably the best death metal guitarist I’ve ever seen, and vocalist Frank Mullen brought a certain New Yawk street-level charm to the event, along with some interesting stage moves, like some Al Jolsonesque hand gesturing during the blastbeat sections. Ha-cha-cha! Most importantly, the band were heavy in a way that Cryptopsy only flirted with, exemplified by songs, like “Pierced From Within” and “Liege of Inveracity,” that pick their moments to carefully grind a boot in yer face.

This Week’s Gigs
Smash and I went to see Removal at the Brickyard Wednesday night. We Trowered* it pretty well. They were playing their second or third song when we got in the door. The crowd was pretty thin, so I was glad we could bolster the numbers a bit. No matter how crummy the venue, Removal always sound tremendous—lean and uncluttered, with each instrument dialed in perfectly from the stage. The set was marked by a few little mistakes, but they played a couple new numbers, including a cover of “Anthem” by that other Canadian power trio.

Said hi to their drummer after the set and bought their new single, featuring guest vocalist Peaches. They’re venturing into CFOX land next Tuesday, playing The Roxy with The (excellent) Feminists. That’s a must-see show, despite the club in question. (Those Roxy ads every week the Straight make me nauseous.) I hope no one slips me a roofie.

*Trower (v): to show up late to a gig, derived from my friend Sox’s late arrival at a Robin Trower concert many years ago.

Tuesday night we saw the Dillinger Escape Plan/Hella/Between the Buried and Me/Horse the Band at The Red Room, another mediocre place to see (or partially see) a show. Because of the long line-up for ID and coat check, Horse the Band were already playing by the time we got in. They were a fantastic train wreck, rocking out with indomitable spirit, especially when their keyboard died in the middle of a song, an event that generated great hilarity among the rest of the band as they thrashed away.

North Carolina’s Between the Buried and Me, one of the tightest, sickest bands on earth right now, only had half an hour (about five songs worth) to kill everyone in attendance. Kicking off with “All Bodies” from the new album was a good way to start, with its mix of technical death grind and sea shanty singalong parts. They followed that with “Autodidact,” “Alaska,” and “The Primer” from the new album, and a song from The Silent Circus to finish. It’s a shame they didn’t get to play longer—I would have liked to hear them pull off the insane “Selkies: The Endless Obsession” live—but all the bands were on a tight schedule tonight. If Mastodon don’t break big with their next album, BtBaM surely must be the next most likely purveyors of facemelt to cross over into the mainstream. Someone’s going to do it; it’s only a matter of time.

Hella’s freeform jazz-skronk was hard to digest. They would have fit nicely on the Sunn O)))/Boris/Thrones bill I saw last month, an event that made questions like “what kind of music is this?” and “can these guys actually play?” obsolete. At times, especially later in the set, I heard hints of melody and structure through the din, but not enough for a breakthrough into the enjoyment zone.

The Dillinger Escape Plan clearly thrive on pushing the limits of personal safety, blending musical and physical chaos into an awesome live experience. I’m not really a big fan, but I respect any band that pushes themselves as hard as they do—constant thrashing, hanging off the PA stacks, and jumping into the audience, all while playing rabid jazz/metalat a million MPH. They’re impressive performers and—not to forget--musicians, even if I don’t think they have songs of the same caliber as BtBaM. The Red Room, more packed than I’ve ever seen, erupted
for the whole hour DEP played.

I bought a copy of Rick Moody's last book,The Black Veil: A Memoir with Digressions, when I was in Toronto last August. It didn't get very enthusiastic reviews, but it was on the bargain table. What the hell; it's Rick Moody, it's cheap. Sold.

Early in the book, Having graduated from college with no job prospects, Moody and a friend drive to San Francisco in an unreliable VW Rabbit. To pass the time, Moody listens to King Crimson on headphones:

"The music of King Crimson, I recognize, is the kind of noodling, pretentious music that no one should admit listening to, even on headphones in the desert..."

I have to say I've found this book to be a disappointing effort.

We saw A History of Violence yesterday at the Van East, one of my favourite theatres. Willingdon Black and I practically lived there between 1986–1988, when they had $5 double bills of the most insane movies ever made—Aguirre the Wrath of God, Gimme Shelter, WR: Mysteries of the Organism, and so on.

I thought A History of Violence was an interesting departure from David Cronenberg's usual theme of the body rebelling against itself. On the other hand, Cronenberg's other big motif (or maybe it's a sub-theme of the body rebellion theme) is the Identity Crisis, and that's what this movie dwelled on. I enjoyed it a lot.

The theatre was frigid. I think they still had the AC on from the summer, and we must have been sitting right under the vent. I think it caused my body to rebel, and I've felt a cold coming on all day today.

I’m having a low-key Halloween. We carved a pumpkin and watched the Freaks and Geeks Halloween episode (featured music: Ted Nugent, "Free for All" and Cheap Trick, "Gonna Raise Hell") on the weekend. The episode is sort of famous for setting all its Halloween scenes in daylight, but otherwise it’s as brilliant as the rest of the series. My favourite moment in that show comes when Alan, the bully, happens upon our trick-or-treating heroes— Sam as robot Gort from the Day the Earth Stood Still, Neil, dressed as either Chaplin or Groucho, Harris as a guy with a knife through his head, and Bill doing an amazing turn as Jamie Summers, the Bionic Woman. The way Alan says, “Oh, my god!” with the perfect mixture of disgust and glee, you know the guys’ night is going straight downhill.

Although we all may not have had our asses kicked, our candy stolen, and gotten egged on Halloween, I think everyone can relate to that final night of trick or treating, when you knew you should have quit after last year. This episode nails that feeling perfectly.

The Super Robertson Show begat the Super Robertson King Show begat the Super Robertson Supper Show, which is where I went tonight. I hadn’t got two steps in when Super asked me to sit in on drums for the horn band (AKA the Legion of Flying Monkeys Horn Orchestra). He might as well have asked me to never show my face at one of his shows again. So the horn band did their thing with a different drummer and a ranter doing a veggie rant and then 21 Tandem Repeats played a few of their workaday songs for the everyman who is a failure and knows it, and then This Young Person who’d been hiding in back of the Railway during the show came up and sat with her guitar on stage for about three weeks while the sound person sorted out her backing trax. Once her monitors were up, This Person played a few acoustic hip-hop tunes that (to be honest) weren’t worth the fuss. She had my sympathy, though. Anyone born in 1983 has my sympathy. When I was 22, my artistic output was embarrassing enough to warrant my euthanization, so kudos (even ‘props’) to This Person for her gumption. Maybe I'll play with the horn band next time, if they'll have me.

Seen and Heard Lately
The Velvet Touch of Lenny Breau Live!
I finally found a nice LP copy of this at Neptoon a couple weeks ago. This features Breau on stage at Shelly’s Manne-Hole in 1969, sometimes solo, sometimes as part of a trio. Unbelievable guitar playing from start to finish, and covering a lot of styles; from jazz to Indian to Spanish. The sound is fantastically intimate and haunting, to my mind, knowing what I know about the poor bugger now. You can practically hear him disappear right into the guitar during the tunes, then come back to reality for some almost apologetic between-song patter. I wonder if that amazing film Breau’s daughter made about his life will ever come out on DVD.

Mare/Cursed/Terror/Converge at Mesa Luna, Sept. 24
A gig on a Saturday afternoon is quite a novelty. Mare were a trigonometric trio with a singer who sounded like a piglet being attacked with pliers. I can’t say they rocked, but their use of ethereal backing tapes was gutsy and interesting. Cursed upped the aggression factor a hundred-fold with some straight-up metal/hardcore. As Canadians back in this country after a long tour, they took a moment to appreciate the metric system with the crowd. Some bonding occurred. Terror are just awesome. I liked them after I saw them at the Sounds of the Underground fest this summer, and this set confirmed their greatness. Their music, which references the crossover thuggery of yesteryear, isn’t something I normally go for, but they perform it with such sincerity and passion and energy that they won me over in a minute. And god, the singer’s raps about scene unity and how hardcore saved his life, and the power of an open mind nearly choked me up a few times. Yay, Terror! Converge’s Jane Doe album has acquired a mystique one of the most terrifying records I own, and it was strange to see them in the flesh and realize they’re just four kind of regular guys, and regular guys having an off day at that. They definitely had a hard time of it. They’d just got off the plane from Japan and their drum set was falling apart, which resulted in their set having less impact than it might have had. They explained the situation, and though their exasperation showed through at times, they didn’t take it out on the crowd (except for the occasional chuckle at bad stage divers, which I attributed to their Bostonian sense of humour). They played well enough to hint at how lethal a Converge set under optimal conditions would be. Still, bodies flew, people sang into the mic when singer Jacob Bannon offered it—amazing to me because I can’t discern a word of Converge lyrics, even with a lyric sheet in front of me—and we all got out in time to get home to a hot supper.
Side note: Smash asked afterwards, “What was up with the kids in costumes?” I don’t know, but there were a couple kids there sporting a sailor outfit and a Mexican wrestler’s mask respectively. Is it a hardcore subculture thing? I’m hoping it’ll catch on, because I’d love to see pits at future shows full of sailors and cowboys and wrestlers and astronauts and Spidermen and ghosts doing those new-style kung-fu moves.

Even though they're as much a blight on this city as crystal meth and international students, I'll admit that I sometimes read a free daily or two during the week. I usually have to pick them up just so I can sit down, such is their proliferation.

Last Friday's 24 Hours published the results of a poll to determine the world's favourite song, which turned out to be Queen's "We Are the Champions." My pick, "By-Tor and the Snow Dog," didn't even crack the top 20. Even more surprising was that 24 Hours' photo editor chose a photo of a Freddie Mercury impersonator to run with the piece.

And bad mistakes, they've made a few...

Wetwork – Synod (Krankenhaus)
This album is world class in every way. From the arresting artwork (cybernetic anti-religious imagery by Mattias Norén of progart.com) to the flawless production (by Dan Hulse and the band) to tautly drafted songs superior to anything Morbid Angel’s released lately, Toronto’s Wetwork have delivered in savage style. Each member contributes something crucial. Vocalist Doc combines a Jeff Walker-style rasp with guttural imprecations, adding some disquieting clean singing at various junctures. Guitarist Bryan has a knack for merciless, palm-muted riffs and discordant fingerings that evoke the late great Piggy of Voivod. Bassist Chay alternates between grinding away alongside the guitars and claiming his own territory when the opportunity arises. It’s a bonus that he’s clearly audible in the mix, which is almost a novelty in this type of music, to my eternal regret. And to take things over the top, drummer Mezz elevates the whole affair to sustained levels of controlled fury with his crisp snare/kick attack and surprising cymbal flourishes. While my immediate preference is for bands who shamelessly mash up genres and employ extreme dynamic shifts, Wetwork’s relatively pure strain of death metal clicked with me from the opening track, “Prae Laetum.” I don’t want to label Wetwork’s style as melodic death metal, because in the hands of the accepted proponents of the style (and their blinkered b-league copyists) it’s a subgenre that bores me to death, but that’s what Wetwork undeniably play—with the emphasis on Death Metal. Imagine a collision between At the Gates and the Canadian Voivod/Gorguts tech-death tradition, and this is what you get. Synod packs a lot of highlights into its 38 minutes, including the syncopated chaos that erupts around the 2-minute mark of second track “Heaven’s Advocate” (the point at which this album’s lethal nature became apparent) and the grinding atmospherics of the brilliantly original “Nature of Repention,” which evolves into what could be almost be a jam, where the bass really comes forward and the guitar plays clean until heaviosity erupts anew. This song introduces the more experimental last third of the album, with both “Venison” and “Pontius Pilate” linking together to form a disturbing duo before the final track flails the last remaining patch of skin raw with a full-on burst of death metal. Listening to Synod puts me in the mind of Poe’s nameless narrator in the pit, assessing the razor-keen craftsmanship of the pendulum as it swings closer and closer. Synod has a similarly deadly trajectory.

I'm not a big fan of Steve Austin and Today Is the Day, but I certainly respect the guy. Here's what he has to say about "the increasingly diminished lack of dynamics—and integrity—in commercial metal" in the new Decibel magazine, a publication that's become a mandatory purchase every month:

"We need to be putting some motherfucking Miles Davis albums on and listening to some goddamn Bitches Brew instead of whatever the fuck people are loading their heads up on, thumping out the same old 'I am angry. I'm pissed off. I'm kinda cute and my jeans are just a little too tight on my ass.'"

Sound advice.

Black Mountain, September 13 at Richard’s on Richards
Smash pointed out on the drive home from this gig that it’s no good to describe music as “evocative” unless you mention what the music actually evokes. He gave the example of the sticker on the new Opeth album, which indeed claims the contents are “evocative.” What it really should say is that Ghost Reveries is evocative of early Genesis, Porcupine Tree, shafts of sunlight through cathedral windows, the high points of all other Opeth albums, the finest wines available to humanity, and a really good shag. I like it very much.

The Christa Min opened for Black Mountain, and they were evocative of a big dog let loose on a muddy trail—all energy and shaggy momentum. Unlike that runaway dog, though, it was difficult to tell how much fun they were having. When we used to play the Waterfront Cabaret, I remember someone in the seven-strong crowd telling us to smile onstage. I never forgot that. Because when you’re up there playing your strange songs to strange people, you should enjoy (and acknowledge to others present) the ridiculousness of your privileged position. Henceforth, I encourage everyone—not just performers—to smile, especially in this town, where too many people have adopted bitchface as part of the civic uniform.

S.T.R.E.E.T.S. were evocative of ’80s crossover bands, epic heavy metal, and, during certain dual harmony instrumental passages, The Fucking Champs. After the first two songs I thought “This is a job for Logan Sox,” but their material got better and more intricate as the set progressed. In the local metal for hipsters genre, I’d give them an edge over Three Inches of Blood.

Black Mountain were evocative of Can, PJ Harvey, Uriah Heep, Pink Floyd, the blues, breached levees, and the relief of exceeded expectations. Never having seen them live before, I thought maybe they’d be smug from local acclaim, content to trainwreck their way through the new album. Not a possibility, it turned out. Black Mountain were as solid and imposing as their name. The songs did lose some of their fine studio details in a live setting, but the fivesome (plus Masa, on occasional saxophone) more than compensated with their musicianship and control of dynamics, as they stretched out songs like “Druganaut” and “No Hits” with sexee, pulsating guitar & synth battles. Their music isn’t intricate on the surface; its complexity lies in the combination of tones and attack they use. A less-experienced band might deliver the same material as a tedious smudge, but the band I saw last night looked great, sounded great, and left me happy, unburdened, and wanting to hear more ASAP.

Give 'Til It Hurts
Walking along Kingsway this evening, I noticed a discarded piece of cardboard on the sidewalk. It had obviously served as a sign for a panhandler, who had described his plight in felt pen: "blue balls."

Mattias IA Eklundh — Freak Guitar: The Road Less Traveled (Favored Nations Entertainment)
Shred guitar albums can take one of two opposing approaches. The first is the portentous faux-classical approach, with featured guitarist as Paganini figure—the Malmsteen school, if you will. At the other end of the scale is the Satriani/Morse approach, with approachable, accessible chunks of shredding—some jazz fusion here, a little tech-metal there, with the off chance of getting on the radio and having a “Surfing With the Alien”-type hit. Mattias IA Eklundh is firmly in the latter camp on his second Freak Guitar album—unpretentious and fun, eager to please, and more than willing to show off his chops across a bewildering variety of material. The Road Less Traveled contains a synapse-scrambling 23 songs ranging in length from 15 seconds to 9 minutes. Eklundh, who doesn’t work with effects other than distortion, processes all the styles on this album through his own mental effects box, producing some enjoyably warped results. For example, his nylon string tribute to “The Woman in Seat 27A” could be a pleasant meandering number, yet it’s rendered unsettling by a backing track of menacing pizzicato strings and dripping water. One of the only songs to play it relatively straight is also the only vocal track, “Happy Hour,” which rocks along in unobtrusive 7/4 time. The album contains no information about backing musicians, so I assume that Eklundh programmed his backing tracks himself. If so, he did an amazing job; they’re more than up to the task of supporting all the shredding on offer. “There’s No Money in Jazz” sees “Flight of the Bumblebee” speed metal battling with staccato fusion passages (as the title hints, the metal wins out), “The Battle of Bob” showcases some prog insanity of near-Japanese intensity, and the Nintendo-core of “Insert Coin” sends you helplessly caroming around a short-circuiting pinball machine. His electro-bounce take on “Smoke on the Water” makes a nice companion piece to TOC’s similarly irreverent cover on last year’s Loss Angeles. Eklundh’s aim with this collection was to “make it easy for everyone to listen to and not just be a platform for showing off,” and he’s clearly succeeded. Guitar purists and old-school bluesmen might blanch at Eklundh’s over-the-top squeals and squalls, but anyone else interested in sonic extremes would do to well to strap themselves in for this album’s near-hour of six-string splatter.

When he left Boston, Lincolnshire after teaching for a year at Kitwood School, my dad received a poem entitled “Ode to a Canuck” as a parting gift from the staff. It mentions the newborn me: “If Robert gets tired of Vancouver, you’ll know he’s an Englishman through and through.”

I do get tired of Vancouver, though I often don’t realize it until I go somewhere else.

I got back from Ontario last week. It was a three-leg trip, with three days in Toronto showing Cypress around the city, then renting a car and driving to Fancy’s parents’ place in Fulton, then leaving Cypress with the grandparents and driving back to Toronto for a three-day blowout of fun.

I like Toronto very much. As a non-car-owning person, the place has its shit together in ways that Vancouver never will. Although Vancouver has done well in maintaining a livable downtown core, Toronto simply crushes this town in terms of urban neighbourhoods. Rents are also pretty comparable to Vancouver, based on what we heard from our small sampling of friends.

As Adam Honsinger pointed out, the major drawback to Toronto is that you have to travel so far to escape from the place. On the West Coast, it’s not a big hassle to get away from people for a spell.

(For fans of Mr. Honsinger, our host for the first leg, he and Rain are doing great. He says they’ll probably move back to B.C. once the obligations keeping them in Ontario ease up.)

I met my Unrestrained! boss Adrian “The Energizer” Bromley during both stints in Toronto for fine dining on the U! expense account and some record shopping. He was nursing a fresh tattoo on his lower arm that I tried not to look at too closely, as the affected skin was threatening to flake off onto his pancakes. That aside, the Energizer is a top man and a fantastic tour guide. By the time I said goodbye, I had a serious case of Phonographic Digititis, AKA Album Finger, the grimy fingertip encrustation contracted from afternoons spent flipping through old LPs.

Adrian also let me pillage his shoeboxes full of promos, so I brought home a stupid amount of new music.

Fancy’s parents’ place was as weird as ever. Her folks are excellent hosts, but they (more precisely, her mom) can wear you down. We took advantage of the car to make a couple side trips to Hamilton and Niagara Falls. Hamilton is a bit like Toronto meets John Waters’ Baltimore, while Niagara Falls is crazily tacky and random, with a long avenue of gentlemen’s clubs and motels culminating in an explosion of arcades, fast food, thrill rides, spook houses and wax museums. And if you can tear yourself away from all that, you can walk down the hill and see the pretty waterfalls.

Back home on the grandparents' farm, Cypress caught frogs, packs of coyotes disemboweled sheep in the night, Fancy’s mom lamented the ulcers that would soon fester on her legs, and Fancy, Cypress and I played lots of Scrabble.

The final few days in Toronto were taxing but fun. The first two nights we stayed with Fancy’s hard-rocking high school friend Joan, drinking and dining almost exclusively at Sneaky Dee’s. I just laid low and supped pints while Fancy and friends got caught up and reminisced about their bizarro alternate universe where kids have fun in high school. Two nights of that and I was well into injury time and ready to lay off the ale for a bit... For our last night in Toronto we left poor Joan to sleep in her own bed again and called up Bonnie Bowman. Bonnie’s a riot and has a million hilarious stories, but she’s pretty nocturnal. We managed to keep up the pace, though, and hit the pit about 4 am. We slept till noon, grabbed some breakfast and got a cab to the airport.

The overbooked flight and the non-service of the Air Canada crew left us wishing we’d stayed in Toronto. Our first day back in Vancouver wasn’t very joyous (except for sleeping in our glorious bed), and I felt zombified and disconnected from everything and everyone. Then the next evening, I got a potent dose of Super Robertson after I bumped into him out on Main. We compared notes on Air Canada (the Super family returned to Vancouver from Toronto the same day we did, sans luggage) and had a laugh and I felt a lot better. Just the man I needed to see to get me grounded in this town again.

This entry arises partially out of the need to fill some column inches and tamp the Bee Gees down, out of your line of sight.

I just finished working on the new issue of Unrestrained! (should be out by the end of August). In addition to the copyediting, I did three stories for #28—Circus Maximus (righteous Norwegian prog-metal, just the way blacknblues likes it), Frameshift (in which we learn of the dangers of hiring Sebastian Bach to sing your concept album about human tendencies towards violence), and Presto Ballet.

For the last piece I talked to Kurdt Vanderhoof, who wrote all the music for the project in between his main gig with Metal Church. Presto Ballet is a riotous take on seventies American pomp-prog—sort of a cheekily grand illusion of The Grand Illusion. Twenty-five years ago it would have been all over the radio, which is mildly interesting to ponder, but that kind of hypothetical crap doesn’t help Vanderhoof’s cause. He’s not worried about airplay anyway; he’s just enjoying working in his studio and being the old-school rock guy.

Here are some bits I transcribed but had to cut out of the article.

[ME] Do you still have to sacrifice as much as you used to in order to play music?

[KV] Oh, absolutely—any kind of stability, any kind of relationship, any kind of money. I’m still pretty much living the way I was when I was 19…which gets a little bit old, but you get used to it.

You’re a big fan and advocate of analog sounds and analog recording. Does it freak you out that they’re not manufacturing recording tape anymore?

Uh-huh.

Where’s it going to come from?

They’re still manufacturing it, but the bigger companies aren’t doing it as much. It’s more boutique now. Smaller companies are still making it, because most of the major industry studios and producers and stuff still want analog tape. There’s definitely still a market for it, but it’s not enough of a market to keep the big companies going, like Quantegy, Ampex, and BASF. There’s not enough recording studios, because most of us who work in the studio or own studios, the demo market is completely gone because people, instead of spending $3000 to make a good demo, they just go spend $3000 and buy themselves a digital rig for home. They don’t go spend the time in the studio. The big studios are almost all gone unless you’re a major, major studio. But for the rest of us, you can still buy tape, although the big companies quit making it. I just found this out about six weeks ago; you can still get tape. It’s a little more expensive and you have to really know where to go look. You can’t just go buy it like you used to. Tape sounds better and everybody knows it.

So obviously your studio is equipped with a tape deck.

Yeah, two-inch tape, exactly.

Have you made any concessions to computer recording?

Yeah, I have my own digital rig here in my house and I do my writing on it, which is fantastic for the creation process. I’ll totally give digital the tip of the hat in that respect, for the writing, but for actually putting out finished products, it still sounds like crap. It’s a great tool for the creation process. Sitting in front of my computer, the shit you can do is amazing, but it’s nothing that I would ever use to put out a finished product. It’s just for coming up with the ideas. The cut-and-paste editing is just amazing to try new arrangements, and it sounds good, but it doesn’t sound like a record. It beats the hell out of the old cassette four track.

In 1978, my Aunt Ev and Uncle John got me this poster for Christmas.

I remember I opened it alone, unfurling it only enough to see their faces, then shoving it under my bed in horror. Good thing I just took a peek, because seeing Maurice's profile probably would have blinded me, then killed me. Great. Anyway, my holidays had been ruined.

I think this is also why I share Fancy's dislike of white pants. "I invite your stains," they say. No thank you.

Hate Eternal, Krisiun and Into Eternity at the Red Room

I decided to go see Hate Eternal, Krisiun and Into Eternity at the Red Room (formerly The Drink) on Thursday, July 7. It was a last-minute thing, because the show looked like it wasn't going to happen—bands were dropping off the bill, generating rumours that the headliners wouldn't complete the western leg of the tour. The gig went ahead, though, minus Jungle Rot and All Else Perished. No great loss there, in my view.

Into Eternity were quite excellent, with twin leads from hell and the right amount of math to keep me interested throughout (i.e., lots). Lead singer Stu hails from Vancouver, and his parents were there to witness the spectacle. He's got a tremendous voice, with air-raid siren qualities to rival Bruce Dickinson and John Arch. Even better, the rest of the band can also sing, which means there's never a dull moment for both band and audience as the wheedling/growling/wailing/thrash/death/prog mayhem unfolds.

I'm not into Krisiun and their no-frills brutal death metal. I remember reading a live review of Kreator back in the day that described them as "Accept warped by the Chernobyl fallout." Well, if that was true, then Krisiun are like Kreator mutated by every toxic event in the two decades since. I'll admit that the Brazilian trio incorporate some catchy riffs here and there (that came across surprisingly well on stage), but if a band's intent is to be the fastest/heaviest, then I need some eccentricity to temper the po-faced punishment. The Brazilian trio don't offer much beyond plentiful blasting and dive-bomb soloing, but the crowd loved their brutal metal of death. Between-song patter included the obligatory "when in Vancouver" shout-outs to Blasphemy.

I came to check out Hate Eternal mainly because of Derek Roddy's ridiculous performance on their latest, I, Monarch. The man is a phenomenal drummer, a fact reflected by the cluster of drum nerds watching the show from the side of the stage. They got their money's worth. I watched from a distance for most of the gig, then wandered down for a closer look during their last number and saw some unbelievably fast fingertip blasting. Hate Eternal overall are less nutty than Morbid Angel (guitarist/vocalist Erik Rutan's former band), but maintain the elder group's dedication to disciplined, musicianly death metal. They didn't burn many musical memories in my brain (beyond the immediate impact of their instrumental athleticism), but H.E. were an impressive act to end an ultra-heavy evening anyway.

Next up, with any luck, will be Sounds of the Underground, with Clutch, Opeth, High on Fire and 856 metalcore bands.

I borrowed the Judas Priest "Metalworks: '73–'93" video from the Logans' house a couple weeks ago. It's your basic history of Priest, with an emphasis on promotional videos and assorted TV footage. The Rocka Rolla-era Old Grey Whistle Test segment is sterling, with the band sporting a gypsy/glam look, velvet-tressed and satin-dressed. Songs from the following handful of albums (lean times for our boys, even if they were hitting an artistic zenith) are featured via live footage from 1983.

Priest returned to the airwaves once the NWOBHM took hold. The real gems of the tape reside in this era, between 1980 and 1983. The video for "Living After Midnight" features Rob Loonhouse, the humble air guitarist-cum-folk hero who stole the 20th Century Box documentary on Iron Maiden's Early Days DVD. Here he is again, playing his cardboard guitar in a Judas Priest video—brilliant.

"Breaking the Law" uses the classic music-vid gambit of showing an authority figure succumbing to the liberating power of heavy metal. Halford and the band rob a bank (subduing customers and opening the vault by pointing their guitars at them), while the security guard on duty dons Rob Loonhouse's trademark reverse Flying V cardboard guitar and unconvincingly rocks out. Thus Priest make their getaway.

The real corker is the video for Point of Entry's "Hot Rockin'." The director stages a hilariously literal interpretation of the lyrics, so that when Halford sings the opening line—"I've done my share of working out"—the band are, yes, working out (shirtless) on a universal gym. Come chorus time, Downing/Tipton/Hill/Holland are showering, while Halford is in the sauna, ladling water over hot rocks. This is not the way to dispel rumours. For the rest of the song, the band take the stage, where their instruments and Rob's mike catch fire, so hot is the rocking.

Other than the clips from Heavy Metal Parking Lot later in the tape, the laughs stop there. Sure, there's more ludricrous crap, including the musical and visual nadir of Ram It Down's cover of "Johnny B. Goode," featuring stage divers, for godsakes, but the low-budget good humour has been replaced by cynical, business-driven misjudgements of a band desperate to keep filling hockey barns tour after tour.

Last Thursday I went to the Brickyard with Smash to see The Atomic Bitchwax, headlining a four-band heavy rock bill. We missed The Belushis, but made it in time to see Hezzakaya. They’ve got a good live act together, with lots of high-volume stoner sludge and cool collages of images projected onto them and the back of the stage. Their singer faced 90 degrees away from the crowd and hollered into the wings. I find it frustrating when a band has two guitarists that constantly play the exact same thing, which was the case here. Maybe they’ll work out some dual-axe arrangements in the future and let the music breathe a little more. Right now they seem intent on pummeling as a unit, and they pummel well. Mendozza, a trio in the Electric Wizard/Sleep vein, went on next. You’ve really got to be able sell it to make that basic kinda riff rock work, and they did a good job of convincing me that they meant every damn power chord. It helped that they had some good songs that allowed each player to back off or drop out and lend a smidgeon of dynamics to the din. The Atomic Bitchwax were stupendous, in an elite class they surely share with Clutch and maybe a couple other bands that operate within, often above, the stoner rock realm. They began by playing the main theme to “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” (for maximum Mule appeal) before racing into “Stork Theme” from their first album. Drummer Keith Ackerman must have been warming up backstage because he laced into this “Moby Dick” doppelganger in well-limbered form. I was surprised by how many songs from their debut were in the set—“Birth to the Earth,” “Hey Alright,” “Kiss the Sun,” “Shit Kicker” and so on. The new album got its share of stage time as well, including their effortless and reverent cover of “Maybe I’m a Leo.” As someone who’s tried and failed to cover Deep Purple with various bands over the years (mass graves of mangled Smoke on the Waters and Space Truckings haunt my past), I can appreciate the talent it takes to pull that off. The Atomic Bitchwax can swing. They can also venture way out there, where it sounds like all three of them are soloing at once, before they reel the song back in for the big finish. New guitarist Finn Ryan is the perfect replacement for Ed Mundell (who left to focus on Monster Magnet), with a mellow, self-assured presence and an ability to rip shit up with a Telecaster and wah pedal. Just like their new album (38 minutes of relentless excellence) the set was action-packed, well paced, and more than enough evidence that The Atomic Bitchwax are the class of their field in 2005.

Fancylady assigned me the task of picking six of my favourite songs these days, so I now present a short playlist:

Porcupine Tree — "Mellotron Scratch"
A beautiful little song off of Deadwing. In between the space metal epics, Steve Wilson likes to redirect the flow with simple yet devastating interludes like this.

Blue Oyster Cult — "Hot Rails to Hell"
I found a copy of Tyranny and Mutation at Apollo Music a few weeks ago—best $1 I've spent in ages. I'm pretty sure that Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner spun this song repeatedly as pasty schoolboys. "Warsaw" here we come.

Napalm Death — "Silence is Deafening"
"Their silence is deafening/from the havens of thieves and kings." I'm still coming to terms with how good the new Napalm album is.

The Atomic Bitchwax — "The Destroyer"
Another leadoff track, this one from the new TAB album. Love the verse, love the chorus, love the two-note vamp that propels the whole thing.

High Tide — "Futilist's Lament"
The filthiest guitar sound to ever saturate a tape. Tony Hill showing fellow Tonys Iommi and Bourge the way in 1969.

Bjork — "Submarines"
A choir of Bjorks duets with a choir of Robert Wyatts in some uncharted deep sea trench. It's a whole other world down there.

I listened to Max Webster's Mutiny Up My Sleeve tonight and thought about my friend A in Toronto. Fancy's going to be in Toronto next week, where she'll no doubt get to hang out with him and the lovely R for a bit. A once claimed I could get Fancy into Max Webster by getting her really high and putting Mutiny... on for her. It is one of the more chilled-out Max albums, what with "Hawaii" and "Astonish Me" and "Water Me Down" all being pretty languid affairs. I prefer the Zappa-ish stuff, like "The Party," which has one of the coolest song endings in history. I'll never take A's advice, though, because he and I are of a certain age that remembers quality FM radio broadcasting, while Fancy is of a certain other age for which Max Webster = Kim Mitchell = "Patio Lanterns" on Video Hits = projectile vomiting. And that's OK.

I love that the lyric sheet for this album is in both official languages. Just like the cereal boxes, eh?

I blame the BraveBoard for the dropoff in posts in recent months. I'm wasting way too much time and too many music-related thoughts there. They're a great bunch of kids, though, and I've picked up many a fine record based on their recommendations lately.

Of course, I never linger anywhere unless there's comedy to be had. A recent thread that polled Braveboarders on when they first had sex resulted in one indignant celibate claiming that "Metal is all about living with your parents, being single, having a shitty job, and masturbating constantly!" The voice of the otherwise-silent majority.

The old codgers in Van der Graaf Generator got back together in 2004 and released their first album in nearly three decades earlier this year. I've finally heard it now. I moderated my expectations and avoided taking the orgasmic praise of both the album (Present) and their live shows to heart. So why haven't I immediately fallen in love with it?

Female Trouble

We watched Female Trouble last night. Although it's easily one of my top ten movies ever, it does wear me down after the first hour. Still, there's Divine's trampoline act to look forward to in the last third of the flick.

I think my favourite throwaway moment in the movie is in the scene where Dawn invites The Dashers, her new patrons, over for dinner. When she asks the Dashers if they would like their spaghetti "with or without cheese," Donna Dasher replies, "I'll have two chicken breasts, please," as though she's ordering in a restaurant. I've always wanted to try that line at a dinner party, but no one would get it, and I'd feel awkward and ashamed.

Female Trouble is over 30 years old now, and though a lot of its political and criminal references have been obscured by subsequent decades of headlines and horrors, the whole idea of "crime is beauty" is still completely relevant. Why do you think The Province puts that horrid little scag Kelly Ellard on its cover whenever it gets the chance? The Province looooves Kelly Ellard and her ratlike face...almost as much as it loves her crime.

Grant Hart at the Lamplighter

I went to see Grant Hart a few weeks ago at the Lamplighter.

We arrived too late to see The Cape May—too bad, because I enjoyed their set at Mesa Luna a while back. The Doers, second on the bill, were a spirited mob, acoustic based but more akin to the Minutemen than anything overtly folky. The bassist was nimble of finger, the drummer flailed and the guitarist sweated. They played lots of short, busy songs. Members of Black Rice joined them on stage—one took pictures and another sang a number.

Everyone had a different hearsay-based preduction about Grant Hart’s set. My old buddy Kick (last seen at the Motorhead show) thought he might just play a couple token Husker Du songs. Brock Pytel thought Grant might have a full band to back him up. After the Doers set, the drums stayed set up on stage, and a couple amps were left behind. Then Grant, long haired and portly, got up and rearranged the stage, moving the drums aside and repositioning his amp. The amp was at full volume and the movement shook the internal reverb—crash! Everyone in the club shuddered at the noise. This did not bode well. Neither did his shaky rendition of opening number "The Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill." Though it's one of my favourite songs of all time, Hart muffed a couple chord changes and stopped the song dead in the middle to tell a club tech not to turn on the stage lighting. It was a shame that he had to sacrifice the song for the purpose of ironing out the kinks. The rest of the set went much more smoothly. He did play a ton of Husker Du material, surprisingly enough, as well as solo stuff like "2541" and "Last Days of Pompeii." He took requests (Brock asked for "Flexible Flyer" and one of the Black Rice kids got him back up on stage for an encore of "No Promises Have I Made") and was strangely obliging throughout. With his catalog of crushing songs, I was expecting him to really take command of the set, but he never did. Near the end, when he looked like he was contemplating ending the set, he said, “Well, I hope you got to hear the songs you wanted to hear.” He seemed almost resigned to the duty of being a one-man Husker Jukebox.