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The New Pornographers Ww Bella, Young &
Sexy on Oct 22 (Richard’s on Richards)

Kevin Lalonde, OP Arts & Entertainment Editor

(eats. ae \

The Exclaim! Magazine / Mint Records’
cross-country live concert series finally came
home to Vancouver last weekend, culminating
in a two-night stint at the Plaza club with the
New Pornographers.

Night one featured our city’s greatest rock
supergroup (no argument here), The New
Pornos, along with Immaculate Machine and

  

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Winnipeg’s Novillero. While I didn’t manage
to hit this first night, I kind of wish I had,
because Immaculate Machine recently
released a six-song EP featuring songs from
their debut album sung entirely in French.
And nothing stirs the loins of a fat, freckled
frog like myself as passionately as pop/rock
songs in French. “(Comme tu es) Cynique?”’ I

think so!

Night two featured The New Pornos
again, supported by local act Bella and staple
Mint act Young & Sexy. I won’t go into how
good Bella was because I was kinda busy
schmoozing with the cute (and informative!)
Mint interns and wasn’t paying much atten-
tion to the set. Nonetheless, they were swell,
and you should check out their recent split
EP with Edmonton band Columbus.

Young & Sexy followed Bella, playing a
handful of tracks mostly pulled from their
recent album, Panic When You Find It. Lead
vocalist Lucy Brain kicked it out as strongly
as always, and the sound quality (which is
notoriously sketchy at the Plaza) was shock-
ingly fantastic, but I still felt a little disap-
pointed with their choice of songs for the set.
A few more tunes from Stand Up For Your
Mother and Life From One Speaker would have
nicely rounded things out.

After a brief and rather ill-advised attempt
at achieving intoxication on my part, Carl
Newman and Co. brought a refreshingly
poppy and deliciously rockus (spelling inten-
tional) show to a well pleased crowd of some

200 hipsters. Two notable points regarding
their set: 1) Unfortunately, Neko Case was
not in attendance, and was replaced on sup-
port vocals by Kat Calder of Immaculate
Machine, who performed her duties with
admirable zeal and her signature super-cute
grin. 2) Fortunately (for me, anyway), Dan
Bejar was also not in attendance. Anyone
who’s ever even met me knows that I hate
Dan Bejar like I hate a bad blister: Really,
really badly. ,

Anyway, that said, their set was pretty
sexy. Opening with “Spanish Techno,” and
moving into most of their material from Tw
Cinema, the Pornos seem to be keeping their
A-game. The highlight of the evening was a
newly mustachioed Kurt Dahle, whose tiny
splotch of facial hair made for the topic of
witty on-stage banter throughout the evenin
Turns out that dude can balance a glass of
whisky pretty well when he’s rocking out.

All in all, not many surprises from a han
ful of Vancouver’s best rock groups that
night. Just a good, solid night of rock, and
when it comes to rock, sometimes it’s good
know what you’re getting.

Thunderbirds are Now!: A Think Piece...

Luke Simcoe, OP Contributor

A@>E Editor Kevin Lalonde: So, Luke... deadline’s
approaching; how's that TAN! piece shaping up?

Me: Ubbh... well... it’s a think piece... about a mid-
level band... struggling with their own limitations in
the harsh face of... ubb... stardom.

A@rE Editor Kevin Lalonde: So... you've got noth-
ing.

Me: ... yeah.

I don’t know when it happened, but some-
where along the line, indie rock began to lose
sight of its roots. What began as an
unabashedly unapologetic, earnest and open
genre has come to be characterized by inap-
proachable bands, false modesty, way too
much self-referential banter, fans who forgot
how to dance, and P4K’s ongoing tendency
to praise obscurity and inaccessibility.

Okay, that’s a convoluted blanket state-
ment, and I’m well aware that there are bands
out there who fly the indie flag and don’t
merit any of the above criticism. In fact, ’'m
here to argue that Detroit’s Thunderbirds are
Now!, a dance-punk quartet that some might
not everi label as indie, is just such a band,
Singer/guitarist Ryan Allen is enamored with
the “aesthetic” of 90s indie rock and is eager
to discuss how bands like Pavement, Guided
by Voices, and curiously enough, Sloan (in his
youth, Allen was so obsessed with Sloan that
he had an entire wall enshrined to the band in
his room — “we would go to Kinko’s and
photocopy Sloan zines and shit, just to put

pictures on my wall... it was intense’) were

1 2 THE OTHER PRESS NOVEMBER 9 2006

influential in the shaping of TAN!’s latest LP,
Make History.

“What I love about it the most,’ Allen
says in reference to the hallowed era of indie,
“4s that it’s before the Internet, it’s before
fucking MySpace, it’s before all this commod-
ity of taking music and using it to brainwash
teenage kids.” Allen sets his sights on the
music industry’s failure to live up to his
romanticized notions of the past in “We Win
(Ha ha),” with its sing-along chorus of
“We’ve heard this one before / Nothing new
and nothing more.” The music world isn’t the
only target of Allen’s ire though, as songs like
“The Veil Comes Down,” and “PPL R
ANMALS?” with its refrain of “There’s one
thing I know as such / People don’t impress
me much” reflect the singer’s disappointment

with single-serving tour friends. “I think a lot
of it is being on the road. You meet so many
people, and sometimes you get bummed out

* on people you were looking forward to meet-

ing; people force-feeding you this veiled ver-
sion of themselves. I had some friendships
break down over the last few years, I made
some of my own mistakes in my life as far as
relationships are concerned, and instead of
writing a song about something that’s inciden-
tal, I tried to say something this time.”

The aura of disillusionment vanishes
almost immediately when you get the band
talking about the writing process behind their
latest album. The band cut the record in a
very short period of time, but “instead of
pick up where we left off and stay where we
were, we decided let’s really fucking go for it;

 

let’s go for it with these songs; let’s not give
shit about what people’s perception of our
band is, because the minute you start doing
that you’re going to write watered-down ver
sions of your last record, and that’s what a |
of bands end up doing. For us, it was like
instead of making Justamustache 2, let’s make
new record, of new songs by the same banc
and try to honour some different influences
that we had.”

TAN!’s attitude of “let’s go for it” really
shows in their live act. Their melodic, spasti
take on disco-punk is made for live settings,
and they gave the crowd a show at Richards
on October 7. There wete jumps, scissor
kicks, a cardboard cut-out of Lincoln’s head
(whom my friend didn’t recognize because |
wasn't wearing “that hat”), on-the-spot run-
ning courtesy of keyboardist Scott Allen

" (Ryan’s brother), who would later regale me
with tales of being propositioned by Cap’n
Jazz/Joan of Arc’s Tim Kinsella while stanc
ing at a urinal, and enough excess nervous
energy to get a few folks dancing and one g
crowd-surfing. The band’s not afraid to try
and make a connection with the audience,
even if it means coming across as a bit tack
and that makes them far more “indie” than
The Arcade Fire’s foppish outfits, or
Interpol’s static, precisely duplicated live
shows. It’s like Ryan Allen says at the end o
“Panthers In Crime,” Make History’s openii
track: “If everyone’s singing out / And eve:
one’s dancing now / There’s no reason for
standing around / Because we’re dead whet
we're lying down.” Now that’s a think piece