RISS&ENTERTAINMEN

Fera at the Marine Club

' Brady Ehler, OP Contributor

place looks like inside.

To those of you who haven’t been to
the Marine Club before, imagine this: you
walk up a long flight of stairs, only to find
yourself face to face with a pair of sealed
double doors. Fortunately, there is a buzzer
that summons the attention of a muscle-
bound, tattoo-covered doorman, who will
open the doors for you. The inside is long
in length, though only 20 feet or so in
width, giving it a ship-like ambiance. The
place kind of reminded me of The Sugar
Refinery, which used to be on Granville,
only instead of random crap on the walls, it
was mostly just life preservers.

I had no idea what kind of band I
would be watching, so in that light I can’t
say that I was particularly surprised to find
an alt-country band, composed primarily of
musicians in their early 20s...from
Coquitlam. As if this wasn’t weird enough,
check this out; the band was fronted by

 

I had never been to the Marine club before.
When I got asked out to the show, I
thought we were going to the Media Club,
not the Marine Club. However, after some
contemplation, I remembered walking past
an apartment-like building on Homer Street
a few times. A building that proudly dis-
played the a blue and white sign declaring
itself the Marine Club, and became happy
that I would finally get to see what the

*

 

 

 

aeditor@gmail.com

 

identical twin sisters, Courtney and
Stephanie Fera, and their father Tony Fera
played bass guitar. The other musicians
included Matt Rose on electric and steel
guitars, who sometimes transcended the
barriers of country music with his plethora
of pedals and space-like sci-fi effects, and
Peter Lemon on drums. The quintet blazed
through a 15-song set without a break and,
I must say, for an alt-country band, playing
original material for an hour and a half, I
was kept relatively entertained.

Fera’s sound diverged quite a bit from
song to song. Some pieces were straight-up,
twangy country ditties; there was even a 12
bar. I liked these least, because they seemed
a bit contrived and the lyrics, which stayed
fairly trite throughout the entire set,
seemed especially so for these foot stomp-
ing western ballads. Among these, the
worst was no doubt a song called “I Love
You, But You’re Bugging Me.”

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The band did have its virtues, howe,
and if the lyrics were immature, the Fer
girls’ vocal harmonies made up for it an
more. Both girls sang with strong, confi
dent voices that intertwined interweavec
create a very satisfying driving force to |
pel the songs. I found the band was at t
best when they cooled their jets and we:
into the slower songs in their repertoire;
these seemed the least countryish.

All in all, it wasn’t exactly my type o/
music, but the musicians were all very tz
ented and they put on a pretty good shc
The lead guitar player was especially
impressive; I’ve never seen someone thz
young bust out such wild western soloir
skills.

If you are interested in checking out
Fera, you can catch them at Rooster’s in
Maple Ridge, on March 10.

For more information on Fera, check out
www. feramusic.com| index. cfm

     

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