—

The Blood Brothers w/Minus the Bear & Guests @
The Showbox, Seattle—Jan. 28

The Blood Brothers w/Guests @ Mesa Luna,
Vancouver, BC-—Jan. 29

This past weekend, January 28 to be exact, I found myself
hurtling down the I-5 with nothing but the company of
good friends and some shoddy directions (props to Yahoo!
Maps) in hand. The plan: catch The Blood Brothers and
Minus the Bear at The Showbox in Seattle, and return to
Vancouver the next night to bear witness to The Blood
Brothers’ sophomore show at Mesa Luna.

Despite troubles rousing the fourth member of our
crew from his hung-over stupor, and a hefty delay at the
border (20 Questions anyone?), we arrived in Seattle with
time to spare. We checked into our hotel, had dinner, and
paid a visit to the massage chairs at The Sharper Image,
America’s purveyors of all things unnecessary and elec-
tronic, in order to work out those road trip aches and
pains.

Unfortunately, the lure of the massage chairs was too
strong and we missed most of Crystal Skulls’ set. They're a
Seattle-based quartet with some definite lounge-rock lean-
ings. The next band was These Arms Are Snakes, a post-
hardcore band formed in the ashes of Kill Sadie and
Botch. I was glad to see their full set since I only caught
their last song when they opened for The International
Noise Conspiracy at the Red Room in December. Vocalist
Steve Snere has an incredibly fitting name, and a frenetic
stage presence (he hurled himself all over the stage for
most of their set) that strikes a good balance between
TAAS’ straightforward thrash and their forays into prog-
rock.

Minus the Bear took the stage shortly after and were
greeted by a chorus of “YAR!” (due to their affectionately
titled EP Bands Like It When You Yell Yar! At Them.) Their
albums are filled with energetically shifting time signatures,
airy layers, and intricate finger-tapped guitar hooks, and
they replicate their sound perfectly as a live unit.

The Bear’s set consisted of mainly songs from their lat-
est album, Menos e/ Oso (Spanish for Minus the Bear,) but
they did reach into their back catalogue for fan favourite

  

“Monkey!!!Knifel!!Fight!!!” from their debut LP. The song
“Hooray,” with its ode to Seattle in the wintertime (‘it’s
cold, and snow’s actually on the ground in this no snow
town’) was also a crowd pleaser, and showcased guitarist
Dave Knudson’s technical prowess.

There was a significant delay before The Blood
Brothers took the stage at around midnight, and the
crowd’s anticipation became palpable. When the boys final-
ly arrived, the crowd cheered and the mosh pit erupted.
The band deviated from standard rock n’ roll operating
procedure and opened with a new song (they’ve been in
the studio since the end of November recording their fifth
LP) but the crowd greeted this unfamiliar offering as if it
was one of the band’s biggest hits. The Blood Brothers
would roll out a few more new tracks during their set, and
each one was greeted with the same level of enthusiasm.

Although the backing members of the band, particular-
ly drummer Mark Gajadhar, are integral in producing their
live sound, the show is all about vocalists Jordan Blilie and
Johnny Whitney. The two have perfected a dual-vocal
attack with just the right mix of spazz, scuzz, and sass.
They thrashed around the stage and sang/screamed their
esoteric lyrics with vitriolic conviction.

My

 

s sae

ui Brothers Lava-Proof Themselves while Minus The Bear Searches.
twhile Ursine Companion: 4, V/A, Ce,

 

Aside from the new material, their set was comprised
entirely of material off of their most recent album Crimes.
The hooks from “Teen Heat,” and “Beautiful Horses”
were definitely lingering around in my head long after the
show, and the operatic chorus of Crimes’ title track was
enough to reduce the girl standing next to me into a weepy,
hair-pulling mess. The band would return to the stage for
an encore consisting of “Ambulance vs. Ambulance,” and
“Cecilia and The Silhouette Saloon,” the most popular
tracks from the band’s breakout album Burn Piano Island,
Burn. For a band that puts out so hard during its sets,
encores are rare, and even this budding photographer
hoisted his camera gear onto his girlfriend and joined the
pit for the last few songs.

The Blood Brothers would mount this same assault, set
list and all, on Vancouver’s Mesa Luna the following night.
Booty-shaking local dance-punks You Say Party! We Say
Die! did an excellent job warming up the sold-out crowd
(with vocalist Becky Ninkovic cribbing some awesome
dance moves from Tina Turner and Bassist Stephen
O’Shea spending more time in the crowd than on the
stage,) but it was clear who the audience were there to see.

When The Blood Brothers played Mesa Luna a few
yeats ago in support of Burn Piano Island, the crowd was
sparse. Since then, the band’s following has definitely out-
grown such a small, albeit intimate, venue, and from the
first bar of the first song, kids were being forced onto the
stage by the pressure of the surging crowd. The presence
of these displaced fans resulted in an array of technical
difficulties for the band, most notably the unplugging of
Whitney’s keyboard and guitarist Cody Votolato’s mic in
the middle of “Peacock Skeleton With Crooked Feathers.”

Despite the obstacles, Whitney seemed to feed off of
the crowd’s energy. Blilie was more wary, informing the
crowd that “the unifying theme of the evening is take two
steps back.” When this didn’t have the desired effect, he
joked that “the stage is hot lava, and that there are only
five people who are lava-proof.””

I guess you’d have to be there to breathe the kind of
lyrical and choral fire that The Blood Brothers have pio-
neered.

Photos by Luke Simcoe