NXNE 2009 Day 1 featuring Spiral Beach, Amos The Transparent, The Love Machine, The Balconies, Pirate Love & Natalie Portman's Shaved Head

This year's NXNE festival was going to have to be more about quality than quantity. Here's the deal: I was out of town during the day which means that there is no way to catch any of the daytime shows. Also, since complete alertness was going to be required of me, I would also have to get to bed at a reasonable hour. Yes, this is the old man's version of the summer festival, but this only meant that being all random about my selections was not an option. I had to choose wisely within those specified boundaries. And, for the most part, I think that I did.

I began my day at Yonge and Dundas Square where the fact that the events to follow were clearly being presented by myspace became painfully obvious when the world's cheesiest MC took to the stage and proceeded to say some pretty embarrassing things. Besides playing the lame card with comments like, "we're so wild the police are going to have to shut us down tonight," he then proceeded to commit a major faux pas by comparing Spiral Beach to the Jonas Brothers. The crowd booed, the band gave each other the "what the?" look and the guy tried to save himself with some sort of "but these guys are way cooler" sort of comment. Anyway, you put that aside and the Beach once again reminded me as to why I love them so much.

It's strange but I never think of Spiral Beach as one of those spectacular bands that I must recommend to everybody, yet every time I see them, I leave in a state of complete elation. To simply refer to them as fun does not give them nearly enough credit. They portray themselves with this campy aire of mystery that makes every performance an odd slice of unforced theater, as much as it is just a great rock show. Guitarist Airick Woodhead was particularly amusing as he knocked over his microphone and accidentally unplugged his guitar and fell to the ground on several occasions in a way that was mildly rock star but mostly just hilariously clumsy. The band is hypnotic in the way that you can't take our eyes off of them, and their music is contagious in the way that you just gotta dance when you're there. This is my third time seeing them, but I just want to go out and see them again. Right now.

Photos: My shots of Spiral Beach @ Yonge & Dundas Square are on flickr
Myspace: Spiral Beach
Download: Made Of Stone mp3


I then headed up the street to Sunrise Records to see Amos The Transparent. I know, I know, there's so much going on in the city that the idea of seeing a band that I've seen a billion times this year already may seem a little bit stalker-ish, but the novelty of seeing them in a stripped down and controlled atmosphere was too intriguing to pass up. The fact is that the last few times that I saw them here in the city, they have put on such a powerhouse show that I couldn't imagine that they still had the ability to quiet down and show a little self control if the atmosphere required it. Well, this was an atmosphere that definitely required it since the place was small and the audience was even smaller. Still, their ultimate strength has always been in the songs themselves and they sounded absolutely beautiful. It was funny to watch them try to pull in the reigns at those moments when they would normally belt it out (such as the "figure it out! figure it out!" part of the song Stale Scent Of Old Beer), but overall the performance was all kinds of enjoyable.

Photos: My shots of Amos the Transparent @ Sunrise Records are on flickr.
Myspace: Amos The Transparent
Download: Lemons (aka Big Fish, Little Pond) mp3


After that, I hopped on the Queen streetcar from hell towards The Drake Underground to catch part of the i (heart) music showcase. It was bad enough that the car was delayed by some sort of track and field type of situation, but we were unfortunately subjected to the whimsical nature of our driver, who started out kind of funny but was sort of irritating me by the end of the ride. The delays made me late for the first act on the bill.

The Love Machine are a band from Ottawa that served as the replacement for The Urban Aesthetics, who just broke up recently. I didn't know very much about them going in, but from what I sampled on their myspace page, they sounded like a solid mix of classic indie rock and radio friendly shout-along anthems. The three songs that I heard that night seemed to follow that pattern well and they did a good job at keeping the crowd in rapt attention from start to finish. The group also displayed a boundless amount of energy that kept their live show anchored in high intensity performances. Although their recorded material is really just a simple display of large choruses coupled with infectious power pop hookery, the band really does make their sense of energy work for them in concert, proving that, sometimes, gimmicks are really unnecessary when a band has the ability to let a simple melody do the talking.

Photos: My shots of The Love Machine @ Drake Underground are on flickr
Myspace: The Love Machine
Download: A Little Cursive In All Of Us mp3


The Balconies blew my mind when I saw them at The Horseshoe just a couple of months ago. This is why I was eager to see them again when they were back in town last week. They've got all of my favourite ingredients: really tight musicianship, a cuter than cute lead singer, a charismatic stage presence, and a sound influenced by elements of all of the great sounds of the past, including (but not limited to) 60's garage rock, 70's post punk and 80's new wave. I really appreciated that schizophrenic sense of variety that pervaded throughout their entire set. The band is not too shy to sandwich a highly atmospheric track inbetween a couple of in-yer-face rockers. The chemistry between Jacquie Neville's surf-jangle guitar style, Steve Neville's boundary stretching vocals and Liam Jaeger's calculated drumming has to be witnessed to be believed.

Photos: My shots of The Balconies @ Drake Underground are on flickr
Myspace: The Balconies
Download: Elephant Lamp mp3

Originally, I had considered just sticking around for the rest of the bill at The Drake since it was pretty amazing, but it was basically compiled of artists that play around the city all of the time and if I could only catch a select number of artists at this festival, than I really should see a few of the out of towners. Thankfully, the streetcars moving from The Drake to the El Mocambo were significantly better than the one that I sat on earlier, and I made it to my next show in record time.

Pirate Love is a band from Norway that was described in their bio as "a refreshing blend of garage, punk, rockabilly and goth" which basically could be alternately translated as "a sonic stew of everything Bob loves." OK, not a huge goth fan but still, I went into this one pretty sure that I would find something enjoyable about their sound. As they started off, I have to admit that I found their particular brand of arrogance to be a bit off-putting. I think a measure of tongue in cheek arrogance can be very entertaining at a rock show and I think most of my favourite artists display that well but when this is done without any sense of irony, it just makes a guy look like a tool. Well, lead vocalist David Al Dajani definitely seemed a bit too tool-like for my tastes as the first couple of songs wizzed by. However, there's an old saying that rock n' roll always wins in the end and each song on the bill just seemed to get better and better, to the point where I found myself really digging what they were doing. The vocals were shredding, while the guitar playing was raw and incendiary. There was also a primal quality to their sound that I couldn't help but surrender to and by the time their set was finished, their psychedelic assault had completely won me over. Good stuff indeed.

Photos: My shots of Pirate Love @ El Mocambo are on flickr.
Myspace: Pirate Love
Download: Laughing Gas mp3


After all is said and done, how could you possibly justify not seeing a band named Natalie Portman's Shaved Head? Many of my friends think that name is awesomely hilarious; I think it's ridiculously bad; but either way it is completely curiosity inducing and I just had to see what these guys are all about.

NPSH is from Seattle, which is an area that is usually synonymous with the grunge movement, but grunge this band is not. These guys specialize in a sweaty, funky electronic sound that is obviously designed to destroy your local dancefloor. According to their wikipedia page, Luke Smith and Shaun Libman formed the band to meet girls, and from what I could tell by the gaggle of young ladies staring longingly at the geeky kids on stage, mission accomplished. The band was all about energy and I can't remember the last time that I'd seen a band so energetic. I have seriously never witnessed the build up of sweat that was gushing from the pores of the eclectic creatures that were bounding across that stage. In fact, next to these guys, Spiral Beach was a silent movie. In other words, the band may lack the depth and originality of other similar bands, but if you just want to dance, party and be sweat upon, it would be hard to get any better than these guys.

I left after their set, but I'll bet that You Say Party, We Say Die and Green Go served as an excellent follow up to Natalie Portman's Shaved Head. I just hope that the kids kept themselves hydrated because I'm sure the sweat loss may have broken some records that night. If they compile records on that sort of thing. Which they probably don't.

Photos: My shots of Natalie Portman's Shaved Head are on flickr.
Myspace: Natalie Portman's Shaved Head
Download: Me and Yr Daughter mp3