Last Wednesday I had the opportunity to go see Deerhoof at the Phoenix, a band which I have listened to for a number of years but had never seen live. The concert was part of the Eye Weekly sponsored "Canadian Music Week", where a number of concerts are staged throughout the week around the great city of Toronto.
When I arrived at the Phoenix, which is a spacious venue on Sherbourne street, Sebastien Granger and the Montagnes were preparing to go on. Sebastien Granger, for those of you who don't know, was the lead singer and drummer of the acclaimed pop thrash metal(?) band Death From Above 1979. Since the band broke up a couple of years ago, we haven't heard much from Sebastien, whereas his counterpart Jesse Keeler went on to form the successful electro-dance-punk MSTRKRFT (a name inspired by Canadian Tire's popular brand of well-made, yet affordable, power tools.) Sebastien's new band seems to have all the right building blocks of a successful new indie band (fashionable haircuts, moustaches, painted-on white jeans, and indie cred. . . ) but their songs were lacking that edge and originality that made a band like MSTRKRFT so popular. However, this band was miles above the following act, which I'm going to brazenly describe as THE WORST SET I HAVE EVER SEEN.
Ladies and Gentlemen,I give you No Age. The band No Age consists simply of a drummer/singer and a guitarist. The drummer can drum, I'll give you that, but his singing was terrible. The guitarist may be able to play guitar, but you can't tell because everything he plays is awash in distortion and prerecorded "ambiance". Any semblance of melody or chord structure was indiscernible and the instrumentation grating and convoluted. I could actually feel my ears being damaged from listening to this crap. Now, I know what you're saying: Man, this old guy doesn't know what he's talking about. . that shit was off the hook! I may be getting long in the tooth but I still appreciate a wide variety of music, and I'm not adverse to noise art either (music's bastardized cousin). But No Age was neither of these things. It was a perfect example of what happens when P4K hypes up a band that isn't actually talented. It seems as though people were enjoying this music because they were supposed to enjoy it, which I find shameful and tragic. By the end of the set I was so furious with No Age, and the destruction they were doing to my already-mangled ear drums, I threw my plastic beer cup towards the stage. (my apologies to the hipster I smoked in the back of the head.) I immediately regretted my redneck-esque behaviour, but I just couldn't take it anymore. If I'm going to ruin my hearing, I would like it to come from listening to music I actually enjoy.
Deerhoof got to the stage and put on a great show. They had a huge spinning propeller on stage that was lit up with LCD's and flashed in time with the music. It was very cool. Anyway. . .moral of the story: Sebastien Granger=nothing to scream about. No Age=worst band ever. Deerhoof=always entertaining.
