Canadian Music Week Dark Horses: Toronto
Today we kick off our coverage of Canadian Music Week, the so-called more industry-oriented of Toronto’s two mega music festivals. Fear not – there are better things to see than middle-aged, washed-up Can-con and Live Nation-sponsored R’n'B stars. Tomorrow we’ll bring you our favourite bands trekking in from out of town, but today is dedicated to Toronto-area bands sure to give you your wristband’s worth. We’ve purposely avoided the lineup-out-the-door “hot tickets” and opted instead for a few local acts flying under the radar, but who should be able to leave a few unsuspecting mouths agape.
Pick a Piper
We tipped you to Pick a Piper’s dancey psych-pop in our Bands to Chase in 2010 series back in January, but if you’ve slept on them until now, CMW is the time to get out to see them. Why? Seven drummers, that’s why! Pick a Piper is usually a four-piece and there are parts of every set in which they all play drums at once. For this show only they’ve added three extra drummers, upping the level of percussion from excess to overload. You could opt for one of the safer acts, but this is the kind of unique, attention-stealing performance that festivals like this thrive upon. The band has even promised a “crazy surprise” saved for the end of the set. If we were to hazard a guess, we’d say more drummers.
Pick a Piper play Two Way Monologues’ showcase at Rancho Relaxo (at 11pm) with Irish imports Adebisi Shank (12am) and The Wilderness (1am) Wednesday, March 10.
PICK A PIPER – Yellowknife from Mitch Fillion on Vimeo.
Homicide
Is there anything more metal than being (reportedly) fired for being fall-off-your-chair vodka-drunk on live TV and radio? Despite being let go by The Score last year, mouthy sports radio host Gabe Morency seems to be keeping busy with the reunion of his ’90s thrash band Homicide, the discog of which you can stream on his sports website here. The reunion show at the Comfort Zone is undoubtedly part of promoter Dan Burke’s attempt to get the infamous drug den (sorry, we mean nightclub) up and running as a show venue, and what a perfectly dark sketchy place to see some dirty rehashed thrash.
Homicide play Comfort Zone (at 1am) with sleaze rockers Diemonds (12am) and all-girl band People You Know (11pm) Thursday March 11.Soft Copy
Although not featured in this week’s self-promotion special issue, Soft Copy are playing Eye Weekly’s 3-Way Showdown at the Garrison. Immediately following METZ, it’s sure to inject some welcome 90’s style heavy guitar dissonance into a festival filled with lightweight indie pop. Drummer Paul Boddum tells us to expect “loud rock songs, songs about groupthink, the financial meltdown, being lost and young love.” It’s lyrically weighty and sonically visceral, but it’s also hooky and immediate. Despite a healthy dose of experimentation and pure guitar power, the songs hit with a clean precision usually reserved for pop music. Boddum claims that even in an abbreviated CMW-friendly set the band can get through an entire album’s worth of material, and we’re inclined to believe him.
Soft Copy play The Garrison (at 1am) with METZ (12am) and The D’Urbervilles(10pm) Friday March 12.
[...] name fool you – Canadian Music Week isn’t a whole week, nor is it exclusively Canadian music. Yesterday we focused on Toronto-area acts, highlighting a few under-the-radar bands operating in our very own [...]
[...] you noticed the Toronto segment of our Canadian Music Week Dark Horses feature seemed a bit scanter than its Honourary Torontonians component, that’s because we were [...]
[...] had high expectations for ourselves,” said a disappointed Gabriel Morency after his band Homicide’s gig Thursday night at the Comfort Zone. The ’90s thrash band – led by Morency, a [...]