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The Canadian Music Festival (which used to be Canadian Music Week and is now sponsored by Canadian Music Week) is happening this week! Be excited! “But why?”, you might ask sleepily. The answer starts big and ends up bigger than the sum of its parts, for lack of a better phrase.

So what is the sum of its parts? For those just recently unburied from a snow bank, CMW’s (sorry, CMF’s) claim to fame is hosting 500+ bands at 45 venues around the city over five nights, although it’s actually more like three nights, since few bands are playing on Wednesday or Sunday. Lots of (500?) new and well-known local and international bands are going to be playing tunes and/or abusing their instruments every night, everywhere, for the rest of the week. So many genres, sub-genres, and cross-genres will be attempted; you’ll have to check three times to make sure your head is on straight.

Proud to have been there from the first night, we’re bringing you coverage of the Wednesday night goings-on at the Gladstone Hotel:

Kicking the week off right, the Gladstone hosted an Eye Weekly Wednesday-night showcase of some exceptional local talent. The Job were first to take the stage, and began the evening with some no-holds-barred Red-Bull-chugging punk rock that had their drummer sweaty and shirtless by the third song into the set.

Sounding very much like a Strokes-influenced, Hives-loving tribute to the Ramones, the band strong-armed their way past technical difficulties and silly things like deep lyrics (there were lots of yeah!s and whoa!s) almost effortlessly.

The result was an energetic and aggressive set that could only have ended in hardcore rock-and-roll style: with the band carelessly yet angrily throwing their instruments to the floor, kicking their pedals off the platform, and walking off-stage. Later that night, I heard someone in the crowd describe this to his friend as the end of a “truly special” performance, which proves that this band definitely made an impression.

This set was quickly followed up by another rousing performance from Everything All The Time, who I recently saw open for Winter Gloves and Ruby Coast, and whose live act certainly hasn’t lost any sparkle in the last few weeks. One of the big draws of this band for me (besides Alanna Stuart’s voice – that girl can sing) is the adorable way the members of the band communicate on stage, as if they have huge crushes on each other. Combined with this is a sense that the band has a definite want/need to make music, which is most evident when Joseph Shabason picks up his saxophone for a song whose name I have yet to discover, and rocks the heck out of the ever-eager audience.

Playing an interesting mix of electro-dance fused pop, and with maybe one-too-many synthesizers crowding the stage, Everything All The Time had the audience stuck in a mood somewhere between needing to dance and needing to stand still to contemplate the greater meaning of life, as it comes floating by in a track called Lazy Days.

The third act of the night, Toronto’s Foxfire, started their set suddenly, and with a bit of a bang, if you will, as the seven-piece band’s lead male vocalist started caressing his microphone and hip-thrusting at the crowd, oozing nothing but charisma. All very well, since Foxfire’s music is apparently aiming to start a renaissance of 1970s swanky, steamy disco, the kind you don’t take home to mom, with some 1980’s synthesizers mixed in for good measure.

The band boasts two sexy-sounding vocalists, Neil Rankin and Hannah Krapivinski, multiple guitarists and keyboardists, and more pairs of tight pants than you can shake a leg at, and they seemed to delight in grooving from song to song with hardly a break for air in between. The band’s musicianship and stage presence is no small thing either: while Krapivinski put on her best Donna Summers, Rankin strutted out into the crowd for some bonding time with the masses, much to the delight of the front row.
Much to my sorrow, I had to stagger out of the Gladstone before being able to witness sets from Lioness or Mansion, but I hear they were pretty good too. So concluded my Wednesday night CMF (CMW?) experience, and I’m very much looking forward to what’s on tap tonight.

Posted on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 2:04 pm by Jessica and is filed under Concerts & Events.

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