CMW Thursday: $100, We Are Wolves and Malajube

March 13th, 2009

Day Two, or perhaps Night Two, of the Canadian Music Festival came and went on Thursday. It was very much like the rising of the tides, or the way that the audience funnelled into the back room at the Horseshoe Tavern for a glimpse of the set by Toronto’s own $100. You may have heard of them; their name has been buzzing around quite a bit since the release of their full length LP Forest of Tears last December.

All that attention isn’t undeserved, either. Besides the oddity of hearing such a powerful country sound come out of a city band, the combination of singer-songwriter Simone Fornow’s vocals supported by the soothing sounds of Stew Crookes’ pedal steel as they floated around the melodies created by the rest of the band was certainly something the crowds at the Horseshoe don’t see much of.

The huge crowd was something of a blessing and a curse, though. While it was good for the band, their noise may have drowned out some of the finer points of the $100 set, like Fornow’s explanatory song introductions (their song Black Gold is about the Canadian oil sands… who knew?). The size of the crowd also delegated some people (like me) to be crushed against the wall at the back of the room behind some unusually tall people.

Nonetheless, even listening to $100 perform left me with the feeling of time well spent, even as I made my escape down the street… and right into another massive crowd at the El Mocambo. Here, Sirius Radio was showcasing a series of francophone artists, and I arrived just in time to catch Radio Radio‘s last tune. Now I am thinking that perhaps high-school French has not prepared me for French rap from Moncton, but the one song I saw performed was still super-fun to watch. Rap may or may not be a lot more fun to observe when you can only understand one word out of five.

The one thing clearly demonstrated by the Sirius showcase was that language is no barrier to genre. We Are Wolves (aka Nous Sommes Loups) were up next, with their version of spacey sound, which combines elements of post-punk, electro-dance, and indie sensibilities. They self-describe it as sounding like “celestial lightning on the mystic mountain”.

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Though the band’s setup may look simple, with only a bass guitar, drum set, and set of synths/keys, all three band members provided vocals, and their combined sound and energy was cranked up to eleven. Bassist Alexander Ortiz kept making bug-eyed faces at the audience, and at once screaming into his mic in what may have been Spanish while trying to ingest it at the same time, while keyboardist Vincent Levesque seemed to have the most fun switching his vocal effects to “robot noises”. With drummer Antonin Marquis crashing away upstage center, We Are Wolves played like they may have been trying to defy all laws controlling the speed of sound.

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Malajube‘s expectant audience, already riled up from We Are Wolves’ frenetic performance, were chanting soccer cheers by the time the band hit the stage. The audience was not disappointed; if possible, they got even louder when the band launched into their newest single Porte Disparu two songs into their set.

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With a new record coming out, Malajube seemed to want to show off their new material, and their new sound, which is a marked change from the pop gems like Montreal -40 from their 2006 LP Trompe-l’oeil . On Labyrinthes, which was released last month, the band goes after – and achieves – a much darker, harder, progressive sound that their single does not reveal, which likens after bands like Muse in complexity, and is a far cry from the flaky goodness of their previous album’s Pate Filo. The audience, however, couldn’t have cared less, and embraced the band’s set like a long-lost little brother, even though he may be sporting dyed-black hair and a metal-studded belt.

Posted on Friday, March 13th, 2009 at 3:24 pm by Jessica and is filed under Concerts & Events.