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Last night I checked out Woodhands and Cadence Weapon, who’ve been working their way eastward from Calgary over the past week - together they’ve already made pitstops in Edmonton, Saskatoon and Winnipeg. Now Cadence Weapon is taking Woodhands along with him for a few dates in Quebec before he finishes up his Canadian tour all the way in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Woodhands took the stage at the early hour of 10pm - I say early because not even a week ago I saw them at Pop Montreal and their set time was nearly 2am (!!). A small and loyal legion of fans inched its way towards the stage for their set, which was lively and energetic as always. They opened with I Can’t See Straight and tore through another ten or so songs from Heart Attack, including their newest single I Wasn’t Made For Fighting, Under Attack and Breaking Up. There were lots of highlights from last night’s show, not the least of which was finally seeing first single Dancer performed with a female vocalist (I don’t know who the cute girl who jumped up on stage from the audience was - does anyone else? Is it the original vocalist from the album?). I’ve seen Woodhands about a dozen times live now and this was the first time that drummer Paul Banwatt didn’t assume vocal duties. I kinda missed hearing his version of the vocoded falsetto!!

Woodhands also called Cadence Weapon out to rap on one of their songs, AND they premiered a new song from their upcoming second album. It was instrumental and featured Paul on a giant bongo-ish drum that he was hammering from both sides. Who knew that Paul had Indian roots? Certainly not me - I’ve been engaged in a couple of debates about his ethnicity with people wagering Turkish, Portuguese or even Persian. There you go.

Next up was Cadence Weapon, who worked the growing crowd like a total champ - as if he’d been at this gig for decades and not just the past three years. The past few years have been great to him though - in 2006 he was nominated for the first ever Polaris Prize, his debut album Breaking Kayfabe was well received by tons of music critics, and his newest album, Afterparty Babies has been seeing much of the same praise since its release earlier this year. Plus he’s toured with the likes of Final Fantasy and Lady Sovereign (where I first saw him!).

Cadence (can I call him Cadence?) was decked out in head-to-toe white, with a gold & glittery screenprinted Obama tshirt (how fitting!), and he spent most of his energetic set bouncing from one of the stage to the other. And I mean it - he was hopping on one foot, shimmying and doing lots of grooving to keep the momentum of the show going. I especially loved his performance of Vicarious (from Breaking Kayfabe) and an interlude of some sort set to Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve. As I often tend to do after shows, I’ve been listening to Cadence Weapon’s album Afterparty Babies for most of today.

Definitely check out both artists if you live in Ottawa, Montreal or Quebec and are free over the next few days. If not, Cadence Weapon’s tour continues on the east coast for another week!

Remaining Canadian Tour Dates:
October 10 @ Babylon, Ottawa *
October 11 @ Zoobizarre, Montreal *
October 12 @ La Ninkasi du Faubourg, Quebec
October 16 @ The Marquee, Halifax
October 17 @ The Wave, Charlottetown
October 18 @ The Phoenix, Fredericton

* with Woodhands

Links:
MySpace: Cadence Weapon
MySpace: Woodhands

Posted on Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 1:21 pm by Kat and is filed under Concerts & Events.

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