Gig: Zoobombs

Zoobombs / Mother Murder / The Owle Bird

Silver Dollar Room. Tuesday, June 30, 2009.

The opening band's lament, courtesy of The Owle Bird's Lisa Conway:

"We have one more song, and then... we'll..." [trailing off]

[pause. no response.]

"You don't sound very upset," laughing self-consciously at herself. "Okay."

Well, for what it's worth, I was enjoying myself, though most of the earlybirds on hand at the Dollar were chatting or otherwise ignoring the band. A bit of an odd duck at the bottom of the bill on a psych-garage-rock evening, The Owle Birds might have a bit of psych in them, but of a more of a ramshackle folk variety. With keyb, violin and cello, the band brought a mildly atonal but not unmelodic batch of songs that got over with their slightly-dark textures and Lisa Conway's appealing vox. That is to say, in the local vernacular, they came across as more Tranzac than Silver Dollar — I think, say, Picastro would come to mind as a point of comparison. Add to that a slightly menacing undercurrent — if a sadistic genius were to trap you in a locked room slowly filling with water, this is the sort of music he'd be playing while watching the look on your face — so perhaps no surprise the good-times crowd were kinda tuning it out. But there were some crafty moments here, and I'd check 'em out again.

Listen to a track from this set here.

When Mother Murder, on the other hand, took the stage with a rangy flourish, this was something the Silver Dollar audience understood. The place, suddenly filling rapidly, was quickly bouncing to the two-guitar attack — even if, after the first song, the band stopped playing and looked around at each other to try and figure out why the music was continuing. Turned out the house system had kicked back on somehow. Once that was squelched, the band resumed its set of garage rock American-style. Leavened with a slight Joy Division twist, especially in the bored-unto-doom vox of Noel Greaves, who came across as a disinterestedly extroverted frontman.¹ A good rock'n'roll attack with decent songs.²

And then, with the place pretty full, the main attraction, Japan's Zoobombs taking the stage for the last night of their Canadian stay. It is quite possible that if this band didn't already exist, Dan Burke would have had to invent them, being the perfect exemplars of no bullshit, loud, sweaty garage-y rock that is his favoured product. As it is, band and promoter seem to have forged a strong bond and the band's visits here are always much-talked-about, perhaps nearly even legendary.

Zoobombs' nugget-y rockers are made unique by their funky undertone and scorching improvization — not only in Don Matsuo's athletic guitar workouts, but also in keyboardist Matta's textures, sounding like Chick Corea at his most echoplexed and freaky. Weld this to a booming rhythm section and melt together 'til gooey and it packs a potent punch.

Sadly, the show wasn't all it could have been. Besides dealing with the crowd, the sound went south on several occasions, overloading the speaker cabinets. I don't know if we were just getting amps and monitors — it was still plenty loud — but when the sound went, suddenly Matsuo's guitar was robbed of all of its drive and the vox were almost inaudible. The sound guy came on to stage on three occasions to reset the speakers, and then things were A-OK for a spell — until they overloaded again. The show was also — dare I say it? — a bit on the long side. The set ran for ninety minutes, giving the band plenty of time to take the songs into more abstract excursions, which felt a bit indulgent on a couple occasions. Maybe just because it was my first time experiencing this, but I felt like a shorter, more focused set would have wowed me more. Which is not to say this wasn't an impressive time. The band gave their sweaty all to the show and the crowd was well into it. Utterly exhausting fun.

Listen to a track from this set here.

So exhausting that despite my most ardent desires, there was no way I felt up to sticking to see The Hoa Hoa's, who I dug so much at NxNE. Knowing there'll be other chances, I grabbed a streetcar to get to the subway while the getting was good.

---

¹ Greaves, with his vocabulary of twisting, bending poses, will make some camera-happy blogger's day in the near future.

² In the spirit of full disclosure, I will note that during Zoobombs' performance, one member of Mother Murder pushed their way past me, stood directly in front of the woman standing beside me and proceeded to dance around in a manner showing general disregard for other peoples' personal space, including tromping on my foot several times. I don't think I allowed this to effect my evaluation of the band's performance, but it may be a factor when adding up votes for this year's Lady Byng winner.