I totally thought this show was just going to be a series of DJ sets by members of the DFA roster. It was being held as one of the Return to New York events that I sometimes see advertised around town for the old-school partiers. Whatever I had expected, it certainly wasn’t four dudes in hoods playing drum pads, keyboard guitars and synths and making epic, rocked-out techno jams, which is what The Juan Maclean did with its opening slot.

Until they came on, I wasn’t even entirely sure that I wanted to be there; it had been snowing all day, I was tired, feeling under the weather and decidedly not up for a party that wasn’t even supposed to get started until near midnight. But four minutes of the Juan Maclean set made all of that past history, and an hour of non-stop dancing later, it was completely forgotten.
It wasn’t even immediately clear that the headlining LCD Soundsystem would be able to match the Macleaners’ rump-shaking energy. While James Murphy has dropped some next-level tracks under the LCD moniker, onstage he goes for a live band set up with minimal pre-set electronics, giving the whole thing more of a punk-funk feel than a heavy floor-filling sound. Murphy himself sticks pretty much to singing and leaves the music to the band, which, considering he’s not got the prettiest pipes, is a bit of a daring move.
That, however, would underestimate the show-carrying powers of a burly, boozy and brimming-with-energy front man; Murphy shrieked, stomped and shimmied his way through the proceedings, carrying his tireless bandmates with him on a straight line journey from passable disco-punk at the show’s start straight up to a raucous, balls-out dance party stratosphere at the end. It’s hard to say exactly how he did it, other than having been able to hire a tight-ass band and knowing how to goad them into ever-greater controlled chaos (the technique he seemed to go for on this night was a borderline asshole level of drunkenness, complete with throwing his drummer’s own kit at him).
However he did it, the show was a smash, and the dance floor a sea of hands-up non-stop movement through to the end - which, considering the weather outside and the usual event’s expectations inside, was probably testament enough to the fact that the DFA Records crew knows how to have a party.

(Inspired by the Church Sign Generator)

The developer, Activa Holdings, has now launched a punitive libel suit against Louisette Lanteigne for $2 million. Here’s what’s interesting: Activa’s lawyer, Greg Murdoch (looks like a nice enough guy), crows that Activa is “confident the right public perception will come about.”

Now, maybe it’s the naive little boy in me that thinks this is the dumbest way for a company to restore its besmirched reputation. You can’t polish a gold turd with sandpaper, to coin a phrase. If the woman is lying, they’re still suing the mother of 3 into bankruptcy. If she’s telling the truth, wouldn’t it be better to keep it, like, on the hush-hush?

No dry cleaning on the planet is going to make this suit look good in the public eye. Unless Activa stops acting like a rich bully, this is going to end up in front of a judge and Lanteigne’s claims will be made even more public, true or not.

As a footnote, Canadian libel law is somewhat retarded. You can basically be sued for anything that damages someone’s reputation. It’s up to you to prove that what you’re saying is true. Even then, the court might find against you if they suspect your intentions were malicious.

Next up: Funfur to be named in punitive libel suit for calling lawyer “nice enough guy”

To summarize, Justin Hawkins, singer of The Darkness, found an advance industry copy on eBay of their upcoming CD (due out at the end of November) that some industry slimeball had put up for auction. Hawkins paid £350 to reclaim it, stating the move was to stop the CD from being leaked prematurely.

To quote, “I’ve bought our own album back off this character who’s selling it on eBay,” he told the BBC. “It cost me £350 and it’s going to be a tenner when it’s in the shops - with artwork.”

The best part of this quote is the “with artwork” bit. For a taste of what passes for The Darkness artwork, open wide and click on the image below for more

It’s a work in progress apparently. I’m guessing the sheer scattered, eclectic nature of a collector like Peel means that the average muso has never even heard of most of these artists, nevermind rip them from their collection. For sure, some great tracks and then some tracks that only a mother could love (or an archivist like John Peel).

Herewith, a summary of my very own Pop Toronto, which, while lacking in hype, depth, buzz and wrist bands, was still full of scenesters, cheap beer and hangovers at the office the next day.


Sunday, October 9:
New Pornographers, Destroyer w. Immaculate Machines
Phoenix Nightclub

OK, so it’s a bit misleading for me to play up the whole 5 bands, 4 nights thing, considering that two of those bands were not only at the same venue at the same time, but they even share many of the same members. Still, the selling point for me when it came to seeing the New Pornographers lay in the fact that “secret member” Dan Bejar’s full-time project, Destroyer, was opening. Of the two, I confess I have a greater fondness for the latter, fuelled partly by my memories of the last time I saw Destroyer in action, in Van City itself at Richard’s on Richards several years back. At the time, Mr. Bejar’s grand rock majestics raised the roof above the rapturous hometown crowd, and as his recorded output since that time has only seemed to me to get better and better (and more and more deserving of a live treatment), the prospect of seeing him team up with his power-pop powerhouse paycheque band was hard to pass up.

It turned out to be an early show (6 p.m.) on Thanksgiving Sunday in a venue that was scaled back in size from the originally intended Docks entertainment megaplex. A recipe for disaster you might think, but the potential side benefit to an early show on a weird weekend is that no one really knows when to show up, so there was a fairly decent sized crowd for opening opener, Immaculate Machines. Head Pornographer Carl Newman’s recently discovered niece (seriously) and her bassless synth-pop trio provided an adequate start to the evening, and looked rather cute doing so (and in the case of the shirtless, farmer-tanned drummer, looking rather intense in the posture department).

The sound, however, wasn’t the greatest, and while it did improve when team Destroyer ambled onto the stage, we seemed left with a choice between having Mr. Bejar’s signature nasal delivery buried under a muddy sludge of sound in the balcony seats or having it piercingly overloud on the main floor. Whether it was the dubious sound or fatigue is hard to say, but Destroyer’s set never really managed to ignite as much as one might have hoped. Perhaps the early start time was to blame, or the fact that not a single track from his two most recent albums made the set list, but Bejar’s rumpled glory seemed to fall a little flat this time around. There was still a good hint of rock n’ roll majesty in his short set, but the opening slot, against a strict 10 p.m. curtain call for the whole evening, seemed to take the wind out of the Destroyer sails. That said, I’m still a sucker for the man’s work, and maybe the only real beef I could have is that it just wasn’t a long enough performance to give me everything I really wanted. And this latest of the band’s incarnations (featuring two New Pornographers on bass and drums) still knows how to rock, enought to make a maroon Destroyer number the first concert t-shirt i’ve bought in many years.

The New Pornographers, of course, are no slouches in the rocking department either, but if Destroyer’s strengths lie in an ability to shuffle and stumble towards grandeur, their’s lie in running a ship so tight and clean it’s like taking the high-speed express. Aided and abetted by a sound that suddenly swelled to crisp perfection, the headliners flew through the best and brightest moments of their catalogue with a momentum that barely wavered. Layers of harmonies and powerhouse vocals, not only from resident big-voice Neko Case, but from nearly every corner of the well-populated stage (including Newman’s Immaculate niece), propelled a high-energy singalong romp that showcased the very best of the Pornographer’s power-pop greatness. With random visits from a perenially beer-toting Bejar and on-stage discussion of the merits of Thansgiving dinners adding to the family-fun vibe, Vancouver’s shiny happy supergroup collective ended up turning the early show into a night to remember, even if it all came to a close at a surprisingly early 10 p.m.

Of course, holiday show good times are helped along by the liberal enjoyment of early show beer, and quite a few at a nearby bar after, so I may have overspent myself on Day 1 of indie rock week - considering all I could think of at work the next day was crawling into bed the minute I got home to put my still heaving hangover to bed. But Pop Toronto comes but once a year (so far, anyway), and I would, of course, have to soldier on.

Monday, October 10
Fiery Furnaces
Lee’s Palace

Day 2 arrived, and I spent most of it regretting the excesses of Day 1. Considering I don’t start work until 2 p.m., carrying a hangover with me throughout the day is something of an accomplishment, and a testament to how much moxie I was going to need to get myself to that night’s show. Fortunately, Lee’s Palace is a 10-minute walk from home, so it wasn’t too hard to pull myself off the couch and into the world of Matt and Eleanor Friedberger, otherwise known as the Fiery Furnaces.
I’ver heard mixed reviews about the new album, which features the Friedbergers’ grandmother as a main narrative character, but live the singing siblings are utterly compelling. Friedberger femme, looking like she came straight out of my junior high cafeteria circa 1986, was herself feeling under the weather, and made a point of constantly apologizing for her poor singing voice. But considering she was up against a wall of noises from frere Matthew’s keyboards and a well-amped rhythm section, it seemed like the weakness of her voice would be of minor consequence. She did, however, provide and excellent visual foil to her brother’s control-freak shenanigans. I have no idea what the actual relationship between the two is or who calls the shots in the band, but you couldn’t help but imagine that Mr. Friedberger, with his Brian Jones haircut and authoritarian demeanour, was the boss, a perception amplified by his vocal scolding (complete with finger-wagging) of the sound man and the aggrieved shakes of his head every time his sister or band made some imperceptible mistake.
All of which made for wonderful optics, and made the Furnaces’ lurching segues from pretty balladry to off-key wackiness the more interesting. Matt’s switch from keyboards to guitar midway set the stage for some louder rock n’ roll noise balanced out some of the more off-kilter material, even if those deservedly-scolded sound guys turned him up to ear-piercing levels.
On account of Ms. Friedberger’s illness, the encore was made up of quieter songs, with just voice and piano - thankfully for those of us nursing a headache from all of the guitar treble we had just endured.
And then it was over. Truth be told, it was none too soon for me, which was probably more of a reflection of my tired state. However intriguing the family dynamics of the two may be, I was feeling the call of my bed. And to judge from the looks of Matt and Eleanor at show’s end, the Fiery Furnaces might have felt the same.

Tuesday, October 11:
Dungen
Lee’s Palace

Is Sweden the Ontario of Scandinavia? It does seem like it’s the big financial, media centre for all things Norse. Maybe people in Oslo are forever shaking their heads about the undeserved cultural hegemony of Stockholm.
Not sure, but the guys that make up Dungen, one of the seemingly endless number of bands to have come out of Abba’s homeland in recent years (though surely one of the first to do so while singing entirely in Swedish), sure wouldn’t look out of place at a Band Wars in Burlington.
As it was, Lee’s Palace was packed with members of the Pitchfork nation, a testament to the power of the indie Web bible, whose enthusiastic review of Dungen’s sole album, Ta Det Lugnt, was probably entirely responsible for the number of people willing to go see a never-before-seen Swedish band on a Tuesday night.
Not that anyone knew what to expect; This was Dungen’s first time in North America, and they were still an unknown quantity, a phenomenon largely based on indie media buzz.
As the guy next to me said as the lights went down and the anticipatory whistles and whoops went up, “Watch all of this go on and we’ll all find out that they actually suck.”
Well, Dungen doesn’t suck, but they’re not all that impressive, either. They come across like a group of longhairs from your high school that were really into Zeppelin and like, jazz, dude, and their show backs up that impression: Lots of rock-out jams, lots of trippy heavy guitar riffing and a lead singer that seemed constantly aware of his own hair - flinging it, waving it, running his hands through it. You could just imagine how many times he’d watched “The Song Remains the Same”.
Overall, it was not a bad show, but it really wasn’t that exciting either. The band was nice and kind of cute in a Scandinavian bumpkin way; they sang a Swedish birthday song for someone in the crowd told funny stories. But anecdotes and accents do not a worthwhile show make, and I would guess that there are any number of Jethro Tull revivalists across Southern Ontario that could give them a run for their money.
And you can bet that the money involved for seeing one of those bands would be a lot less than what I paid for a night with Dungen. Luckily for them, Ta Det Lugnt remains their most widely known calling card, and based on their live show, it’s probably better if they keep it that way.

Thursday, October 13
The Decemberists
Phoenix Nightclub

The final night of the week was also the one for which I least knew what to expect. I had downloaded (sorry!) a few songs by The Decemberists, but was decidedly undecided on what I thought. On the one hand, I found the singer to be kind of irritatingly affected and the ambition to be lyrical and quirky far too obvious. I have a particular distaste for that branch of American indie that turns the too-clever-by-half vocals of every college-rock casanova way up into the mix, and vocal stylings of the Decemberists are close enough to those of barf-tastic OC crooners Death Cab for Cutie and Bright Eyes to turn me off immediately.
On repeated listening, however, I realized that the Decemberists are an entirely different beast from their cringe-inducing peers in those other bands, due just for starters to the fact that their songs actually are kind of clever, and their penchant for musical extravagance is more endearing than grating. Besides, my friend Simon was going anyway, and the endorsement of others is always a good way to go.
Unfortunately, Thursday nights are not a good one for me when it comes to getting out of work at a good hour, a problem compounded by the fact that one of my colleagues announced that day that she was soon going to be leaving us and heading for Boston, a situation that required at least one round of after-work drinks. All of which added up to the fact that I kind of blew this one, and didn’t arrive at the Phoenix until the Decemberists’ encore had already started.
But I’ll tell you something: out of all the bands I had seen that week (which, fine, wasn’t really THAT many, but more than a usual amount for a lazy late-shifter such as me), those Decemberists and their encore fairly blew the competition out of the water. I’m sure it only really lasted for about 15 minutes, but in that time the multi-membered, multi-instrumentalist multi-sized gang of characters onstage brought fans up to play with them, danced in the aisles, switched instruments back and forth like it was a particularly enthusiastic parlour game, convinced an entire room of concertgoers to sit on the (yuck) floor of the Phoenix only to have them stand up again when the song suited it and generally made a showstopping, sing-alonging, smile-causing good time out of it, with some funny banter and good songs thrown in.
I have no idea if the rest of the show was that entertaining, but I considered myself sold. Of the all the shows that week, only the New Pornographers matched the sheer fun and customer satisfaction I witnessed in those dying moments. Maybe it has something to do with the Phoenix itself, or maybe encores are the best way to sample a band; either way, it was a fine way to wrap up the night, the week and the first annual Pop Toronto imaginary festival itself.

Of course, if there ever is to be another Pop Toronto, some things might have to change. Starting things off with a bang only seems to handicap the rest of the week with residual hangover and fatigue, for one, and perhaps making bold claims about one’s plans, and the plans to write about it, aren’t such a good idea either, considering it’s taken me a month to actually finish this posting.
Admittedly, the whole concept it a little bit lame, since all it really involved was going out a few times during the week, but pretty much all of the press (see, um, above) has been pretty positive. And the best part is that you don’t have to wait a whole year to have another one.

Hell, maybe it’s time for another one. LCD Soundsytem and The Juan Maclean are playing tonight, and I’m going … let’s just call it another festival, and I can congratulate myself for being such a good curator.