Forest City Lovers and Entire Cities at the Drake Hotel; Thursday April 19, 2007. 7/10
This show was pretty good. I especially liked the venue, the Drake is so classy and clean, both which you don’t see to often. The venue is located in the newly developing Queen Street West, which is growing to be a super artsy area. The first band came on a hour after making us wait but the Drake has comfy couches that saved my feet. I really wanted to love Entire Cities however their show was definitely not the highlight of the night. They have a barnyard, hoedown-country sound that they emphasize through their vast variety of musical instruments used. The band consists only of seven people, who play: keyboard, drums, two guitars, flute, two accordions and most bizarrely a saw played with a bow. One might question how such a small band is capable of mastering all the diverse instruments used--the simple answer is they can’t. This band’s music is sloppy in their live show. I especially didn’t like the use of the saw, it made a loopy noise that one makes when they shake sheet metal, it sends chills down my spine in a scraping forks and knives together kind of way. In addition the girl wasn’t able to use it properly, the sound wasn’t consistent so the instrument all together was completely out of tune. I thought the flute player was good, she carried on playing to the same mike she sang from, her sound was mediocre with a slight vibrato sound. I think I admired her the most for not shaking, the flute unlike other instruments makes it super difficult to be afraid (shaking) and play because of embouchure and hand positioning. The guitars I found were super sloppy and poorly done, the bass player even mentioned that he was frequently going out of tune because his strings were only on the guitar by duck tape, classy. I really didn’t like the vocals either, this band seemed like a band who only sounded good when the music was loud and in turn drowned out the vocals. I was up close so I could hear them, a little rusty and unpolished which fit their music rather nicely. However I found the girls voice very hard to listen to, she tried to sound intense at times and instead it came off a little to aggressive and coming from the wrong place.To accentuate the positives their live show was extremely up beat, I like that. It was something that everyone could dance to--even if you didn’t know the words or the music. However only two people tried to dance and I’m pretty sure they knew the band. Entire Cities also tried incorporating clapping parts throughout most of their songs, which is always fun especially in the live show setting. I’ve heard many comparisons to Broken, solely based on the fact that they are a large scale band that I would be hesitant to call ‘indie’. They are too country to be compared to them, so keep in mind that they are similar only by numbers not by music.Second up was Forest City Lovers. Kat Burns, leading lady sang quietly and she was super shy. This kind of reminded me of Basia Bulat, who I saw recently with Maria Taylor. She chose repertoire that was on her album ‘The Sun and the Wind’. I really liked that album she captured a lot of energy which I have only found in Stars songs, I needed a good replacement or filler until the new Stars album comes out. Her set had three new songs and the rest she took from her latest release. Burns played both the keyboards and guitar while singing. Her guitar melodies are not that complicated however she doesn’t have another guitar player to fill her in and she tends to avoid chords and plucks strings to create cute melodies. Add in vocals and you have a complete mess if a person can’t do two things at once, but she did it well only screwing up once noticeably to the audience, however she played it off cool. Her band consisted of four people, a violinist, drummer (who was also in Entire Cities) and a bassist who initially started with a children’s sized xylophone. Her songs have such tiny details that the live show emphasizes. She also used more violins in her live material, which made her songs more lively. I think her recorded stuff is kind of dull, however each song varies slightly. Her music is cute, much like someone like Regina Specktors--who play up the cute, however vocals not as strong. I’ve narrowed Kat Burns vocals down to a nice Emily Haines with a concentration upon Amy Millan vocals, soft and sweet. I really liked this show however I thought the sets were short, but because I didn’t know much material that was a good thing. I bought a great shirt, it’s pretty and only ten bucks, cheap merch!
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