Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Outtacontroller (Olympic Community Hall, 8:00PM)
We arrived to the Olympic Community Centre in time to catch the last little bit of Halifax band Outtacontroller. The frantic edge to their blazing power pop-punk tunes proved to be a fun start to our night.
If your ears haven’t yet come across these East Coasters, I’d say it’s time to head over to their Bandcamp. Start with their song “Creeps.”
Cold Warps (Olympic Community Hall, 9:00PM)
The venue filling up at this point, local three-piece Cold Warps got the all-ages crowd riled up with their scruffed-up lo-fi garage pop-punk tones and the humorous lyrics that go along with them. Having seen them last at Parts & Labour, it was definitely a different experience seeing them at a community centre, difficult as it was to recreate the dirty basement vibe on the larger stage. As a result, the crowd seemed tamer than those we’ve seen for the band before, though a serious moshpit finally formed mid-way through the set.
There was a sloppy casualness to singer Paul Hammond as he bobbed around the stage, rarely facing the audience. At one point, bassist Ryan Allen took the microphone from Hammond and sitting on the floor of the stage, began recounting band adventures. Drummer Lance Purcell and Hammond joining him on their knees, they expressed their promise “to get serious for a second” before launching back into their scrappy set. After this brief reprieve, the band came back louder than ever; similarly the crowd didn’t seem to have lost any of their energy as they surged forward, somehow more powerful than before.
Obits (Olympic Community Hall, 10:00PM)
Veterans of the stage, Brooklyn band Obits warmed the stage for headliners Wavves, but it was obvious throughout their set that the younger audience was waiting impatiently for the next act. Growly rock and roll to their very core, the band carried a bit of a tripped out psyche vibe but unfortunately a connection never seemed to made between the band and the audience. With minimal movement to feed off of, the band members didn’t put any extra effort into their performance and it fell flat. A broken string on the lead guitar left dead air, filled merely with a drum solo rather than stage banter, and their set seemed to come to an abrupt end earlier than expected from the third band of the night. Obits are obviously a band better suited to be experienced in the realm of a dirty bar and I’m sure the set would be much different in such an environment.
Wavves (Olympic Community Hall, 11:00PM)
We felt slightly foolish when San Diego’s Wavves took the stage, realizing that we had just spent the entirety of Obits’ set standing directly beside the band. And while Nathan Williams’ (vocals, guitar) brand of bedraggled and fuzzed out power pop-infused surf rock isn’t necessarily the type of music we’d normally listen to, the band’s high-energy live show was entertaining to say the least. Set highlights included “Demon to Lean On” from Afraid of Heights, as well as “Nine Is God”, which was featured exclusively on Grand Theft Auto V. Playing in Halifax for the first time, the packed venue showed their enthusiasm for the band by getting the crowdsurfing going right from the get-go, and never letting up.
BADBADNOTGOOD (Reflections Cabaret, 12:30AM)
It was Toronto trio BADBADNOTGOOD’s first show ever in Halifax, but you never would have guessed it by the audience’s immediate ardour with them. The classically trained young musicians take the “jazz” genre and blow it to pieces. Covering Flying Lotus and Kanye West, and dedicating “DMZ” to the late John Bonham of Led Zeppelin, theirs is not your grandma’s version of classical, that’s for sure.
Fully captivated, the crowd grooved en masse for the length of their lyricless set, quickly forming an undeniable deep connection with band. With a rising intensity, you could feel the instrumentals right down to your toes. Drummer Alex Sowinski’s banter hyped up the crowd higher and higher until their feverish rush couldn’t help but “erupt into the highest level of energy possible.” We emerged from the crowd, sweat-soaked with a buzzing zealous feeling for the room full of strangers into the streets of a city that wasn’t ours, and never felt more at home. | CD
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