Kaptur Won Hearts at Clinton’s

Date of Show: January 29, 2014
Written by: Chiara DiAngelo

Niagara’s Kaptur is the project of multi-instrumentalist Riley Jensen. Formerly a solo endeavour, he recently expanded to a full four-piece band to include Andrew Grierson (guitar), KC Floyd (bass), and Justin Jennings (drums). Their set began with a looping sampler recording introduction, “Hello, we’re Kaptur sit back and enjoy.” Vast and complex, the band’s massive sound extended to every corner of the room, soon filling all of my senses. Heavy yet symphonic, there was a deathly, dark and ominous feel to their music that seemed to haunt your bones – even on songs that included both the tambourine and maracas!

Jensen suffered some technical difficulties mid-set, apologizing to the crowd that “everything just broke, bear with me.” Fortunately for an out-of-town band hoping to impress a new audience, they were able to come right back. Songs like the melodious “Millionaire Counting Machine” and more treacherous-sounding “Tar Rat” had the crowd downright transfixed. While Jensen joked about getting a circle pit going, this one actually was aggressive enough to head bang to.

The set also featured a plentitude of new tunes such as “Halibut”, and set closer “Feast or Famine”, from their upcoming EP, which is set for release in the Spring. It will be the first recording with a full band as the last EP, Thousand, was completed as a solo effort. While Jensen was wholly impressive on his own, the full band had the effect of giving me one of those shivers-down-your-spine “holy shit, these guys are good” moments that don’t come along all that often. I guess you could say they “kaptured” my attention.

The Gentlemen Thieves

Mississauga’s The Gentlemen Thieves warmed the stage. Bringing back vivid memories of my teen years spent deep in a pop-punk phase, their catchy California pop-punk nature was a straight revival of the era of Blink 182 and NOFX. I spent the majority of their set awash with an odd mix of profound nostalgia and feeling slightly too old to truly appreciate their youthful vigor. Luckily the resonating lyrics from lead singer Ken Taylor offered the promise of a new generation’s anthem and the four members’ coordinated dance moves delivered an infectiously entertaining stage show that had a small group of dancers really going.

It was bassist’s Dylan Ramstead first show but you would hardly know it as he seemed to fit right into his role. The band did however encounter some technical difficulties with the guitar speaker. With “one shot” to fill the dead air and win back the audience’s attention, they appropriately threw in a few instrumental lines of Eminem’s “Lose Yourself.” They ended their set with the two songs off their 7”, Shooter, but played them in the opposite order, beginning with the “Take My Advice” and ending with the title track A-side.