WAVELENGTH 500 – NIGHT FOUR
Saturday Feb. 13, 2010
@ SPK, 206 Beverley St.
The Constantines
Rockets Red Glare
Donne Roberts
Picastro
Danger Bay
Doors 8pm • $20 adv
+ Projections by General Chaos Visuals
Festival pass $50 !
Advance tickets and passes available at:
Soundscapes, 572 College St.
Rotate This, 801 Queen W.
Online at GalleryAC.com
From Feb. 10th to 14th, 2010, the Wavelength music series celebrates its 10th birthday and 500th show with Wavelength 500, a festival of independent music featuring 25 bands playing over 5 nights at 5 different venues. WL 500 will look back over a decade of Wavelength and Toronto music scene history, featuring some big names that started small at Wavelength, some dearly departed bands reuniting for this occasion, and some of the best new acts of 2009.
We will also be publishing a special 10th Anniversary Festival Program Guide to coincide with Wavelength 500. Copies will be available at Soundscapes and Rotate This as of Tuesday, Feb. 9.
Feb. 14th also marks the end of the weekly Sunday night incarnation of the Wavelength music series. This is not the end of Wavelength, though. We plan to relaunch the series in a new monthly format in the spring.
The Constantines
The last Sunday of our first year, Wavelength #49, was supposed to be headlined by Full White Drag, a heavy lockgroove trio from Windsor. Sadly, extenuating circumstances forced FWD to stay home, but their friends from Guelph still made the trip down the 401. WL 49 at Ted’s was not The Constantines’ first show in Toronto, in fact some of us had caught them a month earlier at an all-ages show at the Bloor JCC, alongside Rockets Red Glare. In 2001, the post-hardcore/math-punk/whateveryoucallit scene — grounded in D.C. and Dischord but more immediately inspired by Ontarian pioneers Shotmaker and Okara — was alive and well, but was about to undergo a significant mutation. The Cons introduced soul music into the mix, and in a way that was sincere, not campy. And there was a healthy dose of what you might call “heartland rock” — you know, working-class meat-and-potatoes R.O.C.K. that wasn’t indie-cool pre-millennium. The “Springsteen-meets-Fugazi” tagline may have become cliché, but it still tells a good tale — of how The Constantines channeled two heartfelt, anthemic streams of rock’n’roll. It’s a path they’ve followed and stayed true to over the course of five albums, three labels and countless tours, as their fanbase grew beyond basements and bars. Bry, Steve, Dallas, Doug and Wil celebrated their 10th anniversary only two months before Wavelength’s, and we’re happy they’re able to wish us happy birthday in return.
Rockets Red Glare
If you were in a small band in Toronto in the mid-90’s, there weren’t a lot of places to go if you wanted to play out of town. One of the few was Trenton, Ontario, where a brother-sister team, Shannon and Adam Goodwin (both of Mach Tiver) set up shows in union halls. It was in Trenton in ‘96 that I first saw the Mississauga bands Blake and Blue Light Blockade and made friends with Evan Clarke, Jeremy Strachan and Gus Weinkauf. Assembling in 1999, Rockets Red Glare were a powerhouse from the moment go. Though they had roots in hardcore, RRG were truly “post-“ in that they absorbed all kinds of influences and made music that was truly progressive — long, dynamic builds through peaks and valleys that could be quite beautiful, but avoided the melodramatic drive to
crescendo that marred so much so-called “post-rock” of the era. True D.I.Y.-ers, they toured the basement circuit on numerous self-booked tours before calling it a day in 2003,
with a seven-inch and two great albums to their credit. Their triumphant performance at WL 150 that year is one of my all-time favourite Wavelength memories. What blew me away even more is that Evan told me we were the only people who ever invited them to play a show. (WTF?!) Seven years later, we’re so fucking thrilled to invite them back.
Donne Roberts
Born in Madagascar and spending two decades in Russia (starting at the age of seven) before arriving in Canada in 1999, Donné Roberts is a man of many influences and brings a unique world perspective to his music. This cultural crossover of musical ideas can be physically seen in the dancing feet of any and every audience that has the pleasure to witness Donné and his band live. Having played Wavelength twice before alongside bands like Sister Suvi, Green Go and Nifty, other musicians may be hard pressed to engage audiences in attendance for those other acts, but from the first honeyed lick out of Donné’s guitar he always has everyone up on their feet with their bodies swaying. His music and charm is simply infectious and can warm up even the coldest February night. A Juno winner, Donné is a leading figure of Toronto and Canada’s world music community and is integral to educating audiences everywhere to the zest and soul of his African homeland.
Picastro
In a time before there was a local music community, there was a local music scene — and it mostly consisted of hard rocking, sweaty men. Crawling into the testosterone pit in 1997 came Picastro, led by the haunting acoustic guitar and spine-chilling murmur and wail of Liz Hysen, with her confessionary Grand Guignol canticles. Picastro offered something foreboding yet comforting to our unsuspectin city. The addition of cello, drums, piano, and violin solidified them as a remarkable and exotic sound and helped usher in the fruitful, eclectic music community of the past decade. With Hysen always centre, Picastro has featured Owen Pallett, Evan Clarke, Zak Hanna, Tigerbeat6’s Dwayne Sodahberk and Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart, and currently includes Nick Storring on cello and Brandon Valdivia on drums. Releasing their first full-length Red Your Blues in 2002 on L.A. label Pehr, Picastro has since put out three other LPs on Monotreme, Polyvinyl and local recording club
Blocks, including 2009’s Become Secret. They’ve toured North America and Europe countless times and have lent their distinctive sound to experimental film scores and live performance art projects. Recent years have also seen Picastro embrace more field recordings and harsh noise elements as well as a funereal European cabaret touch, but 13 years later, Toronto, has not seen another band balance melancholy and terror in such a beautiful and bewitching manner.
Danger Bay
The sense of hope that comes with being a new unit playing brand new songs with brand new people brings out a wave of creative release and a fresh worldview that just can’t be duplicated. So when it came time for us to think about new 2009-era bands to play WL 500, my gut and my heart overlooked the fact that my head remembers watching Jonny Dovercourt rock the indie stage for almost
as long as I’ve lived in Toronto, and he’s rocked stages for longer than that (see Neck story, pg. 13!). But somehow this all feels fresh to me. In Danger Bay I can still hear The Magnetars and Kid Sniper and Republic of Safety, but it’s become somehow less mature and more like an unbridled wild horse. First-time singer Deirdre O’Sullivan has emerge with a volcanic uncoiling feline yowl, and the secret to Danger Bay’s upward vibe has a lot to do with the sense of “sky’s the limit” that comes from being so brand new that the love of ROCK! is stronger than its history.
