As I sit here in my bathrobe, coffee-flavoured beverage in hand, I take a moment to philosophize, contemplating the inescapable rhythms that govern my life. They are both numerous and intersecting, from the purely circadian controls on my consciousness, to the regular rotations of the workweek grindstone, to the scattered affairs that mark my calendar and make the previous two cycles worthwhile. And so time passes: another day; another dollar; another concert review.
Our most recent concert in question was the Saturday night block of From The ‘Peg, an all-weekend event designed to highlight all that is good and grand from the flatlands of Winnipeg. Every second of the succinctly-titled showcase was free of charge, a detail that donates an automatic +2 to the excellence rating of any concert. The Harbourfront Centre stage is a gorgeous little venue - outdoors, but with the added convenience of actual seating and a glass ceiling that offered shielding from the elements. With just enough room for a few hundred fans, the setting was an odd but genius fusion of the intimate and the expansive.
Indie start-up The Waking Eyes were handed the job of prepping the crowd for the more well-known Weakerthans, and - much as my cold little heart hates to admit it - they weren’t half bad. Fronted by a Carrot Top doppelganger, The Waking Eyes dressed like ‘N Sync did before their boost in popularity (read: poorly-placed bandanas, primary colours, and women’s jeans). Wardrobe choices aside, The Waking Eyes have nothing in common with latter-day boy bands: each member seemed to be an instrumental jack of all trades, as proven by the lead singer’s stint on the keyboard, the lead guitarist’s hot trumpet action, and the equal sharing of vocal responsibilities (with even the dummer getting a mic).
A fourteen-song story short, The Waking Eyes were alt-country, alt-rock, alt-funk, alt-punk, and all too disperse in their musical allegiances. Variety is good - nay, vital - to the survival of any band, and it is true that sticking too closely to one’s established sound is a surefire career killer. However, that little bit of advice assumes that you’ve already established a sound.
I’d love to tell you just what Waking Eyes sounded like, but I can’t properly do that within the confines of this paragraph. To best approximate the quality of their music, take the top twenty radio singles from the last three years, toss them in a blender, and puree for six seconds. Top the easily-digestible mélange that results with a healthy dose of cheese. Voila! The Waking Eyes. Bon appetit! I’m not saying that The Waking Eyes aren’t talented, but they really ought to quit the song-writing business and do what they most certainly do best – become a chameleonic cover band to play at weddings, birthday parties, and maybe even a few lucky bar mitzvahs. I’d certainly hire them.
It only took fifteen minutes of rearranging to set up the stage for the headliners of the night. The Weakerthans got off to a pitch-perfect – but less than riotous – start with John K. Samson’s solo effort on “One Great City!”. That semi-sarcastic hometown elegy was the launching pad from which the band rocketed into a fair mix of discography-spanning crowd favourites. Warmed by the audience’s energy, the band loosened up and rocked out with various-parts-of-their-anatomy out, as best displayed during “Aside” and “Watermark”, their anthems for the terminally introspective. The diminutive John K. didn’t deviate from his characteristic performance style, pushing up on his tiptoes and squeezing his eyes shut in what were obviously the throes of vocal rapture. Amusingly, the band always seemed genuinely surprised at the positive reception of their songs.
The bass-solo tornadoes and the down-to-the-knees guitar face-offs added visual bravado to the Weakerthans impressive aural charisma. Live, their body of work is brought into proper dimension. The chords are crunchier. The lyrics - feline entreaties especially - are more urgent. The full force of the music expands through space and time toward you, reaching into your chest and teasing out all of those long-stored, ill-conceived bits of hope and regret. Their songs beg you to commiserate, to stand up and say you’ve been there, and then to recommence head banging because, hey, that guitar section is pretty sweet.
Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt aside, middle-aged men should not possess the unfaltering ability to make young lasses swoon in their presence. But gosh darn, when those Winnepegians got down to brass tacks and steel frets, the collective hearts of all the ladies within a five-mile radius – including those of the lesbian duo directly to our 12 o’clock – must have melted clean away. And that’s to say nothing of the gentlemen in attendance.
The Weakerthans’ modest wrap-up came far too soon for the audience’s tastes. The band must have realized their negligence, because they came back with an encore that was nearly as long as their set. Either fate stepped in, or John K. heard me screaming, because they ended the encore with “Night Windows”, a handclapping and heartwarming song that has not yet been formally recorded, but which carries for me fond memories of the first time I heard it at 2005’s Hillside Festival. With a flourish (and a promise of an album in October), the Weakerthans disappeared backstage, leaving the rest of us to bask in the satisfying afterglow of still-echoing guitar reverberation.
-Heather Burnett
