"In the eyes of empire, men are not men but instruments."
~ Napoleon Bonaparte
Us aspiring music photojournalists have it tough. Drinking until the wee hours of the morning, having to take the occasional note while grooving with good-looking women and, every so often, when we want to sound more knowledgeable than we really are, we have to go online and look up quotes? I mean, holy shit. Why would anyone want to be a music photojournalist? Fuck that, I say. Financial accountancy is the world for me.
... Ahem.
On the night of December 18th, I was finally able to get through to Clayton Flagg, the drummer for local indie rock band, Empire Alley, to see if I could review and photograph them for a show that they were playing at The Railway Club downtown. Having known Clayton from before through several illicit channels from my film school years, he was perfectly fine with it provided I didn't make them look bad. Frankly, after seeing them perform, that'd be hard to do. And I'm usually pretty vocal about who I dislike.
Openly admitting that I had never been too much of a fan of what they had up on their MySpace, I never quite expected to see so much raw energy from a local indie pop rock band that also sounded so polished and tight. Sounding like a mashup of Maximo Park and a lo-fi version of Montreal rockers Mobile, Empire Alley began with a solid four song set, ending with their arguably most well-known song "Orange Revolution" (in which lead singer, Sonny Manhas, sang through a megaphone to heighten the thematic urgency of the chorus). Next thing I knew, they had somehow managed to drag half the club onstage to sing Christmas songs and at one point, Clayton even emerged from behind the drum kit and began to softly croon "Blue Christmas" into the mic while the rest of the band made their rounds, passing out eggnog. Then, with keyboardist Sean Bayntun launching into an uptempo version of The Carol of the Bells, the rest of the band eased back into their rock groove with the highly-energetic "Hey Now". It didn't take long for about thirty dedicated fans to crowd the front of the stage -- which doesn't sound like much, but the setup of the place is more like a restaurant than an actual club -- and by the finisher, "So Swell", Sonny had brought two girls out of the crowd to play tambourine and maracas with the rest of the band. Say what you will about the music, but the band knows how to work a crowd.
The band sounds much better live than what you'd expect from their recordings. The night that I saw them, I was amazed at how crisp and clear they were, and that was made even all the more amazing by the fact that I'd only heard muddy streaming audio tracks from them before. I hear from Sonny that the band has just finished recording their first album and it's ready to be mixed and mastered in January. It'll be interesting hearing how that turns out.
Earlier that same evening, we were also treated to solo acoustic sets from Chris John of Stabilo and Morgan Ross from Birds of Wales. As it turns out, Ross was in town with his band recording a new feature-length album at Vancouver's Mushroom Studios and John was there to provide guest backing vocals, the two of them being old friends. Both performed amiably, playing songs from their respective bands (though John brought plenty of new solo stuff to the table) and for a moment, it was as though we were at one of those quiet little open mic events, only instead of the hit-and-miss nature that I've come to expect from coffee shop open mics, every song here was a hit. John's acoustic version of the rare Stabilo track, "Starting Fires", went over huge and so did Ross' performance of "Philanthropists".
That's John on the top, Ross on the bottom.
By the way, you can click the smaller shots for a larger view. There's no hierarchy to which photos are bigger or smaller; it's just the nature of the formatting. Cheers!
