LIVE WIRE: Swede action.

(Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat. © 2008 Benjamin Luk.)

Happily filling the gap between the surrealistic British dreaminess of Bat For Lashes and the wild French effervescence of electro-pop star Yelle, Lykke Li stands out as a Swedish powerhouse of addictive indie melodies. Capable of switching back and forth between bitter evocative jazz vocals in “Window Blues” to suddenly bringing the house down with the passive-aggressively danceable “Breaking It Up”, Lykke is pop at its most intelligent and energetic.

On a side note, it seems like dancing onstage has lost its finesse somewhere along the line. Van Morrison used to get a crowd going apeshit just by kicking the air on a cymbal crash, but watching opening band The Friendly Fires’ lead singer Ed Macfarlane thrust, gyrate and swivel his hips just two inches from my face may have been a bit more male crotch action than I was looking for. (Stellar show though, and a perfect primer for Lykke herself.) When Lykke took the stage, she was like fireworks on Mardi Gras. She immediately set herself to work, percussively demolishing her tambourine with a drumstick, bells and whistles breaking off and flying into the crowd during “Dance Dance Dance”. Following suit with her lyrics, Lykke headbanged her way across the floor, had an intimate pole dance moment with her mic stand, then vaulted into convulsive gorilla chest-pounding during one of the many extended solos. Feedback and various other sound issues almost killed “I’m Good, I’m Gone” but Lykke’s energy was infectious, and if she barely even noticed or cared, why should we?



Then the first surprise of the night: a lick on the guitar that sounded like frat boy afro-pop. Before I’d even registered that it was a cover, Lykke and her backing band were already bobbing their way through Vampire Weekend’s “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”. Rocketing off into “Complaint Department”, her exuberance just kept ramping up and up. Knocking drum mics off-axis then doubling back to fix them missing nary a beat, by the time she finished, she had a puffed-up do like sex hair. Closing on an explosive rendition of “Breaking It Up”, we thought for sure she wouldn’t be able to top that in the encore. But when she came back, she blew us all away by rapping through a cover of A Tribe Called Quest’s “Can I Kick It?”. (Yes, she can!)

Even her guitarist was grinning away like a madman, wondering how the fuck they were getting away with it.

Lykke Li's Vancouver Set List (as taken directly from the hard copy):

• Dance
  
• Let It Fall
• Im Good [sic]
  
• Hanging High
• Cape Cod
• Little Bit
• Complaint
• After
• Window Blues
• I Don't Mind
• Breaking
• Tonight*
  
• Can I Kick It*

* Songs marked with an asterisk were played during the encore.

Pearce and I both caught up with Lykke at the merch table after her show. Yes, we embarrassed ourselves as fanboys, but I figure it's one of the fringe benefits of our job.

(I shot the top, Pearce shot the bottom. I'm always the top.)

Not surprisingly, Lykke also turned out to be a pretty cool chick.

Special thanks to Erin at Timbre Productions.

* * * * *

Feel like knowing where I am every hour of the day? Get literally the latest on Vancouver's concerts and more by adding me on Twitter.com! All you have to do is click the link. Free downloads, wine, women and song await.

LIVE WIRE: Leave us hypnotized, love.

(Photographic evidence that Markus Acher is a gift from the music gods. It's a shame the halo doesn't register on camera. © 2008 Benjamin Luk.)

It’s amazing how great the dichotomy can be between how a band sounds recorded, and how that same band sounds live. Case in point, Germany’s very own The Notwist.

On record, it’s clear where they got their influences. Employing the same electro-ambience and jagged pitch bending techniques that reminds me so much of My Bloody Valentine and Autechre, their latest record The Devil, You + Me is a psychedelic trance waiting to happen. (Just thinking about it makes me want to pop open a bottle of cheap Shiraz and watch the rain.) Live however, forget gazing at your shoes the whole damn night. You’d best be prepared to dance.



Anticipating a mellow, perhaps even boring, night was an unfair assumption on my part. The moment I realized this was around the time I saw Notwist keyboardist/programmer Martin Gretschmann going to town on a couple of Wii controllers, laying down some sort of percussive digital squeals. A moment later, we all saw our very first Wii Lightsaber solo and could hardly contain our inner geekery. Explosive crowd favourites like “Gloomy Planets” and “Good Lies” ended with the Acher Brothers thrashing their axes across the stage, and tame-sounding Markus went from mild-mannered indie singer to a hard rock beast, passionately slaying every chord progression while lights behind him seemingly exploded from his back like angel wings. Meanwhile, Andi Haberl was unstoppable on drums, and reminded Notwist fans again that he could do more than just fill the void that Martin Messerschmidt left behind him when he went off to join industrial metal group Schweisser. Watching Haberl play in the Notwist is a bit like winning the lottery, then scoring another two bucks on a Scratch & Win. He’s that little something extra that seizes your attention, then turns it into full-blown awe.



During the encore(s), two Asian girls beside me kept screaming their heads off for “Consequence”. At first, it seemed like they were getting ignored as The Notwist plodded on with epic after epic from Neon Golden and Shrink, but finally Markus smiled and whispered something to his bandmates. Two songs later, some familiar chords sounded. From there, the last thing I remember is the crowd going wild.

Special thanks to Brock Thiessen at Discorder, and to the boys at Sealed With A Kiss. Click the link to see the rest of the Notwist Photo Gallery!

Coming soon: We get all good and gone with Lykke Li at Richard's!

LIVE WIRE: Snakes on a blog.

("Hey baby, wanna see the snake in my jeans?" Gabe Saporta was always cocky like that. © 2008 Kaleena Marie.)

"Wait a sec, aren’t Cobra Starship the guys who did that Snakes On A Plane song?" Yeah, they are. But that’s just the beginning for these New York natives.

When I arrived at the Croatian Cultural Centre last Thursday night, my first thought was "If only I were two years younger." The crowd, which consisted mostly of teenage girls, was buzzing with excitement and impatience, prompting me to wonder if Cobra were the new Backstreet Boys now that the boy band’s moved on to Much More Music and a fan base of soccer moms.

When the house lights finally dropped, I thought I was going to lose my hearing. I’d never heard so many girls screaming at once. As the members of Cobra Starship came onstage, it became very apparent to me that they had the makings of a decent electro-pop band: keyboards, a cute female keytar player, and a frontman charismatic enough to dazzle the pants off any girl (18 or younger).

Donning his tightest pair of jeans and a self-assured swagger, frontman Gabe Saporta came up center stage smirking, admiring his loyal followers, and immediately broke into their first song of the night, a catchy little number called "The Church of Hot Addiction". Then they powered right into their next song "The City Is At War", from their sophomore album ¡Viva la Cobra!. In a way, you have to admire their dedication. After hitting the big time in the closing credits of a certain Samuel L. Jackson flick, any other band might've called it quits then and there. Not Cobra Starship though. In fact, a third album is currently in the works.

Between songs, Gabe spoke to the audience about the current tour, and the importance of knowing how to dance so you can woo yourself a lady (which may have been kind of a moot point since Gabe may have been the only straight male in the room). With that, they launched into my favourite song from their current album, "My Moves Are Hot (White Hot, That Is)".

Closing the show with the hit "Snakes on a Plane (Bring It)", Cobra bid the crowd goodnight. Despite each instrument competing to be heard in the mix, Cobra Starship surprised and entertained me more than most live acts I’ve seen this year. No one will remember them in five years but in the meantime, they deserve their glory in the pop-punk spotlight.

And yet, it’s strange to think that no one would have ever heard of them were it not for motherfucking snakes on a motherfucking plane.

Special thanks to Jessica Dunn of Live Nation.

Next up: Ben explores gloomy planets with Germany's own Notwist!

General update #6.

(You found Warrant? There's Warrant on this iPod?!? © 2008 Benjamin Luk.)

You've probably been wondering what the fuck is going on.

I don't blame you. No updates in a month now, and not even so much as an album review? Did Ben and Pearce suddenly decide to return to real life, where there's probably much more productive things to be done than updating a blog that not enough people know about anyway?

Um. Kinda. Yeah.

It's still searchable online, but one of our sister blogs, The Bermuda Triangle, just bit it recently, announcing via Facebook that the upkeep of the site just took more work than anyone expected to keep the damn thing running. They've effectively closed their online doors as of three weeks ago. Why, you ask? Because we have to work hard to keep this shit coming and sometimes, there's other stuff we'd rather be doing! But allow me to get something straight here: ThatRockBlog.com isn't going anywhere anytime soon. We just don't have it in us to hit up the concerts and write a full article every time we like an album, when we're having to work at the same goddamn time! But in an effort to condense our thoughts from the past four weeks, here's what we've been listening to.

• Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue (2008)
  
• Kings of Leon - Only By The Night (2008)
  
• Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul (2008)
  
• Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes (2008)
  
• The Books - The Lemon of Pink (2003)
  
• Talking Heads - Fear of Music (1979)
  
• Patsy Cline - The Patsy Cline Story (1963)

One of those you probably shouldn't even bother asking about. We like what we like.

Any way you slice it though, we've been busy. I've been off shooting fashion shows and discovering just how much I like wine, and Pearce has been sick as a dog between day calls as Owen Wilson's stand-in on "Night at the Museum 2". Also, Kaleena might be scheduled to make a reappearance, and Ian's apparently checking out some pretty snazzy music-related stuff in Budapest. Yes, that Budapest. We function on an international level now.

On one final and more serious note however, local musicians Hotel Lobbyists are not in a good place right now. If you haven't heard already (and you should have if you're into the local music scene at all), Hotel Lobbyists drummer Mike Gurr has passed away and vocalist/guitarist James Wood is in critical condition following a terrible car accident somewhere between Winnipeg and Calgary. Help their families out by heading over to Pub 340 on Thursday, October 16th for a night of live music from friends of the Lobbyists, including The Smokes and No Horses. Doors at 8, tickets are $10. All proceeds go to the families of Mike and James.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go dive into a bottle of red from the Niagara Peninsula. Que sera, syrah.