(Piper Davis: Making lumberjack shirts sexy since 2006. © 2009 Benjamin Luk.)
To this day, I’ll never understand why certain performers open for supposed “headliners”. Every now and again, I’ll hear about a night’s lineup and somewhere deep inside, I’ve got to give my head a shake. I mean, how is it that we have Piper Davis, the synthpop-funk princess who’s travelled to Spain to study electronica and music production, opening for The SSRIs, who sound all right recorded but in concert sound like a wrecking ball in a piano store staffed by teenagers? I just don’t get it.
As for Piper herself, her sound isn’t so much groundbreakingly new as it is an intensely successful amalgamation of world music, indie pop and synthesized electro. With funk bass and her seductively husky voice taking centre stage, Piper’s hot shit live, delivering each line with something close to deadpan nonchalance. But as the layers of her band coalesce and you hear the Old World collide with the New in offbeat jazz- and reggae-inspired rhythms, you begin to realize this wasn’t something concocted overnight; it’s a perfectly blended show-stopping cocktail of Vancouver's best indie. Two parts Macy Gray, one part The Ting Tings, and one part the way Cat Power scuffs her way across a stage, and you’ve got yourself a killer glass of Piper Davis. (Try her with a little “Cream and Tea”.)
The show wasn’t quite as wild as I would’ve imagined her Commodore performance to be – Piper opened for Dragonette around this time last year – but there’s something about her personality that tells me she’s not so much in this to attract a crowd as she is to just perform. However, it should be quite telling that a good portion of the people who came, came to see her alone, and that at one point, there were about seven concert photographers crowding the front of the stage for her. Heck, I was one of them. The SSRIs? Well, maybe we’ll save them for another review.
Piper Davis plays again with My!Gay!Husband! at The Biltmore on March 28th, 2009 for Glory Days.
As for Piper herself, her sound isn’t so much groundbreakingly new as it is an intensely successful amalgamation of world music, indie pop and synthesized electro. With funk bass and her seductively husky voice taking centre stage, Piper’s hot shit live, delivering each line with something close to deadpan nonchalance. But as the layers of her band coalesce and you hear the Old World collide with the New in offbeat jazz- and reggae-inspired rhythms, you begin to realize this wasn’t something concocted overnight; it’s a perfectly blended show-stopping cocktail of Vancouver's best indie. Two parts Macy Gray, one part The Ting Tings, and one part the way Cat Power scuffs her way across a stage, and you’ve got yourself a killer glass of Piper Davis. (Try her with a little “Cream and Tea”.)
The show wasn’t quite as wild as I would’ve imagined her Commodore performance to be – Piper opened for Dragonette around this time last year – but there’s something about her personality that tells me she’s not so much in this to attract a crowd as she is to just perform. However, it should be quite telling that a good portion of the people who came, came to see her alone, and that at one point, there were about seven concert photographers crowding the front of the stage for her. Heck, I was one of them. The SSRIs? Well, maybe we’ll save them for another review.
Piper Davis plays again with My!Gay!Husband! at The Biltmore on March 28th, 2009 for Glory Days.
4 comments:
Were your comments about the band who played after Piper Davis? Because that was Elton Bong, not The SSRIs. Piper played first, elton bong played second, and the ssris played last...
Oh, I know. The SSRIs just aren't my style. Granted, there's a following for what they do, but I'm not a part of it.
Very nice photos of Piper Davis. I agree, I'm not a fan of SSRIs either.
I fucking hate the SSRIs
a bunch of pretentious art fags.
about time somebody told them to fuck off.
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