LIVE WIRE: Weiss beyond her years.

(The Confederates never forgave Allison for running off with their coat of arms, nor for turning it into a fashionable vintage kerchief. © 2009 Benjamin Luk.)

Allison Weiss is quite possibly the most endearingly dorky person I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. Sporting chunky red glasses that were probably cool thirty years ago (only just starting to make a resurgence now) and looking every bit a vintage store princess, Weiss is as unpretentious as indie music gets. When she performed at The Railway Club with fellow tourmate Lauren Zettler last Wednesday, the two of them were rounding off a self-booked weeklong tour in the Pacific Northwest. Somehow having caught wind of all this through Twitter and being immediately charmed by the unassuming Weiss, I immediately called up some friends and found myself at a table front and center with the stage.

It says a lot about an artist when they greet their audience with a yell and a flail. Unlike many other singer-songwriters, Weiss seems like the whole package: a talented musician and with a genuine personality to boot. (Ever met an artist with truly amazing songs who, when they’ve finished playing, seem like the dullest fucking person in the world? No? Get out more.) The kicker is that she’s a great pop lyricist without even realizing she’s a great pop lyricist. In spite of more pedestrian singles like “I’m Ready” and “Let Me Go”, other tracks like “Let’s Leave” contain lines like, “And you keep me for the lonely days / I swear to God it’s true / I can’t blame you ‘cause I’ve done the same thing / Many times to you.” Eloquence in simplicity, and simple songs about damaged people. Weiss has been there and it comes through in her music. Those with a strong distaste for girly love songs should stay the hell away, but if there’s a small cluster out there that still have a heart and don’t mind eating pancakes for dinner, Weiss’ entire live NYC album is available for download here, and I dare you to listen to it and not fall in love with her just a tiny bit.

Somewhere in the all-too-brief time that Weiss was onstage, she downed a tequila shot practically force-fed to her by an adoring fan, told us stories of plane crashes and hangovers, and her and Lauren performed an oddly moving downtempo cover of MGMT’s “Kids”. If the audience wasn’t on her side up ‘til then, they were on her side now. Here’s a quick taste of what you missed out on live: “Kids (MGMT Cover)” - The Text Overlays (Lauren Zettler & Allison Weiss)

Enjoy the joy.

LIVE WIRE: Franki Chan redeems a night of lacklustre Gayness.

(Because we can all forget our names after a long night of hookers and blow. © 2009 Jeremy Lim.)

Shine has always been one of those mystery clubs; you hear about it and how small it is, but you’re never really quite sure where it’s hidden. Then when you find it, you arrive to an empty room no bigger than your basement. The illustrious Shine – the rumours were true: it's really freaking tiny, but that doesn’t stop you from rocking out. Celebrating the Victoria Day long weekend in style, Shine brought in the legendary Franki Chan and a handful of local acts to spin house, nu-disco, nu-rave and indie dance.

Starting off sore, MY!GAY!HUSBAND! attempted to warm up the main room with a lacklustre house set. Maybe it wasn’t the music. Maybe it was the empty dance floor or the frown, but I didn’t feel a whole lot of love. Even within the confines of being a warm-up act, I was really hoping for a better show and a better show of support. (I swear there was a conga line going in the other room.)

Then, rolling in with his signature fedora and graphic tee, came IHEARTCOMIX’s Franki Chan and with him, the party. Coming in hard, Franki made his pop-punk and dance music roots very clear. Dropping hit after crossover hit of infectious vocal riffs and earth-shattering basslines, Franki had everyone singing along, spinning circles with their hands held high in the air from start to finish.

Despite the lukewarm start, Franki Chan whipped the night around to become what will most likely be the beginning of my indie dance addiction; I just can’t get The Ting Tings out of my head.

I heart Franki Chan. Someone get me a fedora. God bless Queen Victoria.

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View the rest of Jeremy Lim's MY!GAY!HUSBAND! and Franki Chan gallery here! Also, check out all the other awesome shit he gets up to at JeremyLim.ca.

LOCAL EXPOSURE: The Armadilettantes need to come out of their shells.

(Sean Bletcher of The Armadilettantes is rather fond of his eyelids and thusly, uses them every chance he can get. © 2009 Benjamin Luk.)

To be fair, The Armadilettantes’ performance at The Backstage Lounge was essentially their first show, so it’s only natural they’d be a bit rough around the edges. It was clear from their set that all four members of the group are seriously talented musicians; it just takes time before a band really meshes and becomes a group as opposed to four dudes onstage all doing their own thing. Aiming for a neo-punk vibe and hitting most of (if not all) the right notes, there’s plenty of potential for these young rockers, if only certain members would learn a thing or two about stage presence.

No, I take that back. Well, sorta. I’ve never been a fan of the tired Awkward Retro Hipster routine that’s been around since Napoleon Dynamite somehow made $44M in international box office receipts, but that seems to be what frontman Sean Bletcher is going for. Sporting a 60s headband and enough gawky gesticulation to make a slightly-obese 14-year-old girl brim with self-confidence, his inner punk was present while screaming the lyrics of his songs, only to mysteriously vanish during any attempts at crowd banter. Vocal lessons might not hurt either, though his passionately-delivered off-key barking may very well be a crux of The Armadilettantes’ overall charm.

Other key players – pun totally intended – include Sean Bayntun, the other Sean B. in the band and talented keyboardist. Formerly of local pop rock outfit Empire Alley, Bayntun’s energy and anxiousness to perform onstage again after all this time was palpable. During the set closing “Pedestrian”, Bayntun could be seen pounding the keys in an apoplectic display of Gothic-inspired anarchy while the rest of the band launched off into a punk-metal jam that’d make you want to run through an antiques store with a sledgehammer. Other band members (Sam Hutchison on drums and Adam Nigro on bass), though technically proficient, need to open up a bit more before The Armadilettantes’ punkness can finally coalesce into something greater than the sum of all its parts.

I urge you all to check out The Armadilettantes on Facebook and download their free MP3s. For a young band like this, there's nowhere to go but up, and I can't wait to see them at the top in a few short months.

LIVE WIRE: Lenka wants you to just enjoy the show.

(Music so happy, you'll be pooping rainbows for weeks. © 2009 Benjamin Luk.)

Lenka is either your thing or it isn’t. The sugary sweetness of her persona can be exhausting at times, like if you’re a parent already and your neighbour decides she’s going out of town for a week and could you look after her adorable daughter for her while she’s gone pretty please with a cherry on top. But if you’ve ever been trusted with the care of someone else’s child – and for the record, I’m the last person on Earth you’d want looking after your kid – you’d understand how rewarding that experience can be. I mean, c’mon; kids are like puppies. You can take one to the park and use it to pick up chicks.

There’s something about the Aussies that thrive on large cardboard cutouts of random shit. Sia did it first, now Lenka’s following in her footsteps. Giant paper-product mushrooms were taped to mic stands and Lenka’s trademark stoned owl was glued to a paint stirrer and stuck onto her keyboard. Gadgets and gizmos aplenty; miniature pandas, pigs and frogs occupied every horizontal surface within Lenka’s reach. You hear a lot about artists “setting the stage” for their music. This was just that, only more Etsycentric.

In spite of her decided girliness, Lenka emerged onstage in an understated purple dress, more befitting of a secretarial type than some kid liable to get high snorting lines of chocolate milk. Surprisingly, Lenka is already in her early 30s and though I tried hard to forget that, I just couldn’t get caught up in the childlike fantasy world that so much of Lenka’s marketability depends on. She seemed less than carefree that night at The Media Club, shushing the somewhat inebriated crowd stage right and scolding them for “chatting really loudly”. To be fair, Lenka apologized to the audience and redeemed herself by joking, “Busted by teacher,” in that adorable Australian accent of hers.

Lenka played a number of new songs, more sophisticated than anything from her first album and clearly marking her progression towards musical goals loftier than Old Navy commercials or 30 seconds in a Grey’s Anatomy episode. “Pull Me Apart”, though still very much a pop tune, combines her commercial pop style with 50s Motown and jazz influences, mostly thanks to her amazing horns and keys player, Danny Levin. (I’m even inclined to say that about 30% of Lenka’s success has to do with his contribution to her album, though no one knows who he is.) Other highlights include her a cappella rendition of “Like A Song”, performed over eerie radio signals recorded during WWII, and a blasphemously danceable cover of The Zombies’ “The Way I Feel Inside”. However, other gimmicks fell flat, like the weird witchiness she tried to evoke during another new song, “Force of Nature”.

It wasn’t until “The Show” and “Dangerous and Sweet” that Lenka finally latched back onto the girliness she was trying to go for all along. Surprising us all by demonstrating that she is indeed a very competent trumpet player, then finishing on sheer whacked-out childhood glee for “We Will Not Grow Old”, Lenka showed us all that you can still act like a kid well into your adult years.

I just wonder how long she can keep it up.

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Special thanks to Malcolm Croome of Sealed With A Kiss and Hayley Zalm, my dedicated note-taker.

Also, if you'd care to see Lenka's Vancouver set list or a photo of Lenka and I together after her show, you know what to do and where to click.

OFF THE RECORD: Metric - Fantasies

(Courtesy of Last Gang Records.)

Metric is a band I’ve always had high hopes for. They almost effortlessly toss off top-shelf, catchy-as-hell singles like “Combat Baby”, “Succexy” and “Monster Hospital” without sacrificing the politics of their lyrics or the intelligence of their music. Unfortunately, their albums have always been a different story. Both their debut, Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? and its follow-up, 2005’s Live It Out, have proved major disappointments for me. Between the peaks of their singles lie some pretty steep drops. A lot of these tracks (“Hustle Rose” on OWU and “Too Little Too Late” on Live It Out being two prime examples) end up sucking the momentum out of the proceedings by blowing bad ideas into five-minute dirges.

And so, when the absolutely awesome “Help I’m Alive” took over Canadian radio three months ago (and I mean really took over, thanks to Canadian Content rulings stating that whenever an artist from this fair country of ours puts out a truly brilliant song, it gets played to death), I was excited, but not necessarily expecting great things from Fantasies.

But goddamn, was I happy to be proven wrong. Maybe it’s because they’re all getting to be in their mid-30s and see this as their last shot at blowing up big or maybe it’s because of the unusually long break between albums but whatever the reason, Metric have put together the best album of their career. It’s like they took the template for their past singles and applied it to just about every song on the album. After the brilliantly shifting dynamics of “Help I’m Alive”, “Sick Muse” sees an innocuous little guitar riff overwhelmed by a seething Emily Haines railing against romance and all its champions. “Watch out Cupid, stuck me with a sickness / Pull your little arrows out, and let me live my life” go the opening lines, before Haines lays into those who treat looking for their soulmate as life’s new religion: “Everybody just wanna fall in love / Everybody just wanna play the lead”. Emily Haines can be accused of talking or whispering her way through a lot of songs in the Metric catalogue, but not here. She sings those lines in “Sick Muse” with more vigor and intent than anything on OWU or Live It Out, reaching for, and hitting, some seriously high notes before collapsing into a cushion of angelic harmonies.

It’s an early standout on an album full of them. Second single “Gimme Sympathy” sends the synths into overdrive on what’s sure to be one of this summer’s anthems, while “Satellite Mind” rides its propulsive guitar line into lyrics like “Heard you fuck through the walls / I heard you fuck when I’m bored”. The second half of this album takes things a little more gently with songs like “Blindness” and “Collect Call” relying more on atmosphere and mood than a kick-ass hook, but while in the past Metric may have let these ballads drift into the ether, here they build them up, adding new twists as the songs progress.

Fantasies isn’t a perfect album. “Twilight Galaxy” drags on too long, repeating lyrics that don’t merit the attention paid them, and the second half isn't as well paced as it could be, but it’s still one of the best albums I’ve heard this year and a damn sight better than I thought Metric capable of at this stage in their career. Count me a fan.