Show Review: The Wooden Sky - Live at Lee's Palace, Saturday November 6, 2010

Having just finished up a two month long national tour with These United States and Yukon Blonde, you could tell the band was happy to be back home among familiar faces and family. Playing to a surprisingly sold-out Lee’s Palace, The Wooden Sky was ready to deliver their unique left-of-center folk rock to the packed venue. The vibe for the night was particularly energetic, with the crowd really embracing the sounds of both opening acts. So when The Wooden Sky finally took the stage the crowd seemed ready to erupt. The band’s set drew heavily on newer material from 2009s If I Don’t Come Home, You’ll Know I’m Gone but there were more than a few surprises in store for the night.


On record The Wooden Sky are really quite mellow. They do have the tendency to produce huge building crescendos of sound thanks to thickly layered guitars, violin, and the impressive vocals of lead singer Gavin Gardiner. Those grandeur moments were in full force at Saturday night’s show. The haunting “My Old Ghosts” built slowly off of Gavin’s delicately picked guitar lines, while the pounding bass and snare drums helped to create mounting tension. Those in the audience relished the opportunity to scream along with Gavin during the last powerful minute of the song. Riding off the crowd’s energy, The Wooden Sky took the opportunity to play The Animals-influenced “Angels”, a brooding song with strong biblical references to animal sacrifices, Jesus and the star of David.



Showing their trust for the hometown audience, The Wooden Sky treated us as musical guinea pigs and tested out two new songs. These new tunes followed similar themes to those heard on If I Don’t Come Home, You’ll Know I’m Gone, and while beautifully played, they weren’t overly memorable. Likely recognizing this little hiccup, Gavin dedicated the next song to the guys in These United States and hit us with a spot-on and rather jammed out cover of Tom Petty’s anthemic “American Girl”. Soon after the band invited both Yukon Blonde and These United States on to the stage to add some extra bass drum action to the tense “Something Hiding For Us In The Night” set closer. Bass drums were being played with traditional drumsticks to beer bottles and everything in between. The set seemed curiously short, but just as they finished Gavin announced that the group would be playing behind Lee’s Palace in a couple of minutes!



A group of around fifty to sixty people rounded the corner and headed to the back of Lee’s Palace and proceeded to wait eagerly to see what The Wooden Sky had in store. A large circle was left open for the band, who warmly invited everyone to huddle in much closer when the time to play finally came. Gavin led the crowd through an acoustic version “Oh My God (It Still Means A Lot To Me)” before taking the request of “Oslo”. He asked that we all be whisper quiet for this number, but that only lasted about thirty seconds, as everyone seemed to know the words and quickly added their voices to the song. Gavin seemed a bit at a loss as to what to play next, so he posed a question instead. “Who wants to get fucking arrested?” Well, needless to say everyone cheered along to that, and The Wooden Sky began to play the often overlooked Bob Dylan tune “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”, all the while marching the large group into the middle of Bloor Street West. Amid honking cars, taxis, and bemused on-lookers, our group belted out the beautiful words of Bob Dylan in a truly surreal moment that bonded band, song, and community. I know it’s a cliché, but The Wooden Sky’s Saturday night performance was an exceptionally magical evening of music, and one that will be very hard to top.

Photos by Michelle Cortese

Show Review: Land of Talk - Live at Lee's Palace, Thursday September 16, 2010

When Lizzie Powell and her band Land of Talk emerged onstage at Lee’s Palace last night I could tell we were in for a special performance. The Montreal-based indie-rock trio (rounded out by Andrew Barr on drums and Joseph Yarmush on bass and occasionally guitar) was joined by tour-mates and fellow Montréalers, Suuns. With seven musicians onstage, Land of talk was looking more like the Grateful Dead than a power-trio. Needless to say, the addition of a second drummer, backup female vocalist and a keyboard player gave the band’s songs a whole new energy. The Montreal collective opened strong as Barr triggered a digital drum loop and Lizzie launched into “Cloak and Cipher”, the title track off of the band’s latest release, which bares the very same name. Next up was “Swift Coin”, Land of Talk’s newest single. It featured some heavily distorted guitar and was nicely jammed out thanks to some beautiful soloing from Suun’s lead guitarist. “Some Are Lakes” received a huge response from the audience and was the first real sing-a-long of the night. The crowd seemed to know most of the lyrics, throwing caution to the wind and singing loud and proud.


The addition of a second female vocalist seemed to do wonders for Lizzie. As most fans of the band know, she suffered from a vocal polyp and almost had to give up singing entirely. Having another voice to rely on and harmonize with seemed to provide some extra comfort and breathing room for Lizzie, as she didn’t have to risk throwing out her voice during some of the night’s heavier numbers. One of which was “Yuppy Flu”, the anthem rocker that fully illustrates Land of Talk’s ability to enter into alt-rock territory with ease and success. When the band dropped “Quarry Hymns” it was easy to see they were hitting their stride. Lizzie rocked her way over to almost every musician on stage, smiling from ear to ear and receiving huge nods of approval from Barr.


The group showed off their experimental side as swirling noises, more characteristic of Wilco than Land of Talk, filled Lee’s Palace. The walls of noise were slowly ripped down by the heavy sounds of “Sixteen Asterisk” which was followed by “May You Never”. The latter showcased Barr’s proficiency behind his kit as he banged away with maracas rather than traditional sticks. A few tunes later the group waved goodbye and headed off stage. The noise from the crowd was deafening and obviously un-ignorable as Land of Talk quickly reemerged to play one of their slowest and most beautiful tunes titled “It’s Okay”. Once again, the group departed but the fans were unsatisfied with a stingy one song encore (although that’s all the set list, which I managed to grab had listed). They came out once more (as a trio this time) and played two more songs including their classic “Summer Special”.

Last night Land of Talk were treated as if they were Toronto-bred, and the brimming smiles from each musician onstage undoubtedly ensured that they’ll be coming back to Toronto in the near future.

Photo Credits: Lani Warsh