Rising from the depths

You may have noticed that this blog has gone much longer than usual between updates, even by my normal summer standards.

That's because in the last few weeks, I've graduated university, found a job, and moved to Thompson, Manitoba, where I'm now a reporter/photographer for the Thompson Citizen and Nickel Belt News. (I've also apparently become quite the lacrosse player.

In the extremely unlikely event that anybody reading this cares about the goings-on in Northern Manitoba, you can read my stuff from the paper at their website.

Originally, I was debating whether to keep this blog going after I started at the Citizen. If I'm going to spend all day writing, do I really want to do more of it when I get home? I've decided that the answer to that is yes: it's something to do, and things to do are in short supply at the moment. Plus I have an ever-growing list of things I want to share on here.

So, the blog's back. I don't know how often I'll be updating, it could turn out to be a lot, it could turn out to be barely more than I had been, but I'm not going anywhere.

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On June 15, before I skipped town, I had the enormous pleasure of seeing The New Pornographers in concert at Toronto's Sound Academy (that's Dan Bejar on the right).

It was a great show, full of excellent music and little downtime, marred only by an unenthusiastic crowd. (There seemed to be a prevailing atmosphere of "I know these songs, but I'm not used to other people knowing these songs, so I'll just stand here with my hands in my pockets.")

If this reserve bothered the band, though, they never let it show. "Sing Me Spanish Techno" led off a high-octane set of four songs without even a second's pause, and the band played for nearly two hours without any sort of intermission--the music was stopped occasionally for some banter, but even that was enjoyable.

The songs played were a great mix from all of the band's five albums, and pulling "Execution Day" out of mothballs was quite the surprise, as it is almost never played live. Might not have quite satisfied the fans who kept asking for "something obscure" and generally trying to show off their knowledge of the band, but it was a lively little song that they should really play more often.

The biggest reactions were generally reserved for songs from the Challengers album, which surprised me a bit as many consider it the weak point of their discography. But it did come at the zenith of their popularity, so perhaps Challengers was the first "new" album for a lot of those in attendance (as it was for me), and thus a stronger emotional attachment. Conversely, "The Bleeding Heart Show", once a crowd favourite, seemed to float over the heads of much of the audience.

A three-song encore concluded with "Testament To Youth In Verse", in which the crowd was led through the chorus--providing a neat effect which is rather unusual for The New Pornographers.

--Ryan