I went to the Friday Megaphono show on Feb. 5 at the Bridgehead Roastery. Jack Pine, Chris Page, and Cherie were playing.
Before this show I had seen Valois and Yao at Zibi. This venue is much more similar to what I had in mind for Megaphono 2016 than the one at Zibi.
The atmosphere, however, is very bizarre. As I walk in, Jack Pine is playing, but you wouldn’t really think a concert is happening so much as background music. People are kind of going on with their lives, they’re chatting at tables, there’s a couple of people doing their readings, all of them just kind of leaving Jack Pine to give them a great soundtrack to their lifestyle.
Jack Pine’s sound isn’t bad. It’s going for the whole singer-songwriter cool guy, kind of country-folk. But it’s actually not obnoxious. His guitar work is really great, and it sounds like it’s his genuine sound, and not some weird cloak of basic-ness to make the world think he’s talented. He actually is. I’d consider putting him on my iPod, and that’s a ringing endorsement for me.
I’ll elaborate. I feel like a lot of these young bands go for a really basic sound that has a wide market, and right now that market is indie-folk, whatever that means. Twangy guitars, moody lyrics, Lana Del Rey, banjos, finger picking, woodland imagery. That evocation is basically the theme of this venue. If all the bands that play tonight were on a spectrum from basic indie-folk to decent indie-folk, Jack Pine would be at the top, or very close to the top.
And the next artist, Chris Page, falls right on down to the bottom, right to basic mediocrity.
Chris Page has such an unremarkable and unoriginal sound that makes me oddly mad. I’m so tired of hearing these wannabe Blue Rodeo-Weezer sounding motherfuckers. They sound like they used to be a Blue Rodeo cover band but never shook off their chord progressions, and also like Weezer on account of the whiny vocals.
I’m listening to his stuff again on Bandcamp, and it’s not the worst thing ever. I’m not so angry listening to it now as I was before. But in the presence of his live music I was struck by his unoriginality (which I stand by) and by how boring he is (likewise). And of course, the album he performed for us was recorded in some cabin in rural Quebec. Classic. This is the kind of music I expect from some guy trying to pick up women with his acoustic guitar and moody lyrics, not a grown-ass man writing an album in his cabin.
I was so shaken by how boring this guy is. People were still not really listening, and treating this festival as a way to go out and have these musicians create a live soundtrack to live their hip and alternative lifestyle to. But I don’t blame this audience, because this dude is genuine custard, and I didn’t want to be paying attention to his music. The next band, however, calmed me down from my parade of hate. Their name is Cherie, and they’re very precious.
The one difference I could feel was that the band members really liked each other, and that’s relevant only because just as with homemade cookies, you can taste the love put into music.
Cherie follows under the same sort of indie-folk trope as the other two. But the difference between the unsuccessful Chris Page and this one is that this band really worked together as a unit. All of the instruments were separate entities coming together to make a really great sound. As opposed to being this wall of sound, it was a mesh throw blanket that looks like purple from a distance, but when you look inside of it you’ve got some gold strands, some indigo, some burnt sienna, some red. Plus I’m a sucker for a breathy Lana Del Rey vocal.
I change my answer for the spectrum of basic. Chris Page is still way down low, and I really don’t like him. Jack Pine is higher up, by merit of creativity. And the highest is Cherie, because they didn’t strike me as assholes, and because they work together to make a great sound.
