Foals, Freelance Whales and The Naked & Famous at The Commodore

This will not be a concert review of Foals, Freelance Whales and The Naked & Famous.

It's good to be back, Vancouver! I've been on a break, and I was going to return the other night with a (hopefully) fantastic review of one of the Commodore Ballroom's best lineup s this year: Foals, Freelance Whales and The Naked & Famous. But, the night before the show, I was informed that the people organizing the show had cut the entire guestlist. They gave me no explanation, so I imagine they had somehow determined that insulting the press was worth a few extra ticket sales. So, I got to miss one of my most anticipated shows of the year, while my friends, who bought tickets after I introduced them to the bands, went to the show without me. Them's the breaks when you're dealing with the jerks who run the music business. (Except publicists! I love publicists. Their job is literally to make everyone happy; bands, fans, record execs and journalists.)

Now that you know why I don't have a live review for you, there are still three bands that deserve your attention, so I'm going to give them some track reviews instead.

The Naked & Famous - Girls Like You (YSI)
I really should be introducing you to this Kiwi indie rock band with “Punching in a Dream” or “Young Blood”, the two songs that earned them many fond comparisons to MGMT. But, I have played those songs to death, so here's one with a little less radio flavour and a little more beauty. “Girls Like You” builds slowly over three verses before it hits the epic chorus of Thom and Alisa harmonizing with “Don't you know people write songs about girls like you?”

And, here's the really random, low-budget video they made for “Punching in a Dream”.


Freelance Whales - Generator ^ First Floor (YSI)
This band has a lot of variety, blending each song into a different ratio of electropop, indie synth-rock and folk. I suppose I would call them baroque pop—a rock band that likes to use tingly synths and folk instruments like a banjo, a harmonium and a glockenspiel. This song is famous from a Starbucks commercial, so not much more needs to be said. It's unique and it will stick in your head.

The sequel, “Generator ^ 2nd Floor” has a strange and enchanting video. Check it out.


Foals - Miami (YSI)
I still have no clue what "math rock" means, but I'll speculate that the geniuses of Foals devised a secret formula for creating a raw, sexy beat. The “Miami” video is less than sexy, but in a cheeky way. But, I can't show you the video here, due to the bumbling executives at Warner Music Group, so you'll have to find it on your own.

Morcheeba at The Commodore

The radiantly beautiful Skye Edwards took the stage, calm and cool, with no dramatic effect, and went straight into Morcheeba's biggest fan favourite, “The Sea”. She has made an elegant return to Morcheeba and, despite the turmoil that saw her two-album and 7-year departure, she seems to have hardly skipped a beat. The second number detoured the show into an unexpected reggae medley of “Friction”, a track from their second album that most casual fans would not likely know, but I think the intended effect was to warm up the crowd with a danceable beat, and it worked wonderfully.

They continued cruising through the hits collection with “Otherwise” and “Never An Easy Way”, reminding the crowd of their glorious reign over downtempo electronic music in the late 90s and early 2000s. And then, it was time to show the crowd that Morcheeba, indeed, has not skipped a beat since Skye's return. Morcheeba has a reputation for, with every new album, adding at least a handful of what the fans would call “classics”. Their new album, Blood Like Lemonade, clearly follows the trend. First, Skye and the band hit us with “Even Though”, which sounds a lot like old-school Morcheeba. Then, after pleasing the Vancouver crowd with a great cover of “a song about drugs” by Arlo Guthrie (yeah, I had to look it up—it's “Coming Into Los Angeles”), they officially introduced the new album with the title track, “Blood Like Lemonade”. Morcheeba's sound has evolved minimally over the years, with the exception of the two albums absent Skye Edwards, but “Blood Like Lemonade” and then “Crimson”, made it crystal clear that Morcheeba is not just riding on the coattails of their own past success.

“Crimson” was really the peak of Skye's slow crescendo that night. She sang the chorus, “Hellbound, hopeless for you” with wave after wave of fiery passion in her voice. To be honest, I was so mesmerized, I decided at that moment, that this woman has just taken her place among what I consider the most transcendent voices in music. Then, after bouncing a few old non-hits off the crowd for the older fans, it was time for some crowd participation as Skye led us into “Beat of the Drum”, from the new album, which turned out to be the most aggressive and powerful song of the night. The crowd chanted “TO THE BEAT OF THE DRUM!” while Skye egged us on until we were louder than our Seattle rivals at the previous tour stop.

The band closed with the “Blindfold”, a beautiful track off their second album Big Calm, and one of my favourites. The instant it was over, the band slipped away behind the curtains and the crowd erupted in a roar like nothing I have heard at The Commodore before. The band returned quickly and graciously showered us with a triple encore. The encore was essentially a medley, blending the acoustic “Over and Over” through to a mash up of “Be Yourself” with Lady Gaga's “Just Dance”, followed by “Rome Wasn't Built in a Day”, which featured a Bond themed intro, with Skye singing “From Russia with Love”.

Morcheeba - Even Though (Mustang Remix) (YSI)


Morcheeba - Blood Like Lemonade, starring Robert Forster

Darwin Deez at The Media Club (Vancouver)

People call him a hipster, but when Darwin Deez and his merry band of misfits took the stage, it was quickly apparent that they are actually a group of awkward guys who lose all inhibition when they are in their musical element. There is no Bohemian snobbery, just some really catchy guitar-based pop songs and some whimsical numbers of interpretive dance to famous songs, scattered throughout the Darwin Deez live set.

He only has one album under his belt so far, so he played everyone's favourite song, whether it was the apologetic love poem of “Up in the Clouds”, the clever de-personification of his new uninhibiting lady friend in “Radar Detector” or the dark wishes of endless annoyances upon his non-friend in “Bad Day”. As the show progressed, the dance numbers slowly faded into awkward yet entertaining stage banter, with Darwin repeating his catchphrase, “It just got Coldplay in this bitch!” after every song, and asking us how we say “Cheers!” in Canadian. By this point, his guitarist was loosening up and throwing in all sorts of seamless, yet out-of-key, riffs into the songs. I have a thing for bands that have the ability (and the balls) to throw out the musical math, and the Darwin Deez band has it in spades.

Near the end of the set, Darwin introduced his new rap mixtape Wonky Beats, entirely sampled from Willy Wonka and featuring Das Racist. All his band members participated, dropping beats and raps over the wonky beats. Cole the Guitarist even performed a continuation of Das Racist's hilarious “Shorty Said” — “Shorty said she wants to have a twosome/That's gruesome.” When they finally left the stage, the crowd shouted for an encore while Darwin and his band struggled between their nonconformity (encores are such an overdone routine) and the pressure of their fans to give them one last goodbye, which they did.

Darwin has a few US dates left before he heads to the UK and Germany, followed by an extensive Australian tour in April. His self-titled debut has been out for nearly a year, but is now getting it's official US release through Lucky Number on February 22nd! Cop it at your local record store!

Darwin Deez - Candyman (feat. Donovan Deez) (YSI) from the Wonky Beats Mixtape

Previously: Darwin Deez Q&A

GIVERS at The Biltmore

GIVERS were just starting their new single, “Up Up Up” when I arrived. It was love at first listen back in 2009 when I was among the first to hear and write about them, but this was love on a whole new level. Some bands are great on record and still manage to multiply their energy tenfold for their live show. The song began with an insane drum intro, then frontman Taylor Guarisco's vocals crashed in like a hurricane, rolling his eyes back and jumping around like a mad cowboy.

They started with their lead single, and things only got better from there. Tiffany Lamson, the other side of GIVERS' boy/girl vocal team, wowed the crowd with her dynamic vocals and instrumental ability, quickly jumping from drums to glockenspiel to ukulele. Halfway through the set, a couple of members from headlining band Ra Ra Riot came onstage to accompany GIVERS on violin and electric cello. Unless I missed it at the beginning, they didn't play my favourite, “Ceiling of Plankton”, which was the only downside to one of the tightest and most creative live shows I have ever seen.

This was the last show of their tour with Ra Ra Riot, but check them out at SXSW in March and Sasquatch in May! You can download their debut EP and a new promo for their upcoming debut LP at their Bandcamp page.

GIVERS - Saw You First (YSI)

Darwin Deez Q&A and Tour Preview

Darwin Deez is best described by random YouTube comments. Watch one of his music videos and you'll find comments like “i feel so much more hipster after watching this video”, “hes so retardedly happy” and “This guy is definitely Moss of The IT Crowd.”



He has just started his first headlining tour in North America and we'll be seeing him on Monday at The Media Club in Vancouver. Before his tour kicked off, we wrote him to answer a few questions.

SK: Hey Darwin! Glad to have you here on Silence Killer, if only by email. I understand you're back home in North America for another tour. How was the UK tour with Little Comets?
DD: Love those guys so much. They are so so so sweet. And manly. We had a good time prank calling their music biz contacts at 2 am in a Travelodge. And they rock.

SK: A lot of bands are terrible at describing their own music within traditional genres. Tell me about your music, using big and unusual words.
DD: It's heliocentric and electrochemical...not. Ummm, it's minimal. If i say it's minimalistic is that a bigger word? It's simple and funkadociously fresh. I don't like big words, I guess. I like to be very clear and specific as much as possible! I always just call it homemade, authentic indie pop/rock.

SK: Math time. ____ + ____ = Darwin Deez. First things that come to mind. Don't say MGMT + Yo Gabba Gabba. Those are mine.
DD: Thriller + Dismemberment Plan?

SK: Where do you go when your creative parts are in need of new inspiration?
DD: I don't know. Chapel Hill, North Carolina, I guess. My parents' house, in other words.

SK: I think your jheri curl/pornstache combo is a perfect fit for the Deez steez. Do people ever make awkward comments about it, or tug your curls to see if they're real?
DD: Thank you! It's something. I like the way they both frame my face so I've kept them. And it's good to be recognizable in this business. And yes comments, and yes tugging.

SK: What do you do in the "green room" to prepare yourself before your set?
DD: Eat Asian food, I guess. And hope it doesn't sit too heavy in there while I'm dancing around like an idiot!

SK: Often when I go to a concert, the band says that they love the audience and it's their favourite place to play, but sometimes I think they just say that to every audience. What is your actual favourite place you've played?
DD: Seattle. But Vancouver was also a great show (that's the stage persona talking). We were opening for Bishop Allen and Throw Me the Statue last year and we actually got encored. As an opener!

SK: Tell me one popular band/singer/musician you're into right now, and one not-popular one. Then tell me your favourite album of 2010.
DD: One popular band I'm into is the Floyd. I'm having a moment for Dark Side of the Moon this week. A not popular one is my friend Jacob Ciocci's noise band, Extreme Animals. My favorite album of 2010 is Shut Up, Dude by Das Racist. Their first mixtape. Genius.

SK: I love your lyrics. You definitely stand out, lyrically, amongst the bands I'm into right now. What is the cleverest line you've written?
DD: Sweet, thank you! I think it might have been this rap couplet: “Rayanne Graf takin' a spray tan bath with Ray Bans on / the gay man's gone / for Christmas / Ricki / chasin' Angela Chase / wish she / was my so-called wife.” But you have to be a My So-Called Life fan to get it. Maybe “You are a radar detector...[because] you are always looking out for me.” That one's for everybody, but again you have to be familiar with an uncommon piece of electronics to get it!

SK: That's all! Any parting words for my readers and your fans?
DD: Please come to our show in Vancouver and check out myspace.com/friendsband and listen to “Friend Crush.” This band of our buddies will be gigging with us and it's one of my favorite songs of 2010. It's actually worth visiting myspace for!



Darwin will be at The Media Club in Vancouver on Monday, supported by Fol Chen, followed by twenty US dates, ending in New York City. Pick up his self-titled album anywhere or come see him live! I hear he likes dancing.

The Dandy Warhols at The Commodore

The Dandy Warhols have always been a guitar band. There was the exception of their sixth album, 2003's Welcome to the Monkey House, which was an electropop side-project in all but name, having been produced by Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes. The record label took things further than The Dandys were comfortable with, resulting in the band releasing the original mix of Monkey House in 2009 as The Dandy Warhols Are Sound. The Monkey House version of the album is actually better, but it's still a bastardization of who The Dandy Warhols really are—a rock band that has spent their career caught between the post-grunge underground rock snobs (mostly journalists) who think they're sellouts and the psychedelic stoner rockers who love them anyway. In either case, they're not an overproduced pop band, but The Dandys really don't give a fuck. Sure, they were never major label material anyway, but whatever—now they have their own record label and all the benefits from years of major label publicity.

When it comes to their live show, they still just do whatever the hell they feel like doing. They began the show with no entrance, no lights were dimmed, but as soon as they walked onstage, they went into a distorted, noisy and altogether monstrous version of “Be-In”, the opening track off their sophomore album Come Down. “We're a dramatic shoegaze band that plays music so epic that your whole body will hear it when you close your eyes. Just kidding! Now we're a pop band!” No one actually said that, but they went straight from the throbbing massiveness of “Be-In” to their electropop hit “We Used to Be Friends”, aka the Veronica Mars theme song. But, rather than playing it the way Duran Duran intended, they made it a guitar song, and did an OK job of it.

By this point, the cloud of smoke over the stage from the smoke machines and the cloud of smoke over the crowd (of a more natural origin) had joined. Everyone was blazing and I was starting to feel high just from breathing. I don't know exactly where the Dandys lie between stoner rock and alternative rock or grunge or whatever, but in Vancouver, all rock is stoner rock. Call them what you want, but the Dandys are rockstars. We came to see a rock show and damn if they didn't give it, playing song after song from all over their discography, drinking and bantering between songs about how they were going to take all 900 of us at the sold-out show to Morrissey's for the afterparty—200 people inside and 700 on the street, having a toke with the band. But mostly, the just rocked out nearly two hours. At some point around the end, it looked like they were going to finish with some ridiculously random beatboxing and sound effects back-and-forth between Court and Zia. I think they played something after that, but by that time I was too exhausted, thirsty and high from second-hand tokes to remember or to take notes. No encore necessary—I think one guy yelled “one more song!” and then realised that the Dandys had just sated us with a show more than twice as long as most bands will do nowadays.

Catch The Dandy Warhols in Seattle tonight (Friday) or any of their six remaining west coast dates!

If I just introduced you to the Dandys for the first time with this sweet review, here's a couple tracks to get you started.
The Dandy Warhols - Be-in (1997) (YSI)
The Dandy Warhols - The Legend of the Last of the Outlaw Truckers AKA The Ballad of Sheriff Shorty (2008) (YSI)

Cosmo Jarvis - Gay Pirates

The last time we reviewed Cosmo Jarvis, he was singing a charming song about Melanie, the girl next door and the grimy-but-cute boy who is in love with her. Cosmo is back with a fiery new single “Gay Pirates”, which is well, a love song about gay pirates. He brings on the charm once again, turning whatever you'd expect from the title, into a tragic ballad of two swashbuckling lovers.

Buy the single on January 23rd or pre-order it now from Cosmo Jarvis, where you can also download an acoustic version of the song! The single is the first from his upcoming sophomore album Is the World Strange Or Am I Strange?, slated for late March 2011. If you're in the UK, he has a few upcoming live dates before Christmas!

Cosmo Jarvis - Gay Pirates (Acoustic) (YSI)
Cosmo Jarvis - Gay Pirates (Live) (YSI)