Upstairs, Downstairs

Wednesday night, Audio Blood Media was putting on a showcase featuring 3 of its artists at the Drake Underground. Upon arrival, I found out that there was also free music in the Drake Lounge. I spent the evening going back and forth between the two events.

At 9:30, Maylee Todd started indie music night at the Lounge playing a couple of songs with her Tenori-on. The darkened stage allowed me to finally see it in action. It made pretty patterns to match the programmed music, reminding me a bit of Conway's Game of Life. The most beautiful song, Downtown, had Maylee looped multi-layered harmonies with her pedals.

Then it was down into the Underground at 10:00 to catch Ben Caplan and the Casual Smokers, an outfit from the Maritimes. There was actually only one smoker, the drummer, as the rest of band couldn't make it out East. Caplan is a manic performer, cracking jokes and trying to engage the initially stand-offish crowd. Near the end, he commented that he was channeling an old Eastern European. That was my thoughts during his show, with his enormous beard, fun folk/gypsy style, and wordless refrain. He was a crazier Tevye.

I skipped out on Sandman Viper Command, having heard them a few weeks back. Up in the Lounge, Hill and the Sky Heroes was pulling off some catchy alien surf rock. That's what hey call their music, but the blues/rock songs were uniformly entertaining. The only catch was that similar to Caplan, Hill sometimes wrote some banal lines or strained metaphors when in search of a rhyme.

The night ended for me with the powerful trio The Balconies in the Underground. Once again, I'm amazed at how much sound and groove 3 people can make. It was too bad there weren't more people enjoying their jangly rock, but those of us who stayed love every minute. The fat bass got the slim girl next to me into some major pole-dance writhing, which was a bit distracting.