End of An Era

L Con

Friday night, one of my favourite local band, Hooded Fang, played their last show. Ok. That was a bit too dramatic. Over the years, this large group has lost one of its original singers, a backup singer/trombonist, and a change of drummer. But this show would see the end of Lorna Wright (singer/glockenspiel/miscellani) and Nick Hune-Brown (singer/piano). They were an essential part of the group's upbeat pop sound. But in recent songs, including those off the sophomore Tosta Mista, the lead Daniel Lee has taken Hooded Fang into more rock territories. With his extracurricular dabbling in punk (Tonkapuma) and other sounds (Hut), it wasn't clear about the group's future. Also, Lorna and Nick had made in-roads into other areas. I didn't know that they had written Ross Petty's Christmas pantomines for 2 years running (last year's Beauty and the Beast and this year's The Wizard of Oz.) Lamenting the pre and post transition of a local indie band? I have turned into a card-carrying hipster.

Speaking of hipster culture, the first band L Con is steeped in it. The 6-member band (3 singers, bass, cello, and violin) wore red make-up and played dreamy slow music that reminds me of Bjork's Homogenic sound. Their percussive beats were not generated by a synthesizer or drum machine but some sort of 80s analog musical device and a bulky cassette player. That's right, they played their backing track not from a Mac but a tape.

The second band Army Girls did the Julie Doiron reverse-White Stripes setup where the guitarist was the woman and the drummer was the dude. The singer was a tiny dynamo (first time I saw her was with jazzy Donlands & Mortimer) playing lots of catchy, driving chords. She had a number of songs that got people to dance, or at least bop along. The only problem was a sameness to her guitar sound that palled near the end.

By the time Hooded Fang came on, the Horseshoe was packed. They played almost everything from their debut album and also a few songs from Tosta Mista though none from their EP. Cuff The Duke came on to sing backup for the final number Den of Love. The old songs got the biggest cheers because of Lorna and Nick. They played one of their first songs, a unrecorded track 95% of their fans have never heard, and several new numbers. The crowd danced and sang to every tune, some of them a little too zealously from the combination of excessive alcohol and marijuana. Called back for an encore, Hooded Fang played their two biggest "hits" Highway Steam and Laughing.