Lazy Sunday

At the corner of College and Rusholme stood Marquee Video, a small independent video store specializing in foreign films, arty oeuvres, and other obscure movies. It lasted a few years but the neighbourhood hadn't fully gentrified yet, making it hard for to grow that niche market. The store is now a vintage clothing-and-record shop called Of a Kind, selling vinyls (both old and new) and various older items such as clothing, jewelry, shoes, and other knick-knacks.

Sunday afternoon, it hosted a series of 40 minute acoustic sets for NXNE. This was probably one of the smallest officially sanctioned NXNE site. I dropped by after Yoga to catch 2 of the bands. Hands & Teeth's 4-part harmonies would seem to be ideal for this setting and it was. The set gave the band a chance to break out the acoustic instruments including guitars, violins, recorder, and intriguingly a tiny pump organ. This instrument had about 2 octaves and was operated by pumping furiously two foot pedals. Their sweet harmonies filled the tiny space with layered music. Although with all the going-ons, Kevin Black was at his limit and had to sing one octave lower than usual for one song, unable to do his "girly-man voice" as Natasha Pasternak pointed out with a laugh. They ended their slot with a new song called Easy.

Next up was Lovely Killbots. Instead of sunny pop, they were all about catchy industrial dance-pop that oddly enough, also worked in the enclosed space. At first, during setup, it sounded like Ryan Beatty's aggressive drumming might overwhelm Lauralee Love's parts. But during their set, everything came together. It was perhaps a bit too early to dance, but toes were tapping.

I thought about staying for other bands but with all the events at NXNE over the last few days, I needed to get home and catch up on my sleep.