Space Is The Place

Thursday night, I went to Burdock for some live music. First up was L Con. The more I hear their "experimental space folk", the more I enjoy their airy arrangements but anchored by solid bass and beats. To be fair, those drums come from cheap pre-programmed synths. But when you have excellent music on top, they don't sound so cheesy. Tonight was no different. The only downside was that the newer stuff like the bluesy song about "getting rid of ghosts" and a funky "space jam" wasn't available for purchase.

The head-liner was Paper Beats Scissors. This band, augmented with some extra players on french horn and violin, is fronted by Tim Crabtree. Although based in Halifax, his English burr could be lightly heard in his stage patter. I've found the sound here to be excellent but tonight I was partially defeated. Crabtree comes from the "white man screaming" school of singing, and I had trouble making heads or tails of his lyrics. The arrangement themselves were Arcade Fire-ish anthems. That is, sparse and slow passages that grew in sonic layers and then gradually diminished. Unfortunately, with the majority of the dozen or so songs having the same characteristics, I zoned out after a while.