Ghost of Christmas Repasts

For the last post of 2015, I'll cover meals that I've had over the last several weeks. Being the Holiday season, there was more group dining than usual. It all started with 4 lunches at work.

The first was a Thursday lunch at Sashimi House. Despite being a low-end sushi joint and tucked inside a  nondescript suburban plaza, it was packed for lunch. I had one of their "boat" ($17). It seemed like a good deal for miso soup, salad, ice cream, tempura and 14 pieces of sushi. But it really wasn't. Most of the sushi were maki rolls (12 pieces), and the extra sides were run-of-the-mill. For contrast, Mazz Sushi offers a similar combo for $14 with a selection of all nigiri rolls.

The following Thursday, we trekked to Richmond Hill to have dim sum at Dragon Boat Fusion Cuisine. It was a first for some people, but a second time here for me. Astonishly, 24 dishes only came to $130 with tax and tip. That was about $13 per person, an amount that you can't even get for a cheap brunch outside of an old-school diner. Yet the service was prompt and the dim sum top-notch: flavourful and huge.

For the 3rd Thursday, we decided to have an office pot-luck. There was the usual mix between store-bought (e.g., Portuguese chorizo rolls, samosas, latkes, veggie dip platter) and home-made dishes (e.g., chili, vegetarian lasagna, ice cream, carrot cake). The trick is to select options that complement each other. Finally and out-of-the-blue, we had Nando's chicken on Tuesday thanks to Corporate largesse. Perhaps it had something to do with the recent surge of staff turnovers.

Just before Christmas, I met up with friends at The Works in Ottawa. I don't think the gourmet burger trend has come to the Capital because this chain could use some competition. There was nothing wrong with my $15 patty, covered with horseradish and goat cheese. But for a joint that does nothing but burgers and the usual sides (fries, onion rings, etc.), it was decidedly bland. I suppose if I was the young teenagers on a double-date a couple of tables over, I might be more excited over the ambience.

There was no turkey for Christmas day. Instead, it was a pot-luck lunch of chicken wings, asian cabbage slaw, Ethiopian-style samosas (brought by myself from Toronto), Vietnamese rice rolls, sweet meatballs, and more. The variety made for a nice meal. But I did get my turkey after all. A few days later, I had leftovers at a friend's that included turkey, mash potatoes, gravy, and even cranberry sauce. There was also home-made salsa and a slice of savoury tourtière.

The rest of the Holidays was spent eating home-made food and sleeping the afternoon away (with a yoga class here and there to keep the weight gain reasonable).

National Arts Carols

On Friday, I was at the NAC for their Christmas show. The orchestra would typically play some Holiday-related music as well as collaborate with other performers. This year, it was folk singer David Myles and jazz vocalist Emilie-Claire Barlowe. It was an evening of hits and misses, though luckily more of the former.

In an effort to expand from the usual Christmas songs, the NAC played other music. Of the 3, I only enjoyed the Fantasia on Greensleeves. Kozaky (an 8-bar traditional song) was too slight to stretch to several minutes, and A Charlie Brown Christmas was nostalgic fun but seemed a bit anemic.

David Myles' music veered between bittersweet (It's Christmas) and silly (Santa Never Brings Me a Banjo). But though a genial and funny musician, the amphitheatre was too large for his quiet songs. Emilie-Claire Barlowe was a better fit. With her festive gown, soaring voice, and assured presence, she was at home on the stage. Overall, she was best with just her band. Their samba take on Sleigh Ride was the highlight, with its joyful complexity and fun. The slower tunes such as The Christmas Song made the best use of the swelling orchestral arrangement and Barlowe's bright voice. The other numbers bored me with their smooth jazz feel. I couldn't help but think of Bry Webb's collaboration with the "Massey Hall Band": a meld of pop and orchestra that didn't sound like elevator music.

Barlowe was raised an anglophone from English-speaking parents. But being gifted with such a "beautiful French name", she has lately begun to learn the language, even putting out a French CD a few years ago. So she thrilled the bilingual crowd with a few chansons including a cover of Diane Tell's Si j'étais un homme. At the end of her set, Myles joined Barlowe for a duet or two, ending the night with a crowd singalong of Silent Night.

What Child Is This

On Friday night, the monthly Long Winter show was bumped to the next day for Maylee Todd's Virtual Womb. This local musician has always dabbled in visual/performance arts and she has enlisted her friends to collaborate in an evening-long performance piece. The venue was packed and a number of people lining up outside couldn't score any last-minute tickets.

True to the title, Roxanne Ignatius has created a giant vulva, complete with patchy hair, to cover the entrance to the main hall. Inside, the audience was encouraged to remove their shoes, spread out blankets, and get cozy. Before the show, the ceiling projection played a CG gestation from fertilized egg to fetus while the speakers emitted a thumping heartbeat.

When Maylee Todd and her backup vocals (Maya Kiltron, Genevieve Marentette, Janelle Monique) came out, they stayed on the floor with the crowd. The stage was reserved for the string section and various dancers. Each song was accompanied by a trippy, funny, or psychedelic montage shown overhead. So some people chose to spend the whole evening lying back in relaxation. I switched between looking at the videos, and watching the band, especially the funkier numbers when Todd joined the dancers in some tight choreography.

Todd debuted some new songs (Poetry of Intuition, Lonely), older material (Successive Mutations), other projects (Downtown from her Maloo incarnation), and a couple of covers. There were some sloppiness and rough spots here and there. The projector cut out for one performance, some songs ended abruptedly, and for one tune, the strings fell completely apart and had to be conducted back in by Todd. Overall though, it was an interesting show with well-integrated music, visual arts, and dance. 

Samples In Distress

I haven't been to Sneaky Dee's for a long time, partly because they don't book as many live shows as other venues, and partly because it's mostly a dive with poor sound. Thursday night, there was a Red Bull-sponsored event, moved over from Adelaide Hall.

All three acts used pre-recorded tracks (or at least samples) augmented with live vocals. Bad Channels unfortunately lived up to their moniker. Sneaky's doesn't have great sound, and playing music through your Mac won't help. But it was the slightly flat, out-of-tune singing that ruined this set. I hope that it was due to mostly to lack of stage inexperience. They had equipment trouble and had to abort early.

Animalia had a similar set-up: a guy on drums, a female singer, and samples and tracks being triggered. But it was a night and day experience. Actual musical gear made controls easier, the drummer's manic pounding kept the energy high, and Jill Krasnicki was a force of nature. Belted  notes, low trance-y chants, random twitches, it was a theatrical performance but rooted in percussive synth music.

Head-liner U.S. Girls was even more old-school: Meg Remy manipulated samples being played through an old cassette player. Although she book-ended her set with more avant-gard, chromatic songs, her music wouldn't be out-of-place with 60s girl bands. That is, if you kept the sweet sound, but feed it through crazy electronic glitches, thumping bass, and make the lyrics a whole lot darker. Appropriate then, that her pixie haircut, and high-waisted denim outfit, seemed to invoke Joan Jett crossed with Lesley Gore.

Crazy In Love

On Friday, I was at the Burdock for a 7 pm early show. Performer Ben Caplan (and his Casual Smokers) had booked this space on short notice after they were invited to appear on CBC's Q. But despite being up since 5 a.m., Caplan was his usual manic self on Eastern European-tinged folk/pop songs like Belly of the Worm and Beautiful.

His antics seemed to have infected some of the other musicians as well. The capacity crowd ate up the great music. On this occasion, Caplan did do 2 unreleased songs that were pure pop: a "Bublé-style crooner" called On a Night Like Tonight and a hopeful ballad (Can't Hold Back Spring). But the most significant change is the recent addition of singer Taryn Kawaja, which I first heard at a First Play show. Her light alto, and piano riffs, provided a calm counterpoint to Caplan's wild singing. When she sang co-lead on tunes like Seed of Love and 40 Days And 40 Nights, she transformed them. I regret not being in town when he came through on an album release tour because she had an opening set that night.

The early start time and on-the-dot finish was due to the fact that they rented their backline for Q (and this set) and had to return the gears before 9. So they skipped the usual "faux encore". Caplan asked the crowd if they wanted "quiet" or "crazy". Crazy won, though he noted that "was an unfair question, crazy is always louder". But he gave the audience both: the aforementioned ballad and Stranger, a fan favourite complete with loud piano banging. I hope they didn't have to pay any damages on that rental equipment.

On A Steel Horse

A local radio station hosts a series of benefits Christmas concert called The Jingle Bell Series. On Thursday, I went to the Danforth Music Hall for the 1st show of the season. The headliner was husband-and-wife duo Whitehorse.

Although there were lots of instrumentation on stage including the usual drum kit, synths, guitars, and bass, there was actually no backing band. They played it all themselves, with the help of loopers, by moving from instrument to instrument. This gave a lot of their music a rhythmic quality (Sweet Disaster, No Glamour In The Hammer). But even with just the two of them on guitar, there was usually a propulsive push in their songs. It wasn't a surprise that they will be putting out an EP of blues cover because numbers like Devil's Got A Gun (with guest throat singer Tanya Tagak) clearly showed their influences.

Whitehorse claimed they've never had guest performers for any show. Because being married and touring together, their set always felt like a personal moment between them. But tonight, in addition to Tagak, they brought on several performers: Dreimanis and Fay from July Talk (Tame as the Wild One), a lucky fan on guitar (Downtown), and Doucet's father (Little Walter's My Babe). For the final song during the encore, they covered Gun Street Girl. They flubbed a lyric but as McClelland pointed out: "I mean, Tom Waits' lyrics, damn". Whitehorse certainly aimed for the same sort of timeless story-telling quality in their work.