Help Me Rhonda

It was a sparse early crowd at Lee's Palace for Montreal band Foreign Diplomats. That was too bad because their modern take on 70s disco/glam rock had some catchy guitar and beats a bigger, more dance-friendly audience might have enjoyed. Throughout their set, I was feeling a bit Miike Snow.

More people heard the second band Curses though they weren't quite as compelling. To be fair, they were a young pop-punk band with a small repertoire of tunes. So their exhortations and hype to the crowd came off as either oblivious or obnoxious, depending on your temperament.

It was a respectable but not sold-out crowd for the album release of The Balconies. So I don't know if it paid off financially for them to put together a special 9-member band for tonight, but their fans had a great time. The Balconies had gone silent for a while after their second album. Their recent show at Yonge-Dundas show-casing music off the new album Rhonda didn't impress me. Tonight they also concentrated almost exclusively on the new music but it worked better this time round.

 There were several reasons: fans who already knew the lyrics to the new songs; a bigger, more robust sound system; and backup singers, synth, and a horn section added interesting layer and texture to their continuing move to a mainstream sound. Though The Balconies have sanded off their off-kilter indie edge, they can still write catchy hooks and refrains on numbers like Money, Money. Jacquie Neville was still a magnetic front-woman with her big voice and guitar chops. The Balconies ended their set with Guilty Pleasures, a worthy sing-along replacement for Do It In The Dark, with its invitation of "I don't want to keep you up all night but I've been drinking".