Bruce Peninsula, Adverteyes, and Del Bel featured in Kazoo! #192
The persistence of Americana, as a musical genre, is sometimes a tricky thing to pin down. On one hand, purist roots seem to permeate the (often-bearded) self-awareness of the big folk band/collective/family format. On the other, some artists seem to pick the most salient, malleable aspects of the genre and spin them into innovative, compelling works that both resist and intervene with the constraints of America’s folk tradition. Thankfully, the Kazoo! event at eBar on Sunday night, Oct. 6, achieved the best of both camps, with an evening of powerful, exciting music that innovatively engages with that fairly specific label of “folk” music.
Adverteyes, a Guelph-based synth-rock band, launched the evening’s music with their unique blend of electric guitars, Krautrock-flavoured drum loops, and engrossing synth tones. Their genre and lineup-shifting sensibilities are most apparent when the electric guitar is thrown into the mix – these timbres, as mentioned before regarding the idea of “folk,” have a certain organic quality that dances deftly around the blips, bloops, and blorts of their synth-informed final product. Usually a larger group, in addition to the synthesizers and drum loops, it seems that whatever capacity Adverteyes is playing in, they know exactly how to provide an in-depth sonic experience.
Toronto-based Del Bel took the stage shortly after. Performing music off of their latest album, Oneiric, the group’s music is reminiscent of Nick Cave and Rickie Lee Jones’ intangibly dark storytelling, set against a backdrop of richly and distinctly cinematic music. This largely stems from Ira Zingraff’s smoky, film-noir provoking muted trumpet and singer Lisa Conway’s sultry, soaring vocals, but obviously this could not be as effective without the rest of the band’s impeccable groove and attention to texture. Again, the folk tradition is certainly present, but it is not entirely formative of their sound.
The evening’s headliner, Toronto’s Bruce Peninsula, is a large collective of musicians. So large and sprawling, in fact, that they’ve featured Canadian indie hard-hitters such as Taylor Kirk (Timber Timbre) and Casey Mecija (Ohbijou) in their short history as a group. Case in point – not having realized it until it was pointed out by a friend – I was surprised and pleased to see/hear Tamara Lindeman (a.k.a. The Weather Station) as part of their current four-part backing vocal arrangement. With a group this big, and with a lineup so ever changing, it’s really a testament to the core of their musicianship that they have made such a distinctive, familiar sound for themselves. This sound is informed by a number of seemingly disparate parts – rhythms influenced by African funk and pop, lyrics written and presented as matter-of-fact, prosaic storytelling, and a huge, full rock band sound, evoked by seven singers and a rock-solid rhythm section. As an added plus, fuzzy, friendly frontman Neil Haverty also provided some humourous stories about “almost getting into a fight,” a story that resonated with myself, and surely with other histers of meek stature in the audience.
In a fairly rare feat, it seemed that Kazoo! had gathered three groups that were entirely different in their musical approaches, but offered a night of music that, as a whole, fit perfectly to ring in the autumn weeks. Can we even call them autumn months at this point? Regardless, the evening made for one of the most cohesive Kazoo! events of recent memory, and a few hours of simply great music.