Somebody's Watching You

concert review: Matt Mays and El Torpedo w/ In-Flight Safety @ Harbourfront Centre(Toronto, Ontario), August 19, 2005

Damn tornado warning made me miss the Jon Rae and The River instore at Soundscapes yesterday. When things cleared up, I decided to check out In-Flight Safety and Matt Mays and El Torpedo who were playing a free show at Harbourfront as part of their East Coast Rhythms festival. Toronto blogger A tear that hangs... has raved about this Halifax band for a year now comparing them to Coldplay. And you know what? Damn, do they remind me of Coldplay. If you're into introspective but anthemic Brit pop-rock such as Coldplay or early Radiohead, you'll probably like In-Flight Saftey. Actually, the vocalist had more of a muscular vocal style at times than Coldplay's Chris Martin or Radiohead's Thom Yorke and reminded me more of The Verve's Richard Ashcroft especially on their single "Somebody's Watching You". Their tunes featured alot of meaty pop hooks courtesy of the fine keyboard arrangments and guitar playing as well as solid percussion and bass lines which kept things interesting. Most of the songs hovered within that atmospheric pop-rock territory but the band performed a good cover of The Inbreds' "Any Sense of Time", elevating it from the original bass guitar/drums setup into a fleshed out band version including guitar and keyboards. I wonder if NME and any other of the Brit music mags/rags have caught onto In-Flight Safety, because I think music fans in the UK would just eat 'em up. I mean, I was somewhat disappointed in missing the Coldplay show in Toronto recently, but then In-Flight Safety's set yesterday made me forgot all about that. Apologies to the band for all the Coldplay comparisons, but fine set overall.

Matt Mays and El Torpedo were up next. It's too bad that the tornado warning earlier in the day kept attendance yesterday evening lower than expected. However, the seats did fill up somewhat more after In-Flight Safety's set. I'd only seen Matt Mays and El Torpedo live once before when they opened for The Thrills at the Phoenix in May 2004. The Son Volt-country rock stylings of their performance in 2004 seemed to only be half there yesterday. Yesterday evening's set had more of a Neil Young and Crazy Horse-vibe. And there lay my disappointment; I'd prefer the former over the latter. From song to song there were alot of guitar change-ups from electric to acoustic and back and I thought the keyboards in particular were top-notch. Matt Mays said they appeared on Muchmusic's MuchOnDemand, earlier in the day; I wonder if the kids even knew who he was? And what I wouldn't have given to see the band perform their sound check during the afternoon, as Matt said that the storm was quite intense and was throwing the boats in the harbour around like "soap in a bathtub". [photos from the show]
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Brooklynvegan has some lovely photos of Stars who opened for Death Cab For Cutie @ Summerstage in New York City.

The Hamilton board over at Stillepost says that Mr. John Cale will be at Corktown Tavern on November 16th, which leads me to believe that if he's coming to Hamilton he must be coming to Toronto also.

Grab a bunch of Magnetic Fields songs covered by other artists over at Copy, Right? while you can. [via One Louder]

Here's a torrent(registration required) of a recent live show of The Pernice Brothers at Middle East Downstairs in Cambridge MA on August 14, 2005.

Dinosaur Jr. perform a live session for KEXP today at 3 pm PST[6 pm EST]. Listen online.