Van City

Man, vancouver is the shit. After work each day I walk around the neighbourhood called Gastown, which I now realise is like the king st of Vancouver. I bought another pair of nudies today, they cost a bit of change, but i want to start wearing jeans to work so thats how i'll justify it. See the photo to the right :) I went to go see The Antlers last night so I'll get the Vanthreviews rolling:

After sussing out which bus i had to take through the dodgy east vancouver, i was on my way to the biltmore caberet, which is an old (but apparently still in operation) burlesque house. Anyway, i walk in and the first song on the sound system is coin laundry - lisa mitchell, i thought to myself... i like this.

After downing a few $3 beers the support band hit the stage, these guys out of NY were called Phantogram. Wow were they good. Picture crystal castles with no drugs and with a sexy front chick. This boy-girl duo had all the charm of she & him, but cranked it a few notches higher. Hit up Mouthful of diamonds on their myspace. cool cool stuff.

After those guys i got to experience an automatic papar towel dispenser in the bathroom which i thought was abit unecessary. Came back just as The Antlers hit the stage. Quick background, most recent album is called hospice, it was written about a guy who loses a loved one to cancer. so yeah pretty intense.

Sum up the antlers in a few words; soft, powerful, surprisingly catchy.

After powering through a few of the notable tracks on the album kettering, and atrophy the set picked up abit, in line with the tempo of the album, tracks like sylvia and thirteen made the band transform from acoustic pop to garage grunge. The set then delivered the two best tracks back to back being shiva and bear, the latter is a killer, will have even old ladies jumping around. The antlers eventually went off stage to which i asked the nearest chick... "do canadian bands play encores...?", she looked at me like i was mental.

straight after the awkwardness settled down the antlers came back on stage to play a 10min version of wake which is like kettering: part 2. at the end of the set i was thoroughly impressed which the vibe of the crowd, the price of the beer and of course, the performance of the band. overall it was a great start to what should be a busy summer of gigs.