Behind bars

It was the first day of Canadian Music Week yesterday, and you know what that means: Various bands en route or returning from the big shindig travelling through town and playing shows. It also happens to be  CHUO's annual fundraising drive (it runs from March 8 to March 24, so there's still time to give to a worthy cause), and the two came together - sort of - with a free show at Mugshots from Montreal's Fire/Works and Calgary's Bleachers, both of which were excellent.

Fire/Works is a two-man operation whose CMW writeup makes them sound like either Calexico or Bon Iver. It's two multi-instrumentalists, Jonathan Peters and David Lagace, doing some nice , harmonized folk, mostly acoustic guitars and a bit of percussion, with some occasional harmonica and accordion thrown in.

It's handy having a righty and a lefty if you want to play in small space, I guess.


Fire/Works at Mugshots, March 19, 2013

And the view from the other side of the room.


Fire/Works at Mugshots, March 19, 2013

As for Bleachers, I got a very heavy Interpol vibe, mostly thanks to the mellifluous vocals of singer of singer Brett Sandford. Some folks have also compared them to The Strokes. I'll throw in The Watchmen as another possible touchstone. You can also see guitarists Jourdan Cunningham (of Mountaineer fame) and Lauchlin Toms, and drummer Andrew Hamill. Bassist Logan Juke is somewhere off to the left.


Bleachers at Mugshots, March 19, 2013

There is not a lot of space for a band to move around ...


Bleachers at Mugshots, March 19, 2013

That was swell. Unfortunately I quite forgot to have one of the tacos.