Keep it in the kitchen

Last week I made yet another visit to the House of Targ (and believe, there's more to come when I post my Surf & Turf photos), but this time it was for something a little out of my usual heavy metal-hard rock zone: A couple of Exploding in Sound bands, Stove and Dirty Dishes, made the trip up from the States to unleash some very dawn-of-alternative rock sounds on the Targ audience, with Bonnie Doon also making a post-partum appearance. Stove was on first, and made me think a bit of Failure crossed with Guided By Voices. Here's Steve Harlett, formerly of Ovlov.



Here's some bass-and guitar action



Percussive action!



More guitar!



Colour-contrasted action; bassist Alex Molini is also in Dirty Dishes.



Extra Steve!



The whole lot!



Instrument switching action!



Last time I saw Bonnie Doon was at Ottawa Explosion. They played a couple of other shows then went on pregnancy hiatus until guitarist Madison had her baby - this was their first show back in action, and they dressed up in a (mostly) monochromatic colour theme. Here's Lesley!



More bass with Sara!



Gripping action with Madison!



Keltie hits!



Closeup action!



Singalong action!



More guitar!



The whole lot!



I found Dirty Dishes to be quite an interesting outfit; they take a bunch of 1990s sounds (e.g. Sonic Youth, Nirvana, maybe a bit of Mazzy Star) and freshen it up for this decade. Here's frontwoman Jenny Tuite.



And once again, here's Alex.



Jenny definitely wins the best-pants-of-the-evening award.



Percussive action!



Closeup action!



Rhythm section action!



More Jenny!



More feedback!



Keyboard action!



The whole bendy lot!



Definitely a band worth checking out.