Last Saturday was the first of the month, and that means it's time for another helping of Fryquency, the pop weirdness doled out monthly at Mugshots by Weird Canada, CHUO and CKCU's Debaser show.
First on deck was Montreal's Year of Glad, a trio founded and primarily staffed by A.P. Bergeron, whose music is by turns spooky, ethereal and atmospheric fairly often. That's A.P. at left.
Echoey vocal action!
Nick Laugher hits!
Glad action!
Cello action from Sweet Mother Logic's Justin Wright!
Nick works some electronics.
On to Scattered Clouds; for this set Philippe and Jamie were joined by Michael Dubue of The Hi Lo Trons (who also put together the video for their latest single,
Enchanteresse) and a bunch of keyboards. They have a show coming up at the Record Centre May 2, and release their new album,
The First Empire, on April 21. Now here's some feedback!
Michael works the keys!
Scattered action!
Philippe sings!
Limited space plus keyboards equals fisheye lens.
The whole lot!
Jamie hits!
Del Bel weren't quite as experimental as the opening acts; mining a pop noir territory. They released a self-titled album in February. There's enough of them that mandolinist Joe Ernewein had to perform off-stage (to be precise it's a "Mandocaster"). Behind him is bassist Tyler Belluz, guitarist Michael Brooks and singer Lisa Conway.
And here's trumpeter Ira Zingraff and drummer Adam Hindle, the other two members on hand (at full strength, the band stretches to a dozen, not counting backup singers).
Lisa sings!
Tyler is also the band's composer in-chief.
Slide action!
Extra Adam!
Michael frets!
The whole fisheyed lot!
A pleasantly diverse evening, where no band sounded like another but they all suited the bill.
