mtroads

I got a call from Brad on Monday night asking if I wanted to see Sloan. He had won free tickets from BlogTO and was wondering if I was interested. Naturally, I was. Before heading down to the show last night, I did a quick search and determined that the show was part of the Live at the Orange Lounge series for Sympatico/MSN’s music page. After taking in Sloan’s performance for the SunTV program Beautiful Noise and their impending album release (Parallel Play was released yesterday), I was confident that it would be a short set with nearly all of the setlist coming from the new album. Anyways, I headed on undeterred. Sloan live is a lot of fun regardless of the era they draw material from.

After taking the short street car ride down Queen Street to the Tattoo Rock Parlour, we got in line with about 50 people waiting for the soundchecks to finish up so we could move inside. Upon entering the building, I was surprised to see a fairly small space with a stage at the East, bars at the North and South and bench seating along the West wall. After a few minutes of waiting, an opening band came up and proceeded to play a few songs. I think they were called “Will Curry & The Country Fresh” but I can find no record of that band existing on the world wide web. They were a bunch of high school kids, that were maybe 16, playing some piano-driven, 70’s-inspired pop. The guitarist looked like a younger version of Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock. Anyways, they were pretty good for a high school band and were off the stage quickly, only running through four songs before giving way to the headliners.

After a brief break, Sloan were introduced. By this time the place was packed, although there were probably only around 150 people there. They ripped through three songs off their new album (I’m guessing all that they got paid for) and left. After a few minutes of vocal encouragement, they came back to play Coax Me, The Good In Everyone, The Lines You Amend and two more songs off Parallel Play. They were the typical, slightly unorganized Sloan that we’ve come to love. When they played they were tight, but between songs they seemed unsure of what to play next. Chris Murphy looked like he loved the attention and Jay Ferguson looked like he couldn’t get off the stage fast enough. The crowd was very receptive to the new songs but didn’t really come alive until the first few notes of Coax Me where everyone started singing along to one of the band’s most quotable songs. “I drink concentrated OJ”, “It’s not the band I hate, it’s their fans”, etc.

It was a short night but still a lot of fun for the price. Oh yeah, the highlight of the night may have been when Brad realized they were selling pints of beer for $3. Not even the Done-Right Inn sells them for that cheap.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 at 7:53 am, and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.