dimanche 20 Fév 2011, 11h47m

Sat 19 Feb – Rasputina, Brown Bird

Last night was like a masterclass in how not to start an evening. Dinner was unremarkable and slightly too big, and a horrible woman — think Sara Gilbert, crossed with a beluga whale, talking out of her blowhole — brayed at her boyfriend about his taste in movies the entire time. Walking back down the street, the strummy-folky-whatever-with-a-beard Brown Bird had been replaced as openers by the homegrown buzzkill of Ariel (still not the band described here, still no big loss). They were cheesy when they opened for the Legendary Pink Dots a couple of years ago, and without a bass player last night, they were cheesy and disorganized. Yay.

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate the late start times of shows in Toronto? "DOORS AT 9PM" is one of my least favourite things to see on a ticket, because it means that nobody will be anywhere near the stage until at least 10:00, which means that even a 40-minute set by the opening band will probably put the headliners on at eleven-something, which then makes for a panicked dash for the last train at the best of times. Factor in an opening band that has to light candles and pile Bombay Co. tchotchkes on every available horizontal surface to "set the mood", and that's a panicked dash for the train that starts halfway through the headliners' set. Thanks, guys! PS: It's even harder to take your tosspot exoticism seriously when the Japanese word for "urine" is belted out phonetically halfway through your last bit of foreign-language yodelling.

After an awfully long wait considering that they really only had to tune a couple of cellos, find the drummer's mallets and make sure that one another's cheeks were appropriately rouged, Rasputina finally got going just after 11:30. The affected banter between songs would probably get old if I saw them regularly, but considering how much their wonderfully odd sound brightened the room almost immediately, I actually found lines like "I just can't stop thinking and writing about feral children" kind of charming. There were a couple of less-than-ideal moments (mostly the crackling mic that Sound Guy said they steadfastly refused to replace and whoever felt the need to shout out a request for "Transylvanian Concubine" all of two songs into the set), but the thirty-five minutes or so that I got to see of them were lively and fun and, most importantly, didn't require earplugs. Not everyone would necessarily turn to songs about tragic accidents and cannibalism as a way to kick off a long weekend, but performed that well by a band with their own sound, I think it all turned out okay.