In-Flight Safety & Raising the Fawn @ The Lamplighter

So last Monday I was getting ready to head to bed, but decided to check My Yahoo for any new news stories. I found an interesting article on the CBC Radio 3 blog and proceeded to read it. If you have ever been to their site you will know that when you get to the page a music play starts streaming tracks. Usually I have other music playing already and turn it off right away, but since I was on my way to bed I had already shut down my music and decided to let it play out. The track playing was a track by Raising the Fawn that immediately caught my attention. I loved it, it was like a mix of post-rock with indie and a whole bunch of experimentation. So the next day I got a couple of their albums and checked their tour dates, and low and behold they were playing Thursday night. Now Thursday night I was already somewhat planning on seeing Wil and Shaun Verrault play and also heard that Kytami was doing a gig that night too, so their was no shortage of good shows going on. However Lester and myself decided to take a chance and check out these two Canadian bands we had never seen live before.

Well I can honestly say I made the right choice last night, the show was really excellent. The first band Mico wasn’t anything too special, however they did make a big pile of instruments at the end of their show very reminiscent of Trail of the Dead. In-Flight Safety however was very fantastic. This group out of Halifax with their dreamy songs really impressed me, and put in a really solid closing 3 songs.

Raising the Fawn was last up, and before they started playing they had some serious issues with the sound. Really brutal feedback out of the speakers and such. Eventually they got it somewhat together (the keyboard didn’t work) and closed out the show. They put on a solid set as well, playing some really epic live sounding tracks like Carbon Paper and Until It Starts Again. They didn’t appear to have a setlist, and just seemed to make it up as they went along. The drummer was great to watch, as he had some really funny mannerisms and hit pretty damn hard. My only complaint of their set was that it seemed a bit short, but that could be that I was just really into it.

It really amazing me lately just how many good musicians there are out there. Just in Canada alone we have so many (like the 2 bands tonight), and it is sad to see that so little people know about these musicians. It was a bit of a shame seeing the place only about a quarter full for these excellent musicians.