Tokyo Police Club with Hexes & Ohs and Spiral Beach @ the Horseshoe

Damn, I'm getting old. It's gotten to the point at which every new band I see looks like they're straight out of high school. But I guess like most fields that rely on innovation (e.g. art, math, science), the best work is done when the person is young. Not that any of the bands at the sold-out Horseshoe last night were particularly innovative, but they were all a lot of fun and were accomplished performers.

Well, except for Montreal electropop duo Hexes & Ohs. I still maintain that they need more confidence in their singing. I suspect that it's part of their charm, though. They're very wistful and earnest, and a full band and better singing chops would change their sound entirely. Perhaps for the better, because I do like their songwriting, but it would make them an entirely different band. At the moment, it's only the two of them on guitars and synth and their hardworking MacBook.

They only played two songs that I recognized off of Goodbye Friend, Hello Lover. I hope that means there'll be another album soon as I liked all the new material. Set highlight: Edmund Lam suddenly dropping to the floor to play a guitar solo on his back. We didn't see that coming at all.

NOW Magazine cover children Spiral Beach got a mixed response from my posse. We agreed they were good, but not original. We all heard different influences, ranging from Kate Bush to Garbage to Bjork to the B-52's to '60s psychedelia and '70s prog rock. Me, I had terrifying flashbacks to last month's Fiery Furnaces' show. I thought they were an impressively tight band, and the obnoxious theatrics amused me, but the songwriting was harsh to my ears. As K. pointed out, they were best when they had a melody to play with.

Set highlight: what seemed to be Ma and Pa Beach standing on a bench just to the left of us, filming the show and dancing.

By the time Newmarket post-punk-rawkers Tokyo Police Club took the stage, I was tuckered out and I suspect that everyone else was too. It was really hot, and there was more than one person who was a little smelly. Set highlight: none, really. They rocked out pretty well, but there wasn't any one moment that stood out for me. I was likely distracted by the number of people who kept squeezing by me as they were coming or going.

So despite TPC's strong performance and the appreciative audience, this was the first show I've been to at which the people didn't clap for an encore immediately after the band left the stage. (Although considering that the A Lesson in Crime EP has seven songs and is only 20 minutes long, maybe no one thought there was any more material to play.) I felt a little bad about joining the mass exodus -- it was TPC's last show of 2006, and they'd probably hoped to go out with a bang -- but damn it, there were people crammed into every nook and cranny in that place and I wanted out.

Hexes & Ohs website
Hexes & Ohs on MySpace
Spiral Beach website
Spiral Beach on MySpace
Tokyo Police Club website
Tokyo Police Club on MySpace