Patrick Wolf @ Mod Club (Photo Credit: Jackman Chiu)

I was having lunch with a friend around mid-afternoon, several hours before the opening shows of this year’s NXNE, when the rain began pelting the streets of downtown Toronto. I was woefully prepared for this weather; despite having checked the forecasts online days in advance, and arrived soaked at the place of another friend on Bathurst Street (where I would be basing myself and – occasionally – sleeping for the week’s festivities). However after toweling off and heading to catch my first of many shows, Patrick Wolf, with openers Jaguar Love, Plasticines, and Living Things, I realized that from the small crowd outside the Mod Club (a venue that I was eager to experience for the first time) that the weather had done nothing to dampen the spirits of concert-goers. This tour should have been called the “Blond(e)s Have More Fun” Tour. With the exception of the dark-haired boys in Living Things, all of the other lead singers (Jaguar Love’s Johnny Whitney, Katty Besnard of Plasticines, and the main man himself, Mr. Wolf) were sporting various golden coiffures. The lineup was curated by the folks at hipster fashion magazine (let’s call it what it is) NYLON, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a more eclectic group of artists on any summer tour elsewhere. Can you think of another tour where you’d see a freak electro-tinged hardcore duo, a French girl pop-punk group, a mopish-haired, anti-Bush, anti-religion garage rock band and a cabaret pop star all perform on the same bill? That’s what I thought. I can’t wait to see who these guys come up with next year to top themselves. Yet for such diverse styles of music, the acts all seemed to complement each other perfectly and the mostly all-ages crowd at the Mod Club were treated to a solid show. Ladies and gentlemen at NYLON, take a bow. You’ve deserved it.

Jaguar Love
Perhaps the most unlikeliest band to be on the tour, Portland duo Jaguar Love got the night started off with a bang, playing their party-starting anthems full of dirty guitar riffs and buzz-saw electronic flourishes. Anyone that has seen the band before might have noticed the former trio is now a duo, having gotten ridden of drummer Pretty Girls Make Graves’ Jay Clark and instead utilizing a drum machine, with the exception of“Highways of Gold” and one or two others, played all new songs. Lead singer Whitney’s high-pitched girlish voice is one that you either love or hate (depending on your feelings for the now-defunct Blood Brothers – there’s no middle ground), and with Cody Votolato (also in a pastel-coloured shirt) adding some honest-to-goodness melodies, they make for a high energy duo that has the possibility of self-combusting at any moment. The duo got the audience into it early by jumping into the crowd for a sing-along, and by my account, stayed on the ground for more than they were on-stage. Oh, and those two cardboard tigers (what, couldn’t Whitney and Votolato find any cardboard jaguars?) that adorned the stage during their set? Good call.

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/jaguarloveband
Website: http://takebacktheradworld.com/

Plasticines
Before the Plasticines started, I had my doubts that this was a real band, and not a quartet of gorgeous, waifish models plucked from the runways of Paris, and thrown money at to start a band by some fat cat producer. And while Andy Warhol himself couldn’t have came up with a more-perfect dream band, the truth is that these gals can play. The band takes their name from a lyric in The Beatles’ “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” (“plasticine porters with looking glass ties”) and are one of several Parisienne teenage bands, referred to collectively as “les bebes rockers”. Dressed in a black sequin dress, lead singer Besnard looks a little like Blondie, sings like Le Tigre’s Kathleen Hanna with the tongue-in-cheekiness of CSS’ Lovefoxxx (the band does have a song called “I’m A Bitch”), and got the straight boys in the audience wound up as she flaunted and teased. The rest of the band – guitarist Marine Neuilly, bassist Louise Basilien and drummer Anais – were dressed in long t-shirt dresses, leggings and flats, as if they’d stepped out of the pages of NYLONthemselves. To describe their sound as “riot grrl pop-punk” might seem like an insult but their songs, full of catchy hooks and bratty come-ons, definitely fit that description without making the Plasticines any lesser of a band. These girls may speak in French and sing in English, but any language barriers were bridged with their rockin’ cover of Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’”.

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/plastiscine

Living Things
Judging by the lack of people singing along to their songs, it was pretty obvious that the majority of the audience hadn’t heard of the Living Things before tonight. But that seemed to suit the band from St. Louis just fine; that just meant that they had to work harder to win the crowd over. The quartet (three siblings and one childhood friend) came out of seemingly nowhere to release the fantastic debut Ahead Of The Lions in 2005, which Rolling Stone named to their year-end best album list, and the single “Bom Bom Bom” was featured in a cellphone commercial (a curious choice considering the song’s anti-war themes). After that though, the band just disappeared into thin air and no one knew what they were up to until now. Touring behind their new album, entitled Habeas Corpus, the band was eager to bring their straight-up politically and socially-charged garage rock (Mama was a Black Panther) to the Toronto audience. They played a mix of older and newer material including the new single “Oxygen”, which with its huge drawn-out chorus, shows these guys might just have some stadium ambition after all. Critics decry these guys’ songs as sounding all the same, but Living Things believe in the “if it ain’t broke, why fix it” approach. After “Bom Bom Bom” got a rise out of the crowd – with Lillian Berlin shaking his hips in a manner that would suggest he’s spent some spare time watching footage of Mick Jagger in concert – the lead singer decided that it was due time to jump into the frenzied crowd. The biggest thrill of the night for me came when I was handed the microphone during the acronym-laden, “I Owe”, and I got to sing along after my voice had cracked from yelling a long time ago. Perfect.

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/livingthings
Website: http://www.livingthingsmusic.com/

Patrick Wolf
From the get-go, Wolf made it clear that this was his show, and everybody else was just lucky to be along for the ride. Dressed in an outfit that is impossible to describe unless you were there (but included smeared red glitter, a large black flower brooch, a high-waisted black trousers and a white overcoat – you can see pictures of the whole show at Chromewaves here, Wolf was determined to put his recent troubles with San Francisco police behind him and put on a memorable show. The bisexual singer easily commanded the stage with a theatrical performance worth of Bowie; snarling, preening, posing and singing on his knees. I wasn’t familiar with his music, but compared to the opening acts, Wolf has had a pretty prolific career. His set varied from sweeping folk-pop violin solos (“Damaris”) to piano ballads, and aggressive spoken word (the end of “Count Of Casuality”, were the singer howled “Ten thousand human lives”). Unfortunately the show ended on a sour note as Wolf threatened the sound guy, threw the microphone stand, and walked off during “Tristan”. Given Wolf’s reputation as a prickly character, there were no doubts in the audience that this wasn’t staged. Apparently after I left, Wolf eventually returned to the stage in nothing but an open shirt and a thong and proceeded to tear through several more tracks. Just further proof that Wolf is one singer that truly plays by his own rules.

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/officialpatrickwolf
Website: http://patrickwolf.com/

Woodhands @ Drake Underground
It started out as a “secret show”, but by the time I arrived at the packed-to-capacity Drake, its clear this set from Toronto’s favourite electro-poppers Woodhands was anything but. These guys have been on my must-see list of artists ever since I arrived in Toronto, so after waiting about half an hour to get into the basement of the Drake where they were playing, I was excited to finally see them live. They didn’t disappoint. Woodhands’ music is for everybody, from jocks to nerds to music fans. Dan Werb wields his keytar like its his….well, you know what, and exudes a confidence on stage that reminds me of a nerd that got into a party thrown by the cool kids. If Werb is the geeky brains of the group, Paul Banwatt (who also drums in the decidedly more-mellow The Rural Alberta Advantage) is the brawn, thumping away on the drums like there was no tomorrow. You can tell these guys are having fun onstage and it reflects on the crowd. Their chemistry was highlighted when Banwatt messed one of his vocals, and told the crowd that, “He [Dan] said its cute when I fuck up.” Back-dropped by a velvet curtain and a large disco ball, with movie projections on the walls, their set inspired tons of sweaty, alocohol-fuelled, spontaneous dancing. The crowd was treated to all the hits from the duo’s debut Heart Attack LP; “I Can’t See Straight”, “Under Attack”, their now set-staple cover ofEddy Grant’s “Electric Avenue (those shouting out requests for their version of were unfortunately turned down) and the thunderously received “I Wasn’t Made For Fighting”. Maybe it was the fact that I had abused my media pass to get into one of Toronto’s swankiest watering holes, maybe it was the several vodka and cranberries that I had tipped back, but this show was one of the week’s best.

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/woodhands