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Welcome to the inaugural edition of Bird’s Eye View - a new Canadian culture column here at Raw Story. I’ll be filling you in on a variety of topics from Toronto, Canada’s largest city, from music to politics to midget arm-wrestling tournaments. So for all you ex-pats living below the 49th, or all of you interested in a little slice of Canadian life, keep tuning in to Bird’s Eye View.
NXNE - Canadian Music Has Arrived
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By Adam Elliott Segal | Raw Story Columnist
TORONTO -- So you’re 19 years old and you’re living in Madison, Wisconsin and you’ve just finished your 2nd year at college and you see Sarah Harmer is playing at some music festival....in Toronto. And then you see it costs only $22 (Canadian!) for an all inclusive wristband and you’re legal to drink and the greenback still pulls some weight up north, so you hop in a car, drive 10 hours, and there you are, at the 2004 North by North East Festival, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
400 bands in 3 days at 27 clubs in Downtown T.O., and all it’s cost you is a little bit of Saudi-oil along the way.
NXNE is the Canadian cousin to SXSW in Austin, Texas (www.nxne.com). Both are festivals that showcase new indie-rock talent, as well as welcome back artists that have launched their careers through such festivals.
I had the pleasure of bar-hopping for 3 nights with my swanky delegate pass, sweating and standing and soaking in mostly female singer/songwriters, of which there are a multitude in Canada today, all extremely talented in their own right. Sarah Harmer led the charge as one of the headliners, playing Thursday June 10th at Lee’s Palace to kick off the 10th anniversary of NXNE. Ten years ago she was just hoping people would show up at her gig. Now she had a sold out crowd, and seemed like a queen. Her first song declared “we are like pendulums,” and seeing her angelic frame hum these words, it seemed apt as a theme for the weekend.
Canadian independent rock is at the forefront these days, and people like Harmer and Broken Social Scene are finally getting some street cred in the US. Not that any of these musicians are looking to the US of A as the all saving grace for their careers with the Canadian music scene as strong as it is, but a healthy US profile has never hurt record sales. BSS played a sold-out show in Austin this year to 2000 people, and are now headlining the 2nd stage at Lollapalooza. Their Canadian label, Arts & Crafts (www.art-crafts.ca) is on the cutting edge of signing, nurturing and releasing some of the best music out there right now. This was readily apparent when Arts & Crafts musician Feist hit the stage at the Reverb Friday night to headline the NOW Magazine Showcase (http://www.listentofeist.com). It was packed. The buzz had been on for days. Let me say her name again so you remember. FEIST.
A former Broken Social Scenester herself, Leslie Feist has arrived from Calgary-via-Toronto and now holds court as Parisian royalty, recently recording her latest album "Let it Die" in the French capital. I’d listened to “Let It Die” four days in a row prior to NXNE, and I was still unprepared for the magnitude of this rock star. Easily she has the best voice out of any woman I saw this weekend, maybe in the country. Haunting and melodic, bare and soulful, her presence and form entirely bewitching. If Harmer’s the queen, then Feist is easily the goddess.
She arrived on stage, just her and an electric guitar, plugged in, and immediately began fiddling with her sampler and a tiny drum machine, looping her own voice through a second microphone which allowed her to record several layers of music at once. The room expanded. Eyes looked up at the demure figure on stage. Feist was here.
She is drinking-wine-at-midnight-in-the-summer music. Stare out the wintry window post-breakup songs. That layered space in between your dreams.
Whatever happened in Europe is magic. She is rock art, post-modern 70's pop, gorgeous and fiery and talented. Songs like “One Evening” and “Leisure Suite” capture a fleeting sense of another time, and you imagine yourself in another city, sipping Merlot on the boardwalk, lover in arm, smoking cigarettes and speaking another language late into the night.
At several moments during her short 30 minute set the room was absolutely silent, and she reminded me in the midst of all this music what it is to be a true artist.
Other highlights that night were both Maple Music artists (www.maplemusic.com), another down-to-earth label that fosters musicians as artists rather than manufacture them like car parts. Kate Maki is a school-teacher-turned-musician, while Nathan Lawr has been a staple on the Can-rock music scene as a respected drummer, and has now released his first solo album. Both are hybrids of rootsy, crunchy rock, humble and inviting both as musicians and people. Lawr’s “We Go Down” was easily was one of the highlights of the weekend for me.
So it was on the fire-escape turned patio just before the Feist set when I met the girl from Wisconsin who had come all the way up here for NXNE. She wasn’t the only one. We regaled each other with tales of the weekend, musical surprises and wacky stuff like the near fist-fight between the fire-twirlers and bible-thumpers outside of one of the venues, or the girl running around with her punk boyfriend shouting “whip my boyfriend’s ass for a dollar!”
Ah, downtown Toronto. It never gets old. Always something new and exciting. Much like NXNE and the Canadian music scene itself. There is something for everyone. You can’t possibly see everything, so you just make your decisions and ride the wave. And along the way, maybe on a fire escape (which was more hazard than escape) you get someone from Wisconsin to fill you in on what you missed.
Canadian music has arrived. It’s no longer a fad. The be-the-cool-kid-on-the-block-syndrome is still virulent. So google, search, find and destroy, whatever you can. You won’t regret it.
Adam Elliott Segal is a freelance writer living in Toronto.
