The Jack Stafford Foundation

Artist: The Jack Stafford Foundation

Where: NXNE- June 18, 2010- The Cameron House

Who: After a lucrative but unfufilling career as a copywriter and a stint as a fashion designer in Amsterdam, Jack Stafford has reinvented himself as a "troubador" from "no fixed abode England".

What: As a solo artist Jack Stafford calls himself a reductionist but he is much better described as a sardonic contemporary storyteller. His music is topical in nature and delivered in humourous punchlines with a voice that lends itself to the gritty realities it exposes.

Performance: The Jack Stafford Foundation opened up with an introduction that involved the crowd as a choir on stage. He invited them up, taught them the lyrics to the chorus and cajoled them into singing with fervor. In breaking the divide between entertainer and the entertained, Stafford found a sympathetic crowd for his world weary numbers The Hard Way and Claustrophobia and also an enthused audience for his sarcastic wit in 20 Century Baby and A.D.D.

In between numbers he quipped about the behaviour of the crowd and told the stories behind the creation of his songs. The relevance of his material to trendy news headlines and contemporary social issues, like A.D.D, the obesity epidemic, dysfunctional governments, relationships and families, provided an instant connection between Stafford and the small niche crowd he had gathered off the street. He was a welcome relief from the previous artists at the festival, as he went beyond the topics addressed by the others, mainly relationship woe, to address an edgier perspective on the banalities of the everyday existence in western society.

What is really unique about him as an artist is how the context of his life as a muscian is applied to his product and how he reflects his sarcastic and amiable personality in his craft. His lyrics reflect the ennui he succumbed to as a fenced in office copy writer, to the wanderlust he felt as a fashion designer, the rollercoaster ride of loves won and lost and his current fulfillment as a couch surfing troubadour.

But while Stafford's stark and humourous deconstructivist lyrics are good, he is just not much of a vocalist. His limited sonic range and tonal dexterity became evident by the third number, when his novelty wore off. In the studio versions of his songs he buffers his handicap with back up vocals and additional instrumentation. In his live performance, reduced to the merits of his voice and acoustic guitar, his limitations are made painfully apparent.

He could play in a bar for a song or two but a steady diet of him would be hard to take. It would be a welcome act anywhere in between more serious muscians as an audio palate cleanser or audience cheerleader.

For ten months Jack Stafford has been living out of his backpack and guitar case during his North American tour, No Fixed Abode. After examining the bare contents of his entire travel pack, which consists of an iphone, two pairs of shoes, three interchangeable pairs of clothes, a swimsuit, a ziploc baggie of vitamens, travel sized toiletries from motels, an Irvine Welsh novel of short stories and a tiny travel guitar that looked like a distorted ukelele, I asked him if he'd seen the movie Up In The Air. He said he was very much like the Natalie Keener character, at the beginning of his tour he carried his own pillow, for his "bad back", but quickly realized that he was carrying too much baggage. He has since became adept at shedding all of the non-essential comfort items, like girlfriends, pillows and shoes that require socks.

Song to listen to: Claustrophobia and

The Hard Way

Jess McAvoy

Artist: Jess McAvoy

Where: NXNE Festival- Toronto ON- June 18, 2010- The Cameron House

Who: 30 year old singer/songwriter from Melbourne Australia.

What: Jess McAvoy laments love and relationships while bringing her backstage personality on stage in soulful rock ballads.

Performance:

Jess McAvoy needs to take a real risk in her music and display the powerhouse blues rock goddess that she keeps dumbed down by creative coasting. We want loud and we want proud and when Jess McAvoy gives us this we want more, now.

McAvoy is one of those artists who sounds better stripped to the raw essential elements of acoustic performance. In removing the superfluous instrumentation from her songs she is reduced to her best, highlighting her vocal dexterity and tour- tenured musical wit.

How the Hell, a blues inspired powerhouse anthem about unexpected romantic connection and ultimate obsession, created a high expectation for the rest of her performance. She drove the beat into the floor with a rebellious stomp and shook the walls with her riotous wailing "How the hell d'you get into my soul...". Her voice was so powerful, on even the softest of notes, that you could feel the bass of her vocal tenor moving through your bones. She made effortless transitions and flawlessly maneuvered through minor slide scales with such vigour and with a perfected tone that hearkened back to a young Melissa Ethridge.

What started off with such a bang became a disappointment as she moved away from the visceral clap of her piece de resistance and towards the more mundane folksy compositions of The Hard Way, The Sailor and easy. The rest of her performance was anti-climactic, leaving me to wonder why she chose to demonstrate her best piece first, when none of her other songs could compare in either their innovative composition or in displaying her undeniable talent.

Jess McAvoy's more subdued and lackluster songs demonstrated a form of musical apathy, as they all entertained the same imagery, engendered the same emotions and were composed almost identically in narrative and melodic stylization. Her performance after How the Hell left a bitter after taste. All else was comparatively weak and stylistically uninspired, no matter how she performed it; she outshone herself in the first number. It is as if we're watching her dumb her musical ability down for herself. She sings what is obviously easy for her to create and perform with minimal work. With a little more risk and ingenuity she can stun the audience with her triumphant personality, impressive vocal dexterity and soul rattling lyrical and emotive musical translations.

Song to listen to: How the Hell

Luluc

Band: Luluc

Where: NXNE Festival- Toronto, ON- Friday June 18, 2010- The Cameron House

Who: Unassuming folk duo, Zoe Randell and Steve Hassett. Originally from Melbourne Australia, now based in Brooklyn, New York.

What: Minimalist indie folk music that is delivered with a perfected sense of tone but otherwise delivers the familiar romantic and emotional tropes of this kind of music.

Performance: This duo's mix of vocal mastery and vacuous performance left me cold. While Zoe Randell tuned her guitar and warmed up with the first verse of each song from their set list, Steve Hassett concerned himself with perfecting the subtlest of sound nuances, the likes of which only he could hear.

That said, musical perfectionism counts for something. Their acoustics sound delectably rich and intricate and it displays their vivid imagery with the simplest of sonic analogies. Luluc's ability to impress the mixed crowd with the sheer beauty of their musical landscapes and intricate melodic design was best exemplified in Little Suitcase and The Wealthiest Queen. From the gentle timbre of Randell's voice, to the vaulting resonance of Hassett's vintage guitar, Luluc's musicality is an exact science executed with the scope of a musical sniper aimed at simple elegance.

Luluc's music left me unsatisfied despite its mastery. Luluc's withdrawn and introspective personality translates on stage into a docile, wispy performance. They manage to relegate the audience to its bare function; as a passive-receptive witness at the mercy of the artist's creation.

The similar sound structure of their musical cache lulled me into a stupor, which I would still be in now if the Jack Stafford Foundation had not come on next, to clear our audio palates. They must shake things up on stage or experiment with other audio styles in order to differentiate each song from the next.

Song to Listen to: Little Suitcase

Hedley

You know you are old when you go to a pop-rock concert and there is no lineup at the beer tent. This was the first disparaging event at the Hedley concert Monday night at the Air Canada Centre. As we rounded the corner of Front and Bay and joined the throngs of shrieking, hyper- excited teenage girls I knew my twenty-something companion and I were in trouble. Trouble, because I had underestimated the audience demographic and also because I tend to rant about the degeneration of North American society and the Facebook/ iPhone generation. There we were twenty something totally aged and exposed by the sea of teenage conformity that was ebbing and flowing, tittering and tweeting all around us.

The ACC packed up quickly for the sold out performance. A quick look around gave me the distinct nightmarish impression of being trapped in a funhouse mirror maze where all the cajoling reflections look exactly like Ashley Tisdale. Our seats were slightly off centre and bordered on all sides by mom chaperones and fanatical screeching tweens. The ten year old behind me took some great photos but had an unearthly wail that left ringing in my ears for the entire opening sequence by Hedley.

The best music of the night was played as a backdrop for the Alliance films summer screeners, which they showed ad nauseum at each intermission. Since most of the pubescent audience around me was too busy texting or updating their status on Facebook with their iPhones, I doubt they even noticed the previews.
Besides Hedley’s appearance, I was most interested in the climate in the arena. I watched as the wave slowly died off after eight laborious laps. I heard the petulant chant of impulsive adolescents “Hedley…Hedley…Hedley” burble up five rows behind me and spread stadium wide into a deafening command to appease the masses.

I watched, in abject horror, as the Urban Outfitters crew three rows ahead of me (uniform: thin bow tied hair bands and super long, pin straight, side-banged hair) spotted the Urban Behaviour crew seated three rows behind me (uniform: black eyeliner and black lace stockings under cut off distressed jean shorts). The iPhones were out in a flash, for a horrified moment I thought the Urban Outfitters crew was deconstructing my outfit on Twitter. The phones got passed around, texts were sent and at the next intermission the lead Urban Behaviour-ite directed an insecure approval-seeking smile-wave towards the Urban Outfitters crew leader who promptly snubbed her and then texted about it to some clean cut dude named J.J.

Teenage girls scare me.

Fefe Dobson

Seriated by squeal appeal and talent, Fefe Dobson, Stereos and Boys like Girls opened for Hedley. Fefe Dobson is Canada’s take on Miley Cyrus, except she’s brown and spastic. The set went downhill when she stepped on the stage. She entered stage left to the opening of Jimi Hendrix’s "Foxy Lady", a maligned tribute to her own self- importance. There were about five people who were actually eager to see her perform. The entire performance felt like she was playing dress-up for her high school talent show. This was definitely a case of trying too hard.

She isn’t a rockstar and I am not sure why she insists that she is one, or who she thinks is actually listening to the pitchy relationship diatribes that she calls songs ("Bye Bye Boyfriend", "In your Touch"). She pelvic-thrusted, fist-waved and front kicked her way through each song. Her moves were an amalgam of Hannah Montana’s cutesy gesticulation and Mick Jagger’s reverent epileptic fits. Every now and again she would pose on her knees in tribute to the rock gods who are most definitely shunning her from their golden circle.

All of her songs are maladapted to her vocal ability because they are written for someone with a more gravelly cadence. The only song where she demonstrated any vocal aptitude was the first verse of "Bye Bye Boyfriend", which she has been singing for 7 years so it should be perfected for the stage. The pressure of a live performance can make or break a vocalist; it is her job to figure out which songs she can sing live. She either sung too low to be audible or she sung too hastily to show off the average talent that she does possess. She should relegate herself to pop ballads for which her voice is infinitely more suited. With the right type of song she could be as ordinary as Ashlee Simpson.

For all intensive purposes this should have been the right crowd for her uninspired, run of the mill, ex-girlfriend anthems, except that she couldn’t hold her audience because there was no connection. The crowd gave her the most applause when she announced she had two songs left. There was a sense of relief when she got off the stage because now everyone could get back to the important tweeting she’d rudely interrupted with her theatrics.

Stereos

Stereos took the stage after Fefe Dobson's negligible performance at the Hedley Concert April 5, 2010 at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto. Front man, Pat K, may think he’s part of something novel and exciting but there was nothing novel or exciting about this generic electronic-pop band. With such poorly composed hits as "She Only Likes me When She’s Drunk" and "Summer Girl", it is little wonder they haven’t transgressed away from their tween fan base.

Pat K’s bleating vocals perverted the already chaotic juvenile quality of their ‘live’ performance and made every song sound like a continuing verse in an epic tribute to musical banality. For some reason, probably to validate their musicality, they actually have a basic band setup with drums and electric guitars on stage. I’m sure at some point in the creative process Stereos actually used instruments but because the composition is so heavily processed and each song sounds alike I'm not totally convinced (as I should be with a live performance) that some computer in the back isn’t generating the entire set.

In terms of performance, the lead was too fussed about messing up his glossy and super straight man-mane to exert any action. This left the on-stage action to the two guitar and bass players. They demonstrated their showmanship with such hackneyed moves as mounting an the amp and proffering their instrument to the crowd; mid-riff rock style jump-splits and homo-erotic, gender bending guitar duets. I suspect that without the trendy synthesized vocals, or the high energy, rapid fire pacing of the rap-like lyrics, or the ingeniously catchy choruses, “do wah, do wah, let’s make this happen”, the Stereos would fade into the oblivion that they ultimately belong in.

Boys Like Girls

Boys Like Girls garnered the most energy of the opening acts at the Hedley concert at the ACC, despite being the most depressing and angst ridden. Within seconds my view of the stage was obscured by the enthusiastic bouncing and all-hailing of the adolescent enthusiasts. They had a more fine tuned stage presence than either of the other headliners, Stereos or Fefe Dobson. With the amount of estrogen being screamed their way, I think it’s safe to say that they are the Emo heartthrobs of the moment.

The live performance gave their music an edge that makes their songs almost complex. Live is the closest they are going to get to sounding like a real alt-rock band. Their set was a veritable sing-along. The ten-year old behind me was blasting me with her tone deaf rendition of "Thunder". I tried to sing along to the only song I’ve heard in passing, "Two is Better Than One", in a feeble attempt not to age myself. Instead, I managed to age myself more by proxy as the PG 13 chaperone beside me was also only singing at the same parts. It looks like we both listen to Chum-FM at work.

The lead, Martin Johnson, in his eyeliner and bed head, exuded the kind of heart-sick anguish that only 15 year olds can empathize with. He maneuvered the stage with the temerity of a fledgling beefcake, bedroom eyes at front row and posturing for the cameras. Wherever he moved on stage a trail of adoring fan drool would trace where he had been previously. The front rows received a hailing of guitar picks that the band kept chucking. This and their running monologue was the only actual connection they attempted with the audience. Not that the breast beating, hair pulling fans minded the unidimensional nature of the stage-audience relationship, they were already entranced by the band.

As with Fefe Dobson and Stereos, Boy Like Girls’s music also lacked creative range… depth… meaning. The theme of Boys like Girls’ music is totally expressed in their brand name. They have slotted themselves into the distressed-relationship rock ballad category which makes them perfect for this vapid age group as Hedley headliners. If relationship woes, "Two is better than One", and messianic fantasies, "Hero/Heroine", are the defining ideologies for teens why should BLG bother trying to produce anything that promotes genuine musicality or social messages? The girls already love them and they've lived up to their name.