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

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

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.