Johnathan Rice and Jenny Lewis perform with their band Jenny and Johnny at the Kool Haus in Toronto on October 21, 2010.Jennifer Roberts for the Globe and Mail
Band of Horses
- With Besnard Lakes and Jenny & Johnny
- At Kool Haus in Toronto on Thursday
They tripped the iPod-shuffle fantastic. Three bands, with no affiliations or musical connections, brightly delivered a show of college-rock charm and modest heroics at the wide shed down on Queens Quay East. What brought them together could have been promotional practicality or maybe a marquee-builder's whimsy. A romantic might say it was kismet; let's go with that, why not.
The triple bill opened with a short, lapel-grabbing set from Montreal's Besnard Lakes, which shook with beautiful muscle. The quartet paints in big psychedelic swoops, with souring falsetto vocals, nocturnal Beach Boy harmonies, cosmic contemplations and crunching, electric musicianship. It was progressive rock from the light side of the moon - Brian Wilson, let's say, propelled by nuclear afterburners.
Built around husband-and-wife duo Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas, the group's last two LPs ( The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse and The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night) both earned heavy Polaris Prize consideration. The band was much more confident on Thursday than I've seen it in the past - boding well, perhaps, for its own headlining shows in the future.
Up for the middle set was Jenny & Johnny, which is not an Elvis Presley movie, but the duo of Jenny Lewis and Johnathan Rice. Lewis is the acid-tongued former child actress who once co-led the indie-pop group Rilo Kiley. More recently the Cal-pop specialist has released a pair of dynamite solo discs. At Kool Haus, Rice and Lewis almost exclusively presented material from their declaratively titled debut album I'm Having Fun Now.
The two at work are true duetists: They swapped instruments and sweet vocals; they shared harmonies, winks and glances. The upbeat scrunch-punch of Scissor Runner contained a line from the mischievous Lewis - "I'll forgive you if I outlive you" - that demands inclusion into your more entertaining wedding vows.
The night's main draw, as mentioned, was Ben Bridwell and his players. Band of Horses, to the approval of the crowd, assuredly delivered its brand of emotional roots-rock. Bridwell sang in the shimmering register of Supertramp's Roger Hodgson or My Morning Jacket's Jim James.
Band of Horses' material draws on country and southern rock influences, but the moon-lit upswell and pristine surge of something like Is There a Ghost presents the group in its most flattering and affecting light. That tune came from its second album (2007's Cease to Begin), as did the soundtrack-friendly ballad No One's Gonna Love You, a mournful minor-key vow made during a relationship's downside.
The group's third and latest album is Infinite Arms, but all night the Horse faithful called for The Funeral, from 2006. It came as the final number, and though Bridwell's atmospheric vocals work better as sound than as lyric-deliverers, the audience clearly knew the words - "At every occasion I'll be ready for a funeral."
A down note to end on? No, it was a communal and a satisfying sendoff to a night of music brought not by mass media but organic popularity.