Nightwood, Sandman Viper Command And Green Go At Green Room

Sunday, March 7th, 2010.

Warm enough to wear a cap instead of a tuque, but chilly enough to catch a cold if you forget to protect your neck. The perfect weather to be invited to see a live show and drink 12 Mooseheads while there.

Three bands, two I've heard of, including one that I fucking love and have seen live four times already. All three are launching their records that night, so that's a special evening in and of itself.

First up, Sandman Viper Command, releasing Everybody See This. Energetic, sarcastic, these cats are almost too-cool-for-school, though, at times reminiscent of Fall Out Boy, but maybe less playful. Their best songs are when they drop the chords and go riff-a-riffic, like Oh yeah, It's Fusion and Midwest Moses, in my opinion, as it's where they stop sounding like other acts and have a more distinct personality. The Metal I've Spent might also make it onto my Eternal Playlist.

I'll skip the middle-man for now and head straight to what was expected to be the meat of the evening: Green Go (say it fast five times, you'll realize it actually stands for ''gringo''). It's hard to evaluate their performance, seeing as their do-it-all member Ferenc 'Fez' Stenton couldn't make this part of the tour due to illness and was hastily replaced by Rouge's Kelly McMichael (check out their song Sex Money Revolution for an accurate sample) who learned the songs on the drive to Montréal. However, from what I did witness, I prefer hearing their music from a CD rather than live and through the sound system of a rock venue like Green Room, which is ironic considering their brand of dance-electronica-rock is made to rally crowds into chant-friendly choruses and jumping like it's the end of time. But the songs themselves, especially on record, are quite catchy. Cash Money Gremlins, particularly, had me knowing the chorus by the second time it came around, and was so lively it lead me to 'freestyle' another song onto it by the break, a hit from a few years back:

Sweat, baby, sweat, baby - Sex is a Texas drought
Me and you do the kind of stuff that only Prince would sing about
So put your hands down my pants and I'll bet you'll feel nuts
Yes I'm Siskel, yes I'm Ebert and you're getting two thumbs up
(...)
You and me baby ain't nothing but mammals
So let's do it like they do on the Discovery channel

That's right, it took me back to the Bloodhound Gang, although they are nothing like them apart from groovy. All in all, their songs are good, like as if Think About Life had balls or if The Killers had a vision - but the show didn't live up to their record. And they had to follow a hard act...

Which brings me to the pièce de résistance... Nightwood.

I'm not sure where to even begin with Nightwood...

I guess you should start with the record. Buy the vinyl, it comes with an mp3 download, and it is what it is. The artwork by Rick Leong shows big-ass waves on the front and depicts the bottom of the ocean on the back. That's it. So you can't help but just listen to the songs and make your own mind up about how you feel about them, through your own personal tastes.

If you don't heed my advice and opt, instead, to go see them live as your first contact with the band, you'll notice two girls with guitars, both singing, and a drummer with the most basic drum kit you've seen in a long while - don't be fooled: he is merely (and merrily) not pretentious, but he can (and will) bash with the best of them. His playing style is all about emotion, like he feels every single beat he plays, at times subued, other times just plain wild. He is at once Keith Moon, Dave Grohl and the Dresden Dolls' Brian Viglione. He is, quite simply, Jeremy MacCuish, drummer extraordinaire and the sexiest man in the bar that night.

On guitars and vocals, upon first eyeing the dual attack of Amber Goodwin and Erin Ross, your brain will immediately conjure up thoughts of Veruca Salt and/or Heart (even Green Go mentioned it) - don't. Stop that shit right away. Do NOT try to compare them to a major-label act you know - they're not it.

What they are is a tsunami of rock. As a matter of fact, many of their song are like waves, starting off slow and soft, and building into a roaring climax of screaming proportions, like Pearl Jam's Given To Fly or my own Let's Last Dance (sorry, couldn't find a better version).

You could tell early on that this crowd wasn't there for Nightwood, but the sheer energy their songs build up to got every one who left (say, to smoke outside or in the washroom) to come back in a haste and catch the wave, and get swept up by it.

Individually, there were definitely stand-out tracks: Skeleton Crew rocked the house HARD, Johnny was magnificent, Sunken Mountains was a terrific power-ballad that deserved a louder volume. And the very last song they played, I'm not sure what it's called (just because I've seen them before doesn't mean I'm familiar with all the new songs!), but featured some guitar heroics by Amber Goodwin and she two-handed finger-tapped directly onto her guitar's neck, Van Halen-style, just, you know, not cheesily.

Seriously, with a manic octopus on drums and two powerful angelic voices (the type of angel who can also slit your throat) playing wholly original build-up rock music, this is an act to witness many times.

And if you're not going to go for the right reasons - i.e. the quality of the songs - then at least go for the totally wrong reasons: Jeremy MacCuish could make your dead great-grandmother moist, Amber Goodwin looks like she was the model for the perfect doll your sister had as a kid, and Erin Ross is - by far - the hottest human ever to rock a Flying V/Kiss-inspired guitar, and just may be the sexiest person in rock, period.

Thanks to Meet You At The Show for holding this and inviting me to it, you can read their own review here, with even more pictures. Thanks to Nightwood for signing my record, as you can see here.