Japanther and Telefauna

Much thanks should go out to Blue Skies Turn Black for having sought out and tunneled plein de cool into Montreal here over the years. They teamed with Friendship Cove to throw the birthday party that shook city blocks last week; here’s my quick little review with some photos from Marilis Cardinal.

Telefauna was singalongloudable, catchy and dear, despite missing Tyler Rauman’s beats, raps and dapper hats. Graham Van Pelt played live drums with them instead, and it worked. According to Ian from Telefauna, it was actually really cool to feel the songs with live vibrations in the air. Drums and drum loops are differently energizing kinds of things. I love watching a full house enjoy Telefauna, the weird match rock changes in time signature are matched by adjustments in the dance energy and there’s always a bit of a stutter, restart and smile and then dance-even-harder.

Math rock does not always have this effect, sometimes the odd is not danceable, too much head, not enough body, for me anyway and for the grumbly but nice Americans I met at the foot of the crazy stairs at Friendship Cove who liked Telefauna but held their ears and shook their heads confused by the rest of it.

If Telefauna nailed it, then for most of the university-aged crowd that night Japather blew it’s pants and socks off. They rocked the venue on it’s edges. The crowd was so tightly packed that the frenzy that hit when Japanther played made the room like a tempest in a teacup, huge waves rocking from side to side, crashing against the stairs, walls and soundboard. Epic.