Review - Peter, Bjorn and John

Club Soda-Jan. 21, 2008

Another freezing night in Montreal didn’t stop local music fiends from venturing out on a Monday to hear the sweet sounds of Stockholm’s Peter, Bjorn and John. The band had to cancel a couple of shows last spring, so it had been awhile since they’ve had a chance to grace our fair city and enlighten us with their specific brand of Scandinavian pop-rock. The opening band was local favourites Young Galaxy, who got the crowd moving with their own brand of spacey, effects heavy rock. Their sound is nice and moody, and it complimented the headliners.

Once the main act took the stage, there was a definite feeling of excitement reverberating in the room-, these were big fans of P, B and J’s third and insanely well-received album ‘Writer’s Block’ and they were ready for a healthy helping of Swedish band’s signature pop. Which they got: sort-of. The band opened with a lot of the guitar heavy tracks off their first two LP’s, not the really up beat, dance-y stuff, which has defined their recent success. I think they might have been better off opening with something new to really whip everyone into a frenzy, but hey, that’s just me. When it did finally come time to bust out the hits, ‘Amsterdam’ and the whistle song from ‘Grey’s Anatomy’-I believe it’s called ‘Young Folks’, the crowd went wild. Kudos to Young Galaxy’s Catherine McCandless for singing the accompanying vocals with Peter-she did a bang up job. Overall a slow start, but once they got into their more recent work, the audience couldn’t get enough.

[sorry, no show photos, something about not-enough arm-bands, arm-bands needing a different list… here’s the video for the whistling song instead…]