[Part One, in which I review a Connan Mockasin
concert] OK I went to see a Connan Mockasin concert in Toronto,
Ontario on Monday the 13 of January, and I wanted to review it but
instead I am just going to list the facts.
THE FACTS:
1) Connan Mockasin is a highly
psychedelic rock/R&B band from New Zealand. They are currently
based out of London. [That's two or three facts in one. Additionally,
the “band” is largely the solo project of Connan Tant Hosford,
who records in a collaborative manner and assembles touring groups
for performances, and I am just going to refer to him/them as “Connan”
from now on.]
4ish) Connan has been active on other
continents for a few years (including opening for Radiohead on their
2012 Australian tour), but the Toronto show was part of their first
run through North America – a short stint of six shows in five
cities.
5) Connan has amassed quite a catalog
of releases and collaborations and hype, but there are two primary
documents: the 2011 album Forever Dolphin Love (which is very
exploratory early-Radiohead-meets-Ariel Pink lo-fi bedroom jazz) and
2013's Caramel (a slow and sexy R&B concept album,
psychedelic-still, but sounds more like 90s slow jams on BET,
performed by a scrawny white guy with a superlative falsetto).
6) I've blogged about the band a couple
times, and as a result, received a Press/Photo Pass +1 for the
Toronto show from the band's North American publicist. I invited my
friend Ben as the Plus One because 1) he is nebulously Canadian and
Knows Toronto, 2) he really, really got into Connan after I showed
him some YouTube clips, and 3) he has a camera.
9) Before I left for Canada, I took
some brain drugs (Ben drove). We arrived at the venue [The Drake
Hotel Underground, in Toronto's bohemian West Queen area] at 8:30PM.
The show was scheduled to start at 8, but we doubted that Toronto
shows are any more punctual than Buffalo shows, so we blasted a pint of Canadian whiskey in the car before ambling towards
the venue.
11) At the Hotel, I inquired about
being On The List. The lady at the door had a laptop but didn't have
a List (or at least she didn't consult the laptop [my story was
foolproof, though, so she let us in]). There were only a handful of
other people there at that point, and it was all music
journalist-types and the attractive* ladies that they'd invited on Plus One
(some of the journalist-types were female, but everyone seemed to
have invited an attractive lady except me [though Ben With A Camera
is pretty attractive, and well-dressed**]).
13) A moment before the Connan set
began, the bandleader himself, Hosford, was at the bar. He was
flirting with an attractive lady and having a drink. He appeared to
be drunk or high, but in a good way. He was wearing a weird sherpa
hat, and didn't seem ostensibly concerned if the flirting was going
to lead to intercourse. The opener, Brendan Phillip (an avant-indie
two-piece, which I want to call avant-rap because it reminded me of
Odd Future even though they didn't actually really rap, and they were
really good, and they only played for a few minutes – doing the
whole “Leave Them Wanting More” thing [which worked because the
first thing I did when I woke up was look them up on the internet])
had just finished. I looked to Ben, and we asked each other aloud,
“Are there two openers?”
16i) But, no. Hosford quickly abandoned
the bar and went to the stage. He dicked around with his guitar for a
second, misleadingly high and drunkishly, as the rest of the band
came out. By that point, the venue was packed***. I wondered if the
set was going to consist of his demented bedroom lo-fi stuff, or more
recent, slow-jam sex-funk material.
16ii) The exact moment in which the
first kick drum and bassline set in, the two attractive ladies in
front of us instinctively took off their shirts.
16iii) For legal reasons [Ben and I are
in relationships] I should explain that the shirt-taking-off ceremony
wasn't a sex thing: it was more of a demented psychedelic thing. But
it was cool.
17) Footnotes / Key. ***- Literally everyone
at the show was *- attractive and **- well-dressed. There also wasn't
that Repressed American thing where if you stand too close to a guy's
girlfriend, he glares at you for the rest of the show.
18) The band played three songs from
2011's Forever Dolphin Love (“Faking Jazz Together”, “It's
Choade My Dear”, and the titular track). The rest of the set
consisted of sweaty sex-jams, but stylistically they managed to blend
the seemingly-exclusive genres. It all sounded sexy and sharp and
psychedelic.
20) But here's the thing: I hate when I
get into a “psychedelic” band because the term has been co-opted
by shitty Jam Bands so when I tell people that I'm into “psychedelic”
bands the conversation gets into Burning Man and Bonnaroo and fucking
Disco Biscuits. Psychedelic Music should be about exploration, and
function as the opposite of repression; you should take off your
shirt, and sneak dominant sevenths into as many chords as possible to
add suspense, and have agreeable question marks hanging over your
head while a deviant smile creeps into your cheeks. On the other
hand, “Jam” gets recidivist and insular, and repressed and
repetitive.
20ii) Over the last decade, a lot of
Pet Sounds-influenced West Coast and Austin bands have been
reclaiming the concept of Psychedelic by marrying garage rock and
freak folk, which is light-years better than Jam, to be sure. But Connan
seems to exist in a vacuum; it offers no analogues or
contextualization. It's similar, in spirit, to Syd Barrett; songs
that don't present anything besides word salad and slew of signs, and catchy guitar-play/pop-writing –
unpredictable and alluring, and spacey and
obscure, and super-question-mark-inducing, and it doesn't Mean anything. And it
“doesn't mean anything” On Purpose, so you're just left with this
catchy, jazzy vacuum music. It's just psychedelic, and sexy, and
sharp. And when they're playing live and getting sweaty and taking clothes off, the band is tight. So. I was initially bummed that
Connan didn't play Buffalo on this tour, but in the back of my head I
felt that, even if the best Buffalo people set up and populated the
show, it would have been far too repressed and awkward.
98) After 45ish minutes, Connan had
finished their set, but it was clear that no one wanted it to be
over. Also, and I should have elucidated this at an earlier outset,
but throughout the show, Hosford seemed to be trying to get everyone
naked, and did weird, suggestive psychedelic sex stuff with the
audience and his band. So, as the band was trying to figure out what
else they should play for an encore, the bandleader went down into
the crowd with his guitar, and got everybody to lay down on the
sweaty ground together before they kicked into another sharp and sexy
foray, and then everyone jumped up for a few more songs.
100) Outside, after it ended, everyone
was cool. No one acknowledged the show out loud. No one was mad that
somebody stood too close to their girlfriend. Cabs pulled up; a cable
car went by. Ben and I felt ashamed that we were American, and that
things like that didn't happen in Buffalo. And then we finished our
cigarettes and left.
[Part Two, in which Ben takes a video of the band performing the song "It's Choade, My Dear" and in which Ethan Calabrese edits the video to include shots of cats:]
~ Photo and Video by Ben Maries
a superlative review. thank you.
--anonymous
sounds awesome, thanks for the review! in my experience you're much more likely to get the repressed and awkward crowd at a toronto show then in buffalo ...i will say that it may be more a function of the type of shows i see up north, no need to cross the border and get weird seeing shitty jam bands