Peter Bjorn and John with Au Revoir Simone and Fujiya & Miyagi
at the Phoenix Concert Theatre
Sunday May 6th, 2007
By Sal Hassanpour
At the end of science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke’s 1973 novel Rendezvous with Rama, we are left with the cliffhanger observation that “Ramans do everything in threes.” Apparently, so do overnight Swedish indie-pop successes when they’re putting together North American tours.
One
First up were Brooklyn-based, all-female keyboard band Au Revoir Simone. Dressed in polka-dot jumpers and purple tights, they had the retro-cute indie-girl look down pat. Cue all sorts of predictable drooling and palpitations from the guys, although personally it was my eyes that were swelling more than any other body part after seeing Heather D’Angelo stroke an Omnichord. Oh, be still, my beating synth-pop heart!
Live, Au Revoir Simone did not replicate the weepy, bedroom-soft production and so the synth-pop elements of their songs shone forth. Standouts included inaugural single “Through the Backyards” and a re-reading of this year’s The Bird Of Music album-closer “The Way To There,” displacing it from cute doo-wop to a cavernous, powerfully-feminine, all-member chant that not only answered what if Cocteau Twins used only Roland Juno-60 keyboards, but belied the girly band image as well.
Two
Brighton’s Fujiya & Miyagi followed, dressed in circumspect jeans and tees. What they lacked in style was made up by their mix of krautrock and synth-funk. Vocalist/guitarist David Best’s whispered delivery tends to creep the hell out of half the people who listen to their music, but made more sense live: he’s a strange character, delivering his biting lyrics with a face so blank that he can’t possibly know how funny they are. And yet his onstage persona is oddly compelling for that very reason.
Keeping their set very heavy on 2006’s Transparent Things, Fujiya & Miyagi kept the krautrock-revival tracks to band-anthem “Ankle Injuries” and a synth-tastic keyboard duet version of “Conductor 71,” favouring party tunes like album standout “In One Ear And Out The Other” instead. The crowd reaction was favourable, which by Toronto standards means that five people at the front of the stage were doing more than tapping their feet at a crowded and sold-out Phoenix. While we’re on the subject, the majority of the audience were familiar with the openers and what’s more, the concert did not smack of hype-mongering or a scenester-fest in particular. Instead, what we had was a good portion of the city’s segmented indie music population gathering together for a common band, which is a rare occurrence these days.
Three
Immediately apparent about the headlining act: they like to brand things. So behind all the performers was a curtain with huge, white-on-black letters reading:
Peter
Bjorn
And
John
The Backdrop
And much the same for the amps, bass drum, stage passes, etc. It’s that kind of wry humour that the band members portrayed when interacting with the audience, particularly the talkative Peter MorŽn, who had just turned 31 that day.
Those of you who bought the version of Writer’s Block with the extra CD will have identified the instrumental theme music as the band came onstage as “Sitar Folks,” a cheeky, Oriental-flavoured cover of what was perhaps the biggest indie single of 2006. I was convinced that its inclusion meant the band would not play “Young Folks,” having already disavowed it (reports from their most recent NYC gig suggest that half the audience there left once the track was performed). Those worries proved false, however, as Heather from Au Revoir Simone stepped-up to do a good (if hushed) imitation of Victoria Bergson.
Starting with a rousing “Roll The Credits” that threw away the stately acoustic strum for a faster, electric guitar churn complete with smashing drums and growling bass (by indie-pop standards, anyway), the band followed by what is for me the best track off Writer’s Block, “Let’s Call It Off,” which ushered a set of performances: the B-Side “(I Wanna) See-Through” and “Start To Melt” that did away with the mid-tempo retro-rock and went straight for Cheap Trick-style power-pop. Later in the set, when the band performed earlier tracks, such as 2004’s Falling Out highlight “Big Black Coffin” (for which Moren successfully-garnered a huge “ba-ba-ba”-style singalong), Peter Bjorn and John’s immense popularity was given a little bit more weight and credibility. Writer’s Block is the band pairing down their heavily-melodic indie-pop and making it a little more “rock”. As such, their live show is a furtherance of that trajectory.
When I first listened to “Young Folks” in the autumn of 2006, the song did nothing for me at all and I was completely ready to ignore the band from that point on. Since the band’s explosion, others have reacted more passionately, such as this guy whom I have some sympathy for: to quote the night’s sole heckler, the band often sounds as average as “Peanut Butter & Jelly” on record and any indie-popster who dove into the Swedish indie-pop label Labrador Records’ roster in their mid-to-late 90s heyday will tell you, PB&J are definitely second-rate. Yet, in relation to an indie scene that’s still engaged in an increasingly tired game of trying to out-weird/-freak/-bizarre itself, the fact that a bare-boned rock-pop trio gets away with fame based on a track that features nothing more than a whistled melody, a bassline and a guy/girl duet (the essence of musical “retro”?) is not too hard to fathom. Air did much the same with the truly horrid “Alpha Beta Gaga,” and they are one of my favourite bands.
So, if there was a something linking the bands besides a numerical that night, it was that all three broke through the limitations of their recorded music to deliver a concert experience that was great from beginning to end: Au Revoir Simone exchanged emo for exuberance (of a sort), Fujiya & Miyagi played-up Hot Chip-style dance fun (minus that band’s goofy stage antics) and Peter Bjorn and John built a barricade that may yet stand up to backlash.
