Well. Hello there.
It’s been a year since my last concert and you’d think I’d have some exciting news for you. I do not. I’m not even sure how these work anymore.
I’m writing this several weeks after the fact. That feels right. Nostalgic. And I’m out of practice at coming up with ways to say “we saw a band I don’t know a ton about; it was good,” so I think this one will be short. At least I made Mika tell me everything she remembered about the show, most of which I’d forgotten. That’s the only reason this is getting done at all.
This was the first concert we bought tickets to since we saw Michael Bernard Fitzgerald last year and everything else got cancelled. I wasn’t 100% confident it would happen, nor 100% confident that we’d want to go if it did. But the day rolled around, and the venue had a mandatory vaccine and mask policy, and we don’t do anything ever, so why not go do a thing?
We arrived at the Artesian about 20 minutes before showtime and were met outside by the fine (if chilly) folks who checked our vaccine records and photo IDs. Tickets were handled separately inside, by which I mean my name was on a big list and there was a PDF on my phone that they didn’t look at.
I know this is ultimately more convenient, but I’ll miss physical tickets when they go away for good. Nobody wants to see my PDF collection. (Nobody wants to see my ticket collection either but it’s easier to imagine that someone might.)
We got inside and took our usual spots. These became our usual spots, I think, since nobody else wanted them. They’re towards the back, not up off the ground, and you’re kind of in everyone else’s way as they go to and from their own seats. Also they’re old church pews. We need to find better seats, is my point. Mika was at least smart enough to roll up her bunnyhug and use it as lumbar support.
The crowd trickled in and eventually the place looked pretty close to full. The start time of 8:00pm came and went before one guy decided he could will the show into beginning by clapping loudly. This… worked, somehow? Out came the band for the first of two sets of mellow, artsy pop. (He tried again after the intermission and wasn’t nearly as effective. Shouldn’t push your luck.)
Looking up The Weather Station now, and they’ve been a thing since 2006? That’s not recent anymore. I’m quite late to this party, really having been introduced to their music this year via the only two ways I hear any new music anymore, CRZ’s radio show and whatever Mika plays in the car.
According to Mika, most of what they played was off their new album Ignorance, which came out at the start of the year and has wound up on a bunch of year-end best-of lists and got shortlisted for the Polaris Prize. I could have guessed that, both because I know how concerts work and because of the number of songs where I went “hey, I know this from the car and/or radio show.”
It’s worth noting that the show came close to not happening at all. The tour started out west and they only narrowly made it out of BC before landslides shut down roads. Given that the new album is all about climate change, this was a little on the nose.
Anyway, I don’t have a ton to say about the show itself but I really enjoyed it. Everyone else seemed to as well, but it’s going to sound dismissive and I don’t mean it as such when I say that people seemed happy just to be out at all. One person even yelled something like “it’s so good to be out listening to live music again.” I don’t know that it needed to be hollered, but I’m anti-hollering most of the time and I can’t disagree with the sentiment.
NATURE IS HEALING OR ELSE WE’VE JUST SURRENDERED TO FATE; EITHER WAY, UPCOMING CONCERTS:
- Regina Symphony Orchestra (January 22)
- TEKE::TEKE w/Snake River (January 27)
- The Sadies w/The Garrys (January 28)
- Glass Tiger (March 10)
- Hawksley Workman (April 21)
- “Weird Al” Yankovic (July 8)
- Joel Plaskett w/Mo Kenney (September 17)
This is the story of the overly ambitious eagle... 