The Cave Singers, Fanshaw, The Media Club, Vancouver

This is exactly the sort of show where writing this sort of thing isn't the best idea in the universe. Don't get me wrong, it's not like The Cave Singers were bad - in fact - far from it. It's just that it was just a perfectly serviceable indie rock show at a club that I go to ten or twenty times a year. There's just nothing particularly interesting to construct a decent narrative about - nothing noteworthy happened, and there were no on-stage shenanigans worthy of conversion to web-sludge.

But then I find myself with 6 idle hours in the hell-hole of humanity that is LAX, and a cute blond girl in a dress sits down across the lounge from me, and tapping this out is the closest I get to this:

XKCD Journal

Although, maybe that's not the best idea in the world, because there's also this:

http://www.xkcd.com/377/

We'll see what happens. And my desire to talk to her has diminished now that she's pulled out a copy of Us magazine and is reading it as intently as if it's a Dostoyevsky novel.

Anyway, enough digression. Thursday night it was back to the Media Club to see the Cave Singers, upon the hearty recommendation of my sister, who promised to make my life hell if I didn't partake (and as I'm actually seeing her this week, she can actually make good on that threat this time).

I strolled in at what I thought was a reasonable time (9pm - I'll never figure out what time to get to shows in this town - I've turned up at 9pm before to be greeted by crowds of people leaving, talking about how good Magnolia Electric Co were.) to find that I was pretty much the only one there - apart from the band, who stuck out as they were the ones peering intently at the currency trying to figure out what denomination they were holding (when you're from Seattle, which is less than 2 hours from the border, shouldn't you know what it looks like? - I get enough crap when I'm in the states for having to read the denominations on the notes, and there, it's all the same colour). But luckily, I wasn't too early, as the room packed out within minutes, and my premature arrival meant I got a table.

Support for the evening was a band called Fanshaw. I'm reliably informed that they feature ex-members of various other Vancouver collectives (to paraphrase Karen "the bassist is in EVERYTHING") and they played a split show - the first half was a boy/girl guitar/voice Gram and Emmy-Lou-type thing (and you're gonna have to take my word for it when I tell you that I was planning to use that analogy before they dropped in to Love Hurts), and the second half featured a full band, playing some laid back country rock. I'd offer more, but apparently I've turned in to one of those people that talk all the way through shows, because I don't really remember actually watching too much of them. I hate myself right now.

Drat, blond girl just left, but another girl just sat down next to me with a copy of the national enquirer, which I can kinda see. On the negative side, she can also see this screen, so I probably shouldn't be writing this.

Anyway, the Cave Singers are a three piece, but I can't tell you what three pieces, and I'm resisting the temptation to look up on the internet to find out, because I was too far back to see on Thursday. However, I did notice that they play dreamy country pop, that was most engaging, and I can totally see why my sister is so into them. They're a little bit Grizzly Bear-ish, they have a genial stage presence (even if some of the banter fell flat, but sometimes, that's the best thing about banter) and they finished up with a good old-fashioned foot stomper, that sent everyone home on a positive note.

I bought a shirt off one of them afterwards (if someone (namely, me) was ever going to devise a mathematical formula to determine how much I might potentially like a band, selling your own merch would definitely need to be worth a lot of points) and they seemed like good dudes. There were a couple of people trying to get some dancing happening after the show (they're obviously new in town, because it won't happen in Vancouver - although I am 24 hours from Auckland, where the show itself is just something that has to be endured before the post-show dancing starts) and I was accosted by a drunk girl who berated me for my lack of knowledge about the violently fashionable record label advertised by my t-shirt, only to turn out to be wrong. (and I wikipediaed the second I got home just to prove to myself that Final Fantasy wasn't on Secretly Canadian, just so I could go to bed secure in the knowledge that I was, in fact, right)

right, I'm gonna go now - only 3 hours of airport hell to go. but I'm gonna pretend to write this a little longer, so I can finish the story I've been reading vicarously about how Jared from the subway ads' wife left him because "celebrity drove a wedge through their relationship". Awesome.