Ponys / Black Lips / Sunday Sinners, Sala Rossa Montreal, March 26 2007

Riddle me this: how is it that the Sunday Sinners could make one of the best albums to come out of the city of Montreal last year (Sweet Jam EP, Sonic's Chicken Shrimp)-- a soulful, tuneful, and urgent seven songs swinging between sweet jangle and delicious noise-- yet they still haven't figured out how to play live? They've always been an awkward band on a stage-- frontwoman Jenna, for her vast talent and vocal range, is stiff and nervous, as is Annie, Jenna's melodic counterpoint on Farfisa, and the rest of the band simply fumbles around them. When I saw the Sinners play their first show in winter of 2004, I figured they were just starting out and would soon relax-- they clearly had talent and potential by the bucket and would realize it before long. But they've been playing for three years and their live set has hardly improved. Missy, their original guitarist, is gone, and they've replaced her with a guy who doesn't seem to be able to tell when he's not playing in key. All members of the band are riddled with hesitation, as though each waiting for cues from the others that never come. The scene is puzzling-- their songs are stirring and masterful, and on record they sound phenomenal. Why can't they do it live?

I arrived early to the Ponys/Black Lips show to make sure I caught the Sunday Sinners, but three songs in I wished I'd taken the long route over. Three songs after that I was wishing the set would end as soon as possible, for everyone's dignity. When the merciful end came, I could hear the same question all through the audience: What the hell? We'd all heard the record, we all came expecting something on par with Irma Thomas fronting the Velvet Underground. Instead we held our ears surreptitiously, trying to keep the band from seeing, ashamed for them that we knew what they could do but weren't doing. It was a shame.

What a relief when Atlanta's Black Lips tumbled onstage. As they set up my pal Greg said, "If this band doesn't immediately rock my ass off, I'm out of here." They didn't look like much-- a wee longhair in Crue t-shirt and toque on guitar, a skinny guy with short hair in a tie-die shirt on bass, an Eric Bogosian lookalike in a white t-shirt on second guitar, and a kid on drums who wearing a sideways camo hat featuring a dollar-sign in rhinestones. Someone had told me they played in suits and ties in deference to their Nuggets-era sound; instead they looked like a group of kids you'd see in a bus stop near a high school smoking a joint the size of a parsnip. Greg nudged me and pointed at the guy in white. "Does the guitarist on the left have gold fronts?" he asked in disbelief. After careful surveillance we determined that the most normal looking guy in the group did, in fact, have a top row of gold teeth. Huh.

Without preamble they hit the first beat and the room instantly jolted to attention. I'd heard their record and I knew what to expect-- old-school garage rock reminiscent of the Seeds or the Count Five or the early Stones, looser and lower-fi, with an edge of darkness and menace to the lyrics. Most garage rock is repetive and predictable, but Let It Bloom is a solid record that weathers repeated listening well. However, onstage the band was a different beast entirely-- each member played differently with a different energy, all singing at various times. The longhaired guitarist and shorthaired hippie bassist moved around, the drummer swung his head and neck wildly about as he played, and the gold-fronted second guitarist stayed mostly fused in place with his eyes inebriatedly half-lidded, mouth half-open, and a long trail of drool hanging from his chin down his chest. This he disturbed occasionally by spastically waggling his head like a wet dog, always with the same look of total stupefaction in the visible parts of his eyes. His look was such that he surprised me every time he actually played a guitar line, but he did that frequently and well.

What sets the Black Lips apart from a lot of other lo-fi garage bands is that they know how to write songs with hooks, which do things you don't expect and pique your curiosity and hold your interest. Through a brief set nonetheless packed full of short songs, it was clear how much songwriting talent was buried beneath the fuzzy distortion. Where other garage bands play uninspired 12-bar blues, aping the Sonics mimicking Chuck Berry, the Black Lips actually write songs that sound new while sounding old. They're catchy, and while they look like they must consume bull-doses of liquor and dope, they have a tonne of energy that they pass ably over to the audience. However long they had played, their set would still have been over too soon-- I was hooked and would happily have listened all night.

Finally the Ponys came on. Having seen them on the Laced With Romance tour in the summer of 2004 I knew what to expect-- not a lot of movement onstage, but solid songs played loud and well. They too are a weird looking band (as the band that wrote "10 Fingers, 11 Toes" should be)-- fronted by a hulking fellow with terrible posture who lurches over his guitar like a praying mantis, their bassist looks like a shy bird and their androgenous drummer clearly takes his fashion tips from Richard Hell circa-1975. They sound weird too, at least weirder than the Black Lips, but not so weird that you can't follow them. After all, they're a rock band first, an arty band second, and as a rock band they're sturdy and catchy. They played only a couple of old songs off the first album, avoided my favourite song from their second ("Get Black"), and encored with "I Wanna Fuck You" off of their first single. The Tom Verlaine worship of the first record has developed somewhat into a fuller sound with smoother lines and fewer angles, but they still held my attention for the duration of their set despite playing so loud that they left my ears ringing in spite of my earplugs.

I'd gladly see either of the last two bands again. As for the Sunday Sinners, I can only wonder when they're going to live up to their very obvious potential?