Receivers + Coral Red – La Sala Rossa – Friday, May 14th, 2010
As Coral Red, a Montreal indie-rock band fronted by lead singer Trevor Boucher, made their way through their set I looked around the room and was sort of dumbfounded (and not just because it was a seated show at Sala Rossa). The crowd was made up of your average early 20s to mid 30s concert goers but there was a surprising amount of older people present as well. And when I say older I mean grey and balding older. It was definitely different than what I am used to, but since I am fond of the elderly (sometimes overly so) it made me feel quite content.
Anyways, back to the music. Coral Red are a pretty new band on the Montreal music radar but judging by the amount of fans they seemed to bring in and the tightness in their performance, it may not be long before we are hearing a lot more from these guys. Lead singer Trevor Boucher stood on the stage, hands clasped behind his back, as he sang his heart out, while the rest the band provided the backup music; generally a really easy on the ears mixture of guitar, keys, drums and violin. No frills, no gimmicks, just straight forward rock music with some impressive emotional value provided by violinist Catherine Cere and keyboardest Liam Boucher. The highlight of the set was undoubtedly “Notre Dame”, which lead singer, Trevor Boucher ended by adding “Go Habs, Go Habs Go” into the lyrics. The old and young alike stayed pretty reserved throughout the set, but erupted with applause at the end.
After a brief pause, Emilie Marzinotto and her band Receivers took the stage and began to play amid a dazzling light show provided by someone named Peter who apparently came a long way to set it up. While Marzinotto joked that she was on the verge of having a seizure, the lighting really added a certain ambiance to the performance that went perfectly with the moody tunes played by the band. The Visuals projected on a screen behind the band also greatly added to the ambiance, especially so when the band played the track from their latest 7″ that they launched last night, entitled “Devotional”. For this song, the band teamed up with the M60 Film Festival, which had people send in their own 60 second videos that were inspired by the song. The resulting videos were mixed together and screened behind the band as they played the song. There was even a part that included footage from the Habs fan’s celebrations after their game 7 victory from Wednesday night. The band played their newer material of course, but also delved into their older stuff as well, playing the slow and sexy “Matinee” from their debut 2008 release, Consider The Ravens.
Throughout the set, lead singer and guitarist Emilie Marzinotto seemed to get overwhelmed by the outpouring of affecting from the crowd and it was nice to see a band that truly appreciates their fans. An all too quick ‘that’s it! goodnight!’ after the band played “Devotional” left nobody doubting that there would be more and sure enough, a few seconds after the band left the stage they were back for an encore of two songs including the catchy “You Only Live Twice”, another new one. Shortly after the show, the Montreal skies opened up and we got to witness a pretty impressive lightning storm. Talk about a night going from good to great! – Greg Lozoff
Receivers
Coral Red
Photography by Leanne Craigmyle
