The Most Serene Republic – Bar St. Laurent II – 08.27.10
To my relief, the opening band, Still Life Still, had started playing only a few minutes prior to me charging into the dark and steamy venue. I’m happy I didn’t miss much of it, because these guys are great! During the first song, it seemed like they were no more than your average run-of-the-mill five piece band who played their assigned instruments, with one main vocalist, and one back-up vocalist. How wrong can one be! As it turns out, three of these guys take turns with vocals, as well as sharing keyboard playing, guitar slapping, and tambourine smacking. Their spacey synth sounds, sharp drums beats and rough harmonies were a blast to listen to and left me feeling slightly embarrassed for not having looked into them earlier. Somewhere around half-way through their set, during an intense drum solo, Adrian Jewett from The Most Serene Republic pops out of practically nowhere, and sneaks onto the stage area to pitch in with some of his trombone playing, and stayed around to play for another song of theirs as well. It was quite the improvisational treat for the audience. They finished their set off with a ridiculously misleading song. And I don’t mean this in a negative way; it was brilliant! It was full of unexpected rests that would make the audience, including myself, think that the song was over, when really they were only waiting a bit before coming back with a loud blast of sound, a fraction of a second later. I bought their Girls Come Too album (as should you) and found out this lovely gem of a song is called “Pastel”. Still Life Still played a great set that night. They are definitely a must-add in your music shopping cart!
A short quarter of an hour later, The Most Serene Republic had finished setting up and sound checking. I was sort of apprehensive about Emma Ditchburn not being with the band anymore, but I forgot Adrian had a crazy vocal range and could hit almost all the same notes as her, and the guys were doing just fine filling in with the harmonies. They started their set with “Why So Looking Back” and they were bursting with energy within the first few seconds of the song. They played an array of their old songs, which made the long time TMSR fans really happy, although I could count this percentage of the audience on my fingers. I was personally very pleased that they played a bunch of songs off their first EP, Phages. They also played crowd favourites “Bubble Reputation” and “Heavens to Purgatory” from their latest LP, …And The Ever Expanding Universe as well a couple off their latest EP, Fantasick Impossibliss. Obviously, throughout the whole set, Adrian was up to his usual stage antics, making faces and dancing like he was living in the 60s. Smoking was also a recurring topic of conversation. Montreal, apparently we are “bad-asses” for smoking so much, everywhere, including on bikes, while biking. We’ve managed to amaze this group of music-making Torontonians with our over-indulgence of the nasty habbit. Great job!
Their before last song was “Where Cedar Nouns and Adverbs Walk”, to which a part of the crowd joined in at the end chorus that goes “I think we all know the words” over and over again. It made me radiate on the inside. They wrapped their set up with “Present Of Future End” which I found was a marvelous choice. The heavy metal growling additions on Adrian’s part weren’t bad either. He would fit in perfectly in a band with big, tatooed and pierced metalheads.
In any case, it was a great end to a fantastic set, and if only the crowd were a bit more into applauding, we might have gotten an encore, but unfortunately, we didn’t match up to the energy the band gave out that night. Hopefully next time the crowd won’t forget to put their dancing shoes on, instead of those raggedy old slippers! - Sarve
The Most Serene Republic
Still Life Still
Photography by Amelia Robitaille
Click here to read our latest interview with Adrian Jewett of The Most Serene Republic.
