Sled Island, day 1: Fond of Tigers, Slim Twig, Final Fantasy
The Sled Island music festival kicked off in Calgary on Wednesday. First up for me was a three-band show at the Central United Church: Fond of Tigers, Slim Twig, and Final Fantasy. Fond of Tigers are an instrumental post-rock band from Toronto. Their sound is jazzy and occasionally a bit abstract for my taste, but they were very skilled musicians and their music was dotted with moments of hypnotic, haunting beauty.
Next up was Slim Twig, an electro-rockabilly artist about whom I can’t really say anything positive. While I’m sure there are people who appreciate his style, I couldn’t find any musicality to latch on to and had to just bide my time until Final Fantasy came on stage.
Final Fantasy (the stage name of Toronto violinist Owen Pallett) won the inaugural Polaris Music Prize for his 2006 album He Poos Clouds. I’d enjoyed the record even though I found it a little inaccessible, but the show cleared all that up for me: Pallett is an amazingly talented individual, and you owe it to yourself to check out his live performance if you get a chance. Crafting rich, beautiful melodies by layering violin tracks with a loop pedal, and complementing them with piano and vocals (on top of being a virtuoso violinist and a sound effects wizard, Pallett also has a fantastic singing voice).
Here’s some great footage of the concert on YouTube:
He played a two-song encore to an ecstatic crowd, after which I jetted across town to Dickens’ Pub for some dubstep and drum & bass courtesy of Excision and Dieselboy…
