Plants & Animals – Live at The Biltmore, Vancouver
Photographs by Hey Mama
Plants and Animals are having a great year. The Montreal band’s album Parc Avenue, released in February 2008, was nominated for the Polaris Music Prize. Now they’re up for two Junos (on March 29 in Vancouver): Best Alternative Album and Best New Group. There’s no question they’re worthy of such accolades.
DRMHLLR, of Vancouver, took the stage at approximately 9:30pm. The genuinely awkward outfit with a shirtless drummer managed to incite an enthusiastic response from the sold-out room. Relatively new to the scene, this capable foursome offered plenty of noodling guitar – wordless and snare-driven – as the crowd swayed gently.
Plants and Animals, made up of singer-guitarist Warren C. Spicer, drummer Matthew Woodley and multi-instrumentalist Nic Basque, hit the stage around 11pm. Spicer, somewhat tentative at first, his confidence building visibly song by song, wailed and whimpered, his guitar licks quick and frenzied and never wavering from infectious. Woodley drummed with his entire body, each song with its own unique movements, like choreography that maintains an undeniable spontaneity. Basque (with his charming pizza-emblazoned t-shirt) switched from keys to guitar to autoharp with ease, playing and singing ecstatically.
They shifted comfortably from Paul Simon-flavoured compositions (“Mercy”) to David Bowie-like choruses (“Bye Bye Bye”), somehow evoking Radiohead along the way. The first strains of “Faerie Dance” had the crowd roaring, while the chorus of “Good Friend” echoed the room’s feeling: “I wanna dance”. “Bye Bye Bye” was a full-on singalong. Three-part harmonies and catchy choruses were standouts. Woodley’s crisp high hat and light-handed drumming prompted frenetic dancing for the majority of the set, at times moving the audience to an altered state. If there’s one word that accurately sums up a Plants and Animals set, it’s “energetic”.
The crowd wasn’t about to let them get away without an encore. There wasn’t a disappointed ear in the whole damn place, even before they covered the fantastic Nina Simone. If every Plants and Animals show is this tight, this fervent, they’ll be selling out venues ten times the size of The Biltmore in no time.
They wrap up their North American tour in Vancouver at The Railway Club’s Junofest on March 28.
MP3:
Plants & Animals – Bye Bye Bye
Plants & Animals – Feedback in the Field
Tags: concert, Concert Review, The Biltmore, Vancouver
Thanks for introducing me to Plants & Animals. I had not heard of them before. I really like Bye Bye Bye, and I will have to look for more.