They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

WHO: They Shoot Horses, Don't They? + Shapes and Sizes
WHERE: Amigo's
WHEN: July 8/07

There is nothing so humbling as seeing something you can't understand and having much more musically astute new friends unravel it for you.

"As if Wolf Parade kidnapped a polka band," said Rich.

"Think of it like a death machine coming to kill you," said Ryan.

"Are you serious?" I say. He nods. "Did you make that up yourself?" I ask. He nods again.

And the wheels began to turn. With closed eyes. Seeing the giant monstrous machine- constructed out of the awkwardly juxtaposed sounds clashing and stomping together.

Menacing horn lines. A tuba. The audience grabbing noise makers from a germy jumbled bag of items on the floor and using them to construct blunt and awkward sounds. Everyone driving towards inevitable doom, picking at the edges of something strange and very weird, with lead singer Josh's little boy baby babble patching it all together. This wasn’t really music the ear could easily grab and hold onto. No melodies, no easy to find beats. But obviously They Shoot Horses, Don't They? has a band of believers, a sparse and devoted crowd including three people who drove up from Regina for the Sunday night show. At the same time, it wasn't fun. It wasn't comfortable or easy to understand.

Will this show provoke further listening as I stare down a copy of their CD on my desk? Perhaps. But it was some music, a moment, a death parade, a circus in a bag.

Openers Shapes and Sizes were almost as equally odd. A former Victoria band supplanted to Montreal to join the compendium of boy/girl vocalist groups with a poppy synth sound, although they seem to be skirting something outside of those conventions. The strongest moments came when their drummer used a beat you could feel underneath the meandering art project going on over top.

The group didn't seem like they truly wanted to be there (they announced it was their last stop on the tour with They Shoot Horses, Don't They?). What was intriguing about the group was female vocalist Caila Thompson-Hannant's voice, which she alternately pushed and held back, letting it wander up freely into her higher register. Definitely interesting and will prompt future listening so I can learn how to understand whatever it was they were trying to create but didn't quite reach.