The suits were a surprise. Dallas Green and his band walked onstage for the first Canadian stop of City and Colour’s Canadian tour (which started earlier this week in Seattle) all suited up. No plaid flannel, no hoodies. The formal attire was a hint of the slickness to come. This was not going to be a folksy little acoustic set.
City and Colour was born as Green’s side project while his hardcore punk band Alexisonfire was burning up the charts and winning Junos – a poetic outlet for the singer-songwriter dying to break out from the rock star. Tired of the competing demands of both projects (creative and otherwise), Green finally chose between his two loves. City and Colour it was.
On Thursday night, it seemed a very good choice, as City and Colour played a solid show, his gorgeous voice and easy stage manner enchanting the sold-out crowd.
He opened with We Found Each Other in the Dark from City and Colour’s 2011 release Little Hell and throughout the night played a number of tracks from the album, including Weightless, Sorrowing Man (also known, in my row, as “bathroom break”), The Grand Optimist, Little Hell and the lovely Fragile Bird.
To go with the suits was a light-show spectacular that seemed a little incongruous with the material (even the rocking stuff) and, frankly, had bright lights shining in my eyes for what felt like half the night. Not sure if I was simply seated in the exact wrong spot, but I doubt it, somehow.
About seven songs in, Green’s backing band left the stage and he was alone in the smoky spotlight, where at one point he asked the crowd for a favour: Put away your cellphones. He wanted one song, he said, that the crowd could actually experience rather than record. “By no means am I angry with you,” he explained, always the gentleman. And then he launched into Body in a Box, gorgeous and cellphone-free, as far as I could tell. Hands liberated from technology, the audience even broke into spontaneous clapping along, our inability to keep the beat mocked by Green (kindly) afterward.
The backing band came back for a beautiful version of The Girl, which was surely one of the night’s highlights, along with a shivers-up-your-spine rendition of Comin’ Home later on (people were screaming out for it all night).
There were sing-alongs, jokes (best line: “just joshing your pickle”) and a moment to remember what Green called “the worst night of my life” – the night, during the Vancouver Olympics, that fans broke through the barriers at a free Alexisonfire concert, which was then cancelled within seconds. Nineteen people were hurt.
“We’ll leave it at bummer,” Green was saying about the incident, before a heckler’s non-sequitur “Luongo sucks” lightened the mood. (Green, it turns out, is an NBA, not an NHL, fan, so was unable to offer any comment, he said, on the Vancouver goalie’s performance.) The opener, Rhode Island-based indie-folk collective the Low Anthem, brought an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to its instruments (including saw and cellphone) and it sounded like it: an audio cacophony that was often more messy than masterful. Their technically flawed downer set had some sweet moments, but the sound was too produced for the material and, I suspect, their intention. (Did I mention they’re from Rhode Island? They did. Three times.) They can learn something on this tour: You can be polished and slick, and still be true to your folk/acoustic material.
Nobody’s going to call this City and Colour show a spectacle, but it would be fair to call it spectacular. Just please do something about those lights.
City and Colour
- At the Queen Elizabeth Theatre
- In Vancouver on Thursday
City and Colour’s cross-Canada tour (with a few U.S. dates) wraps up Feb. 26 in St. John’s.
