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Deerhoof in a publicity image.



The printed program for this year's NXNE is a bulky magazine-like thing that runs more than 100 pages. That gives you an idea of the size of Toronto's sprawling NXNE club fest, which guarantees everyone with a wristband that no matter how much music they hear, they're always missing dozens of shows elsewhere. Here's a record of one man's path through Thursday evening's offerings, at a few of the 37 festival venues around town.

The Luyas, at the Legendary Horseshoe Tavern: The Montreal quartet, whose album Too Beautiful To Work showed up on the Polaris Music Prize long list earlier in the day, played a charming, balky kind of steeplechase pop on keyboards, French horn, drums and Moodswinger, a 12-string zither that looks like a very wide-necked guitar. Jessie Stein fingered this beast while aligning her narrow, girlish vocals with the band's incessant beat-shifting. There was a lot of daylight magic in these tunes, and plenty of energy too, fuelled principally by Stefan Schneider's nimble, manic drumming and the rocky interplay between instruments. The set included a primitive but effective light show that relied on incandescent bulbs fastened to the band's gear with duct tape.

Deerhoof, at Phoenix Concert Theatre: Running to this show by the veteran American indie band was like flipping back through the Luyas family album. The resemblance was unmistakable, from the intelligent, percussive storm coming from Greg Saunier's drum kit, to the shiny angular shape of the band's discontinuous melodies, to Satomi Matsuzaki's faux-naïve vocals. John Dieterich and Ed Rodriguez wrung an amazing variety of sounds from their guitars, including astringent shredding sounds achieved by scrubbing the strings, to tones that sounded almost like bells. Even when the music seemed most determinedly akimbo, there was no shaking the band's shrewd balance between the rough and the sweet, the intuitive and the brainy.

Allie Hughes, at Wrongbar: Pop cabaret princess Allie Hughes addressed her fans in German, sent some operatic top notes right through the low club ceiling, and at one point knocked all her band members insensible to the floor just by pointing at them. She sang the hell out of her well-made ditties, which fuse the ethos of Tin Pan Alley with that of a proto-rock club in the Weimar Republic. "Why you want to break my heart?" she wailed, in one well-choreographed sequence, and in spite of the show's campy artifice, it sounded like she really, really meant it. I think she may be the reincarnation of Judy Garland, but more fun.

Anagram, at Wrongbar: Who needs a stage anyway? Singer Matt Mason only went there to get more beer between songs. The rest of the time, he pinballed aimlessly and aggressively through the crowd while chant-singing the Toronto-area band's lyrics over the disciplined punk-polka ruckus maintained by guitarist Willy Mason (his twin), bassist Jeff Peers and drummer Clayton Churcher. It's hard to miss the point of a punk band when the singer's shoulder hits you in the chest. Part provocation, part game, Anagram's set seemed like punk the way it should be done in the land of hockey. It felt a bit surreal when Mason, claiming the stage briefly after the third song, said, "Thank you." That's Canada for you: Even in confrontation, we're polite.

North by Northeast

  • At various locations
  • In Toronto on Thursday

The NXNE festival continues in Toronto through Saturday.

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