Lions In The Street Bring Back Early '70s Rock
Thursday February 01, 2007 @ 05:30 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

Lions In The Street

If the indie rock world were the animal kingdom, 2007 would mark the end of the wolf's reign. Wolf Parade, we still love you very much, and Wolf Eyes will always get props. Wolfmother? Well, you can't win 'em all. But now it's time for the big cats to come out and play.

Vancouver's Lions In The Street are one of the first feline bands to emerge (the city's other new cats are Pride Tiger, a band you'll also be hearing more from), and they've been one of the country's best-kept musical secrets. But despite their relative anonymity, the Lions are making it as easy as possible for you to hear about them. Their only current recorded material, the Cat Got Your Tongue EP, is available as a free download from their website.

That indie-forward act of giving away their EP comes from a totally different era than their sound. The songs on Cat Got Your Tongue take a refreshing look back to the early '70s when the Rolling Stones were exiled on Main Street, before the Allman Brothers imploded and before Lynyrd Skynyrd broke up the first time. Each band is a touchstone for the Lions, as they roll with that same sort of loose swagger.

"Well, everyone's downloading music, so you might as well let them have the music for free," says vocalist/guitarist Chris Kinnon. "Might as well make it available to people.

"The fact is you can't shortcut anything, and the only sure way to success is building fans one by one. It's all the old shit that people forget about — going into cities and playing to nobody and then going back and playing for 50 people and then going back and playing for 100 people. Y'know? You just have to have that attitude."

Anyone who listens to the Lions will undoubtedly slap on the retro tag. But the Lions are unapologetic. They happen to like what they like and, if their influences are more obvious than others, then so what?

"I don't really know what it is about the early '70s," ponders Kinnon. "I think it's because the songwriting was good and it was always loose. Not fall apart loose, though.

"Look at The Faces, who I've been listening to a lot lately. Live, you always got the feeling that that train was just about to fall off the tracks, y'know? Because they weren't too uptight about their performance or vibe or sound. And that's the same thing with Chuck Berry. He was always about to fall off the tracks, and I think that's what's so cool. Early '70s Stones was just great — guitars playing off each other, production was pretty direct. It was natural-sounding, but still noisy and almost careless, y'know? But we really love going back to old Chuck Berry records because they're a huge influence on us. And Little Richard. All the late '50s, early '60s R&B that a lot of people just forgot about, which is kind of sad. We just love rock that rolls, y'know?

"We dress how we like and we play how we like and people can call it whatever they want. I think sometimes it's a bit lazy because I think you can call a band like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah retro. It's just 10 years retro instead of 30 years retro. What we hope is that people will listen to the music and say, 'Are the songs good or are they not good?'

"The more important thing is the fact that we're writing about real experiences and we're pretty authentic. The songs are real and they're just dressed up the way they need to be dressed up. So people can call it what they will."

Canadian fans will be able to spot these Lions soon enough. Having never previously toured outside of their native British Columbia, they've their sights set on the rest of the country in '07. Their live sets are quickly becoming infamous for being good ol' fashioned rock 'n' roll parties where people like to boogie and shout along to the songs.

"When you're playing live you don't want to be uptight or too perfect or too well-rehearsed," posits Kinnon. "You want it to be authentic and you want to communicate that feeling you had when you first wrote that song. Something really direct.

"That's what we always build towards live. We try to keep it fun. We stretch things out a bit, too. We're not a jam band, per se, but we're not afraid to stretch things out a bit. We're not afraid of a guitar solo."

Here are Lions In The Street's upcoming shows:

• Feb. 3 Vancouver, BC @ Richard's On Richards
• Feb. 9 Victoria, BC @ Lucky Bar
• Feb. 10 Tofino, BC @ Legion

—Brian Pascual