Jon-Rae Fletcher Loves Annie Lennox

Horseshoe Tavern

Toronto, ON

on May 29 2008

Kate Harper (CHARTattack)

05/30/2008 2:30pm

If AlphaBaby ever lose a member and need to place a newspaper ad to fill that spot, one of the prerequisites will likely read, "must be visually impaired due to extremely long hair." The long-locked Kelowna, B.C. band play a combination of Neil Young country-rock mixed with the psych freak-outs of Black Mountain. It's really unfortunate there was next to no one in the Horseshoe at that point, because they were really interesting to watch and they seamlessly traded instruments with each other every few songs.

By contrast, Toronto's Great Bloomers weren't nearly as exciting. Their songs are well-written and singer Lowell Sostomi can really belt it out, but unfortunately, they aren't very interesting to watch. Sostomi occasionally announced things like, "This song was new when we wrote it, but now it's not anymore," which shows he and the band have a little to learn in the banter department. That said, maybe they just knew it would be hard to play before the act to follow.

This show marked one of the last performances on Jon-Rae Fletcher's first tour since he disappeared over a year ago, when he left Toronto and ended up waiting tables in Kelowna. He opened his set with some new tunes that centred around a tragedy that befalls a young man whom Fletcher said "may or may not be me." He was unaccompanied for the first few songs, but he brought AlphaBaby on stage midway through his set, castigating the sizeable audience for not arriving earlier to see the band. He played a few old tracks before announcing, "I hope you people like Annie Lennox, because the rest of my set is just Annie Lennox songs." Everyone laughed, but he wasn't kidding.

I'm now of the opinion that Fletcher should record an album of Lennox covers. You think I'm joking, but I'm not. Fletcher brought four Lennox/Eurhythmics covers to the Horseshoe: "Little Bird," "Here Comes The Rain," "Missionary Man" and "Would I Lie To You?" It might seem a bit weird to picture a musician who plays a mixture of country, soul and rock covering a synth-pop band, but Fletcher's covers were inventive, different, amusing and just fun to hear. A Fletcher album of Annie Lennox tunes would be far more entertaining than any of Colin Meloy's cover albums.

Fletcher announced his set was done, but the audience wasn't having that. In response, he asked the crowd if it realized "how shitty encores are." No one seemed to care and people kept yelling out song choices until he finally complied. Then he launched into a solo version of Townes Van Zandt's "Two Hands." Fletcher always resembles soul and gospel singers when he does this song — he stomps, closes his eyes, gets incredibly focused and sings as loud as he can. He then transitioned into "Just One More" and "Fire," both of which he wrote with his previous band. Then he was really done.

Hopefully he won't disappear again after this tour.