City And Colour Do No Wrong At Massey

Massey Hall

Toronto, ON

on Jun 6 2008

Stephanie Joudrey (CHARTattack)

06/09/2008 1:00pm

City And Colour's Dallas Green made sure to bring his friends along when he fulfilled a dream by playing two sold out shows at Massey Hall on Friday and Saturday night.

Black Lungs, Friday night's first act, and Wade MacNeil of Alexisonfire's side-project, came on to a half-full hall. You'd assume MacNeil already had most of the audience on-side owing to the connection. The crowd was modest though and measured their support. MacNeil's co-star, keyboardist Sammi Bogdanski was surprisingly missing and was replaced by a guy on keys who I believe was Haris Cehajic, City & Colour roadie and Moneen keyboardist/guitarist. Black Lungs played tracks off the recently released Send Flowers debut well and MacNeil's scratchy vocals came across quite clear. He finished it off big and invited a full band featuring members of Sleepercar on stage for a rockabilly cover of The Gun Club's "For The Love Of Ivy" and ended with a harder version of "In Memory," the emotional last track on Send Flowers.

Sleepercar, another side-project, featuring Sparta frontman and At The Drive-In founder Jim Ward, were up next. The band's alt-country style was solid, but Ward's vocals were extremely hard to understand. He sounded fantastic when he really pushed, but the dramatic highs were frequently accompanied by uninteresting lows. It seemed someone working that night agreed because the house music came back on before the band had started their last song, which made for an awkward ending to the set.

Massey Hall was shrouded in darkness as Dallas Green took the stage and started lightly with "Forgive Me," the first track off his new Bring Me Your Love album. As his backing band joined him and the room filled with lights it was clear this simple acoustic side-project has evolved into something special. The pacing of the light with the feel of the songs was perfect, and gave them atmosphere and sometimes a whole new feel.

The set was split between new and old tracks. New songs "Waiting..." and "Sleeping Sickness" were played faithfully, while old tracks "Sam Malone" and "Day Old Hate" were rocked up just enough to make them fresh again. Green did some tracks solo, such as "Save Your Scissors," while most others had a full band, composed of Attack In Black guitarist Dan Romano (who cameod with every act that night) and Raising The Fawn members Dylan Green and Scott Remila on drums and bass, respectively.

In case all the switching of band members didn't make it clear enough that Green loved all these people, he used them wisely throughout the night. Romano and Remila did some great backing vocals on "Constant Knot" and "The Girl." Then everyone came on stage to do back-ups for "What Makes A Man?" Green also tried to get the audience to clap and sing along, and they put in a surprisingly good effort. Some audience members were even moved to shout declarations between songs and, before the final song, made desperate lunges up the aisles to the front of the stage.

Impassioned fans aside, Green came back for a two-song encore ("Against The Grain" and "Comin' Home") that ended big with the band giving it their all.

Massey Hall was made for singers like him, so hopefully his dream of playing there will be a recurring one.