Cute Is What We Aim For Debut Rotation

Four years ago I would frequently see bands Cherrybing, Forget Last Year and solo musician Dave Melillo play small shows around Buffalo, N.Y. About a year-and-a-half later Cherrybing's Shaant Hacikyan and Jeff Czum, Forget Last Year's Tom Falcone and ex-bassist Fred Cimato merged to form what is now Cute Is What We Aim For. Melillo came later. They've moved on to much larger shows, like the one at Toronto's Mod Club on Tuesday.

Chicago's Powerspace opened the show. I couldn't really grasp what they were about. They looked a little glam rock, but their solos said "metal" and their frontman is a dead ringer for Zac Efron. "Be Aggressive" sounded more cheery than agro, though.

Ace Enders And A Million Different People were next up. Enders used to be the frontman for The Early November, who called it quits about a year ago after putting out five EPs and three full-lengths. Enders went solo from there and now he's a little bit pudgier and giving out his new The Secret Wars album for free online. Enders and the Million Different People (of whom there are actually five) played a pretty good set. He's peppier now, and spent a lot of time charismatically dancing around the stage without his guitar. He hasn't completely let go of The Early November as he performed "Ever So Sweet" last to a crowd that was clearly won over.

Then came Cute Is What We Aim For. This was also the day the band celebrated the release of their second record, Rotation. You'd think the band would put every part of themselves into a show on the day of their album's release. Unfortunately, they've done better.

They played a fair balance of old and new stuff, but the newer material was clearly not as rehearsed. The band seemed to come together more with the older songs like "The Curse Of Curves" and "There's A Class For This," no doubt propelled by the amount of teenage screams coming from the audience.

But it all comes back to where they came from. Hacikyan and Czum spent a moment informing the crowd about Cherrybing and how after the band broke up they stuck together to write "Lyrical Lies." Mid-song Hacikyan took a towel and lovingly wiped Czum's face. The crowd cooed, "Aaaaw."

That's what you'd expect from a band called Cute Is What We Aim For. There were some sound problems and probably not enough practice beforehand, but that didn't matter to their on-side audience.