Lovely Feathers Fall Down At Release Show

Lee's Palace

Toronto, ON

on

Bianca Marcus (CHARTattack)

06/08/2009 2:08pm

Montreal's The Lovely Feathers brought innocent, unfettered energy to the stage at their CD release party on Saturday. The band appeared in support of their latest album Fantasy Of The Lot, which dropped last Tuesday (it comes out Aug. 18 in the U.S.), and their giddiness about the record's arrival was obvious.

The band started out with "Long Walks," a slightly disturbing ("Hey, you shot your lover in the park/Hey, you got stories in your past"), but nonetheless catchy, tune that invited lots of clapping and foot stomping. All the band members seemed a little tipsy and were really getting into it except for bassist Mark Shortt, who seemed a tad awkward and preferred to groove off to the side.

Next was "Family That Doesn't Know The Game," a polite synth-driven track that could almost fit in at an '80s high school dance. After that was a sped-up version of the Caribbean-influenced "Fad," with lots more clapping from band and audience.

Then came the madness.

The set had been fairly predictable up to this point. The band had worked up a reasonable amount of sweat, and judging from the way they were dancing, the crowd was still reasonably sober.

All that changed when the band began "In The Valley." The song began quietly, then built up to a shouted refrain while indie kids ditched all pretense and danced their hearts out. Lead vocalist Mark Kupfert traded his guitar for a tambourine, and guitarist Richard Yanofsky bounced and whipped his hair back and forth.

"Breakfast Cake" saw Kupfert fall to the floor — "I tripped over my own leg!" he later explained — and he continued playing from where he laid on his back. With this kind of energy, it was no surprise that the audience demanded an encore. The band returned to the stage to play "Frantic" and ended the night with "Lowiza," Fantasy Of The Lot's driving first single.

It was a fun, reckless performance, that proved you can abandon too-cool posturing and still have a good time.