Two Hours Traffic Let Music Do The Talking

Lee's Palace

Toronto, ON

on Oct 16 2009

Ian Gormely (CHARTattack)

10/20/2009 3:18pm

Charlottetown's Two Hours Traffic have had one of the most organic rises in Canadian indie rock over the past few years.

They've certainly had a lot of lucky breaks — their recording partnership with Joel Plaskett yielded a Polaris Music Prize nomination for their excellent record Little Jabs — but everything has felt like baby steps rather than meteoric leaps. So it's easy to take them for granted.

Thankfully, their lively performance at Lee's Palace in Toronto this past Friday reminded us all why loved them in the first place.

Fellow Islanders The Danks, who share guitarist Alec O'Hanley and bass player Andrew MacDonald with the night's headliners, opened the show. Curiously, lead singer Brohan Moore thanked Two Hours Traffic several times for taking them out on tour, but made no mention of the connection. Not that it mattered; the quartet fought through some terrible sound conditions (the lead vocal mic buzzed every time Moore got anywhere near it) to deliver their catchy pop rock tunes.

In stark contrast to the polite looking Atlantic Canadians they were sharing the bill with, locals Spiral Beach waltzed onto the stage looking like the bastard children of Sid Vicious and Siouxsie Sioux. With a flare for drama, the band delivered a fantastic set of dancey-rock, drenched in weird vocal and keyboard effects. Although they stick out — and I mean way out — on this tour, the young group were able to get the crowd moving while standing out on their own.

Two Hours Traffic hit the stage to rapturous applause and began ripping through their blossoming catalogue of pop-rockers. The four-piece spent most of the night bouncing back and forth between tracks from Little Jabs and new disc Territory. Although they paused from this rhythm to play Territory bonus track "I Did What I Could," an old folk tune lead singer Liam Corcoran reworked for his wedding, audience requests any other older material were met with relative indifference.

Some have criticized the new album's darker tone, apparently unwilling to let the band move past the breezy songwriting that marked Little Jabs. Live, though, the new tracks are the standouts, adding weight to the band's performance and making some of the older tunes, particularly the one where Corcoran puts down the guitar, seem thin by comparison.

Thankfully, the crowd, of whom many were displaced Islanders, greeted new tunes like "Noisemaker" and "Weightless One" with the same reception as oldies "Backseat Sweetheart" and shoulda-been-a-hit "Heroes Of The Sidewalk."

Two Hours Traffic are rapidly assembling a back catalogue bands twice their age would be envious of, so it's fair to say they won't be playing venues the size of Lee's for too much longer. Though some contemporaries assert their place through glitz and glamour, this is a band that thankfully lets the music do the talking.