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Strange to find the downtown east side's Brickyard full of characters even more disconcertingly eccentric than the folks shooting the breeze on the neighbourhood's notorious street corners. They must have turned up for San Diego's Optiganally Yours, a band who, in this age of cool, detached irony are refreshingly unrepentant in their wackiness. OY's main gimmick is the use of an obscure proto-sampler called the Optigan, which was originally marketed in the early '70s as a toy. It produces a raw sound, spooky in its low-resolution retro ambience. For the most part, though, the band use the instrument's beats and riffs for the considerable kitsch appeal intrinsic to their dated swinging-London idiom. Which brings us to OY's other gimmicks, which include Viking helmets, lizard masks, leotards, cross-dressing, a break-dancing competition and a Hammond-funk rendition of "Wichita Lineman". Like Nardwuar's Goblins and Austria's Fuckhead, Optiganally Yours fall just the right side of unbearably irritating. One imagines that this is the upshot of some serious intent behind the whole thing. This suspicion is confirmed by Thingy, a band featuring most of the same scruffy misfits as OY. They play an aggressive mix of punk-pop and convoluted math/prog rock. It's an impressive noise but the intricacy of the compositions is often lost in the sheer bluster of their performance. Perhaps Thingy
just played it that way because of the venue's sub-standard PA. Certainly,
the subtleties of the New Pornographers' colourful power pop were lost
in the general boom and buzz. New Porn deserve better because they write
fantastic songs and arrange them with great imagination (as evidenced
by their collaboration with Neko Case on the Vancouver Special
compilation). Admirably unafraid of such un-punk rock elements as craftsmanship
and backing vocals, they could really shine given the right venue. Whether
or not the individual members of the band will have time to develop
this project is another matter. The line-up contains faces familiar
from Neko's Boyfriends, Destroyer, Vancouver Nights and even The Radio,
so one assumes that this is something for a side project for most of
those involved. Hopefully they'll all wise up to the fact that this
act could be the one that propels them beyond the parochial Vancouver
scene. |
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