Worst Shows of 2013: Torres with Lady Lamb the Beekeeper at The Media Club, June 19

I’m frequently obsessed with Torres’ performance of “Come To Terms” in this video; it's fucking beautiful. But I've never been impressed by anything else of hers. Regardless, I thought she’d have been worth seeing for "Come To Terms" alone. I couldn’t have been more incorrect. Torres with Lady Lamb the Beekeeper was my first unmitigated negative review. It was… just such a bad show. Man, I don't even want to talk about it! Read why in my review at, where else? Vancouver Weekly.

Worst Shows of 2013: The Thermals with Peace at Fortune Sound Club, April 26

The Thermals with Peace at Fortune Sound Club was only my third published review. With this blog having afforded me frankness and casualness (personal luxuries, professional detriments), I had yet to have any opportunities to practice being tactful with negative reviews. Without re-reading my article, I feel I was more than "fair": I highlighted the positives as much as I could. But truthfully, to be colloquial, the show sucked through and through.

I think Peace are one of the most wildly overrated Vancouver bands. The praise they garner mystifies me: Much of it comes from their close friends - other local bands, whom I love, including White Lung and Nü Sensae - but I'm still perplexed because none of them praise their other friends' bands as much as they praise Peace. Apathy and politely loose post-punk has never felt less inspired or genuine.

Combating Peace's blackhole charisma were the hyper-charged Thermals. They weren't bad live - they weren't sloppy, they played a standard-lengthed set, they appeased the crowd with encores - it just turned out I wasn't as big a fan of them as I thought. Even though I knew their reputation for generic power-pop, I expected their live energy to compensate. But for whatever reason, it just didn't. Even the hits, which are often worth all the duds, felt depressed in the homogenous mire.

If I was a diehard fan, I'd have eaten up the Thermals' set just like... everyone else at the club: Again, the ticket stub should have come with a "HIGH VOLTAGE" warning. But as the show turned out, I can see why The Body, the Blood, the Machine is really the only Thermals album casual fans may gave a shit about.

Read my full review at Vancouver Weekly, and maybe tell me I was wrong about having been tactful.

Worst Shows of 2013: Half Chinese at the Astoria, January 23

I shouldn’t complain about free shows, but Half Chinese at the Astoria wasn’t even worth the $2.10 I spent on transit or the ~hour-and-a-half I spent in transit and enduring a shitty opener (form of dude at a laptop).

Half Chinese’s We Were Pretending To Be was one of my favourite albums of 2012. I’d missed them multiple times, so I was stoked to finally see them. But they played for about fifteen minutes, and most of it sounded like they were tuning. There was scarcely a string of recognizable notes.

Half Chinese still play often enough, but their fifteen-minute sound-check that cost me time and very little money was enough of a rip-off to strongly dissuade me from ever seeing them again.

Visit their Bandcamp page to listen to ALL the sounds I expected to hear at the Astoria.

Worst Shows of 2013: Chelsea Wolfe with King Dude at the Media Club, January 15

Okay, I fucked up my list already. This show (and tomorrow’s entry) happened two months before Martha Wainwright and AroarA.

That Chelsea Wolfe with King Dude was one of the worst shows I saw this year was no fault of theirs. The sorts of black magical forces they tamper with were exactly the ones that seemed to have been at work against them. She was sick. Members of King Dude were sick. I was sick. A full-on flu hit me at the show. My joints ached. It hurt to even stand still. I fluctuated wildly between suffocatingly hot and shiveringly cold, even though I wore two layers and a jacket. All of that befell me on top of usual cold symptoms. No way was I able to focus on Wolfe's or Dude's cauldron-brewed doom-folk. Still, I didn't have it as badly as one person in the audience who passed out and had to be taken away in an ambulance.

Chelsea Wolfe with King Dude continued my Media Club Curse (see paragraph three of my Angel Olsen review). In hindsight, the show was no big loss: Despite heavily getting into Nick Cave and back into Swans and Michael Gira this past week, I'm mostly past Gothic music, these days.