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Tag: Sonic Boom

Nada Surf @ Sonic Boom

Published by haterhigh on April 6, 2012

. : : April 4th, 2012 : : . After traveling across borders, both provincial and international, to see Nada Surf perform almost a dozen times in some seven years, Nada Surf was coming to town and I wasn’t buying a ticket. Their latest release, The Stars Are Indifferent To Astronomy, didn’t strike a chord with me. As the band has aged, I’ve noticed a keen drop in infectious melodies and guitar hooks, which have given way to wordy turns of phrase over an increasing down-tempo sound track. I didn’t love their last album like I did the ones before it. High/Low is a great 90’s alternative…

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Telekinesis @ Sonic Boom / Horseshoe Tavern

Published by haterhigh on March 8, 2011

. : : March 6th, 2011 : : . Between songs at the Horsehoe Tavern, Telekinesis front man and brain child Michel Benjamin Lerner asks the crowd if they have any questions. “Why are you guys so amazing?”, one gentleman piped up from the back. Lerner bashfully shrugged off the compliment, but touring guitarist Cody Votolato interjected with “We try our hardest, maybe that’s why it appears that way. Really hard.” And that would be an extremely difficult assessment to argue. The stripped-down, off-the-cuff set at Sonic Boom records earlier in the evening was definitely more laid back, but in a way that reflected the intimacy of the environment. But for…

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The Dears @ Sonic Boom

Published by haterhigh on February 18, 2011

. : : February 17th, 2011 : : . I loved the Dears when I first discovered them, opening for Matthew Good in 2003 as part of their No Cities Left tour. I listened to that album constantly, and shoved it on several friends with varying success. I saw the band tour that album five times in venues as varied as large congress centres, small clubs, and outdoor stages. But that band as I knew it imploded. Key members left, and the band seemed to be a rotating door of replacements, none of which seemed to click quite right. And, in my opinion, it showed. The follow-up discs…

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Nada Surf @ Sonic Boom

Published by haterhigh on January 2, 2011

. : : January 9th, 2008 : : . Three years less a week ago, January 9th, 2008 was an exciting night for me. Nada Surf was playing an exclusive and intimate one-night only, in-and-out early evening acoustic concert at Toronto’s premiere record store, Sonic Boom. The band was previewing songs from the yet-to-be released album, Lucky. Although the album would be leaked online a month before its release date shortly after, only lead single See These Bones had been heard by the general public to date. It felt special to be a Nada Surf fan and living in Toronto. Also, it was a great way to test…

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Smoosh @ Sonic Boom

Published by haterhigh on April 15, 2010

. : : May 2nd, 2008 : : . A lot of the attention Smoosh gets is based on their so-called “gimmick.” After all, it’s hard to get over the initial reaction of seeing two barely-teenaged girls (and a third, even younger one) take the stage and step behind instruments that are almost comically over-sized in comparison. You can almost hear an entire crowd put down their drinks and collectively turn to one another and whisper, “Awww, isn’t that cute?!”. You just know that many of them pick up their drinks and resume their conversations obliviously just as quickly. That’s a shame, because those…

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