Great Ohbijou Fantasy

The River Run Centre is a gorgeous theatre designed to hold approximately 785 spectators for plays and theatrical productions. Last night it stood as the setting for a three-band concert of indie proportions.
Ohbijou took the stage as a 7-piece that played easily twice as many instruments. Fronted by two petite sisters with surprisingly strong and lovely voices, the group played through a lush mix of light indie music. It was very well done though slightly sleepy at times.
A brief intermission didn't even allow us to leave our seats before a drumset, banjo, upright-bass, acoustic guitar and keyboard were taken up by the Great Lake Swimmers. The lead vocalist had a most interesting and excellent voice, which was nicely accented by the female keyboardist's backing. The upright bass player looked pretty mean with his full beard and tats but knew how to play. The drummer played a myriad of interesting ways and instruments, such as a washboard. The frontman also had a wonderful strum-plucking style that really did it for me on Ongaria greats like There Is A Light and Your Rocky Spine. Other songs included Moving Pictures, Silent Films and Changing Colours, though I would have liked to have heard the female take the lead on Imaginary Bars which was not on the set list. The set was absolutely lovely and could easily have been followed up by an encore - but despite the efforts to start a standing ovation I'm sure a lot of people were anxiously awaiting the main event. The one-man violining genious. Final Fantasy.
Owen was just about to start up his looping extravaganza. He came on humbly dressed in a t-shirt and pants and without much lead-up launched into his tunes. The set seemed somewhat ad-libbed. With Owen doing whatever grabbed him, including two covers of a man who he says he is planning on doing a full album of. The two-songs had funny and interesting lyrics but were solely piano-based and are definitely a departure from He Poos Clouds. The second song of the set had me grinning the entire time at just how phenomenal it was. It was a rendition of the title track from the inaugural Polaris Prize winning album and it was admittedly a tough play for Owen, in fact partway through he paused momentarily and mentioned how difficult it was to play, but this just made my grin grow wider as I was simply amazed. A total highlight. A few other highlights were This Lamb Sells Condos, Many Lives for 49 MP and the CN Tower Belongs to the Dead. Once again words cannot describe all of the ways that Owen produces noise from his violin, nor the visual display that Stephanie puts on with the overhead projector. It was another incredible set, capped off with a two-song encore including Song Song Song, that had Owen beating up his violin a couple times more before the end of the night. This simple word was uttered more than a few times last evening; "Wow."

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