Concert Review: Mauno, Gianna Lauren, Abby and Cloe

This summer, I've been making more of a concerted (ha, a pun) effort to get out and see live shows. And, I've also been putting more effort into writing about music more regularly. Two weeks ago, I saw Hildegard's Ghost at The Art We Are (great band, oddball jazz with a harp player). On July 8^th, I saw Halifax musician Gianna Lauren at Zack's.

Zack's downtown is quickly becoming a hotbed for local music, thanks to new owners. Lately, there's been a lot of punk and metal going on there, and a huge amount of local concerts. It was unusual to see an artist as decidedly non-metal as Gianna Lauren playing there. I also had just completed an interview with Gianna on Saturday (watch the blog for the audio of the interview, coming soon...)

The openers for the show were locals Abby and Cloe, two cute-as-buttons teenagers playing acoustic guitars. Half of the crowd was clearly there to see them, probably family members and friends. This was their debut as a live act, they did three covers and two originals, mostly on the folk-pop end. They were decent for a first try at live performance. Half the crowd left after they finished their set.

Gianna Lauren was up next. She's touring in support of her upcoming fourth album, Moon Through Window. Gianna was using the headliners, Mauno, as her backing band. Gianna's voice is wispy with a bit of a throaty edge. She started with a couple of lighter tunes, her music a bit like the work of Kate Bush, but without the string section, and with Beat Happening as her back up band. After she played her latest single, “Mistakes”, she seemed to find her inner rock-goddess and started drenching her guitar with reverb. She did about an 8 song set and really had the crowd listening by the end of it.

Halifax's Mauno were the last band. I feared that most of the crowd would leave before they hit the stage. There were only three of us left in the crowd while they set up, but about a dozen people came back to listen to their set. Mauno's music is really hard to pin down. The band is a trio, Nick Everett on guitar and lead vocals, Eliza Neimi on bass and Evan Matthews on drums. Mauno have a noisy post-punk feel to it, with the start-stop tempo changes of a math-rock band. The closest band comparison I could make is Archers of Loaf, pretty heady company for a young band. Nick's guitar was front and centre, using no less than eight effects pedals, alternating shredding riffs with intricate strumming and picking. Interestingly, Nick and Eliza shared a microphone, bringing a striking intimacy to their music, having their faces inches from each other when they sang. The vocals were subtle, light singing with no screaming or posturing, almost mumbling at times. Evan Matthews jazz like drum playing added to the math-rock stylings of the band. For their last song, Eliza and Nick swapped instruments and vocal parts. I picked up their album, Rough Master, after the set, I was so impressed with this band. Their live show is more incendiary than their work on album, but both are very satisfying.