I had the pleasure this past weekend of attending dd/mm/yyyy's Black Square release show at Lee's. About a month ago I was on the verge of adopting a blasé attitude towards the Toronto art-punk math-rock quintet, primarily on account of my few awkward meetings with vocalist/guitarist/occasional percussionist Tomas del Balso, which consisted of conversations that made me feel like too much of a fanboy, and that unfortunate Toronto hipster attitude to shun anything local.
Thankfully, I have moved far past that stiff-lipped (.com) arrogance.
I will go ahead and state that Black Square is my favourite album of 2009 thus far. That is a rather bold statement considering that I have had a leak of Manchester Orchestra's Mean Everything to Nothing in my digitally-rendered hands for a month or so now. Not to suggest that the Manchester Orchestra album is by any means disappointing--I simply have been blown away by Black Square.... and I maaaaayyyyy have set the bar a little high for Mean Everything to Nothing.
dd/mm/yyyy perfectly captured the upbeat tempo of Black Square at Thursday's release show. They played incessantly, rarely pausing to catch a breath in between songs. It also helped that note for note they sounded spot-on, the overall mix was fantastic (especially for Lee's Palace, which generally disappoints me), I had a perfect spot elevated slightly beside the stage, and the place was packed.
Opening band Metz did not disappoint either. The Toronto three-piece has surfaced on the music scene at the perfect time, as their hardcore grunge is a refreshing kick in the pants amidst the lo-fi bullshit everyone pretends to like.
As a gift to my loyal reader(s), I will grant you the opportunity to listen to dd/mm/yyyy's 2007 album Are They Masks?, a 20-track opus that is quite a bit stylistically different from Black Square. The songs are a little less structured and accessible and essentially remind me of an intoxicated version of The Chinese Stars.
