by Matt Williams
Last night, Power 97 hooked up Winnipeg’s hungry rock ‘n’ roll fans with three bands and a St. Patrick’s Day party. It was about exactly what you’d imagine if you picked up on the key words there – dudes in “Keep Calm and Chive On” and Dropkick Murphy’s shirts, young longhairs and aging rock star wannabes, women with short, edgy haircuts in faux leather, Bud cans and Jager on special. Most of the crowd looked underage, like it was their first time seeing live music in a bar, and that sentiment was reinforced tenfold when a fat drunk in shamrock sunglasses knocked my beer out of my hand and fell flat on his ass. Neither him nor his Neanderthal buddy in Mardi Gras beads offered to replace it. Kids should learn the rules.
I hovered around the back waiting for anything to start, while another, different fat drunk yelled, “let’s fuckin’ git ‘er dun, boys! Let’s get this show on the road! Turn down the suck!’ to absolutely no one in particular, and eventually The Revival hit the stage. I skipped their set, and came back to the lead singer pointlessly shirtless, and was happy I’d missed it. I also didn’t catch headliners The Glorious Sons – essentially a Trews rip-off band from Kingston who made their name entering and winning commercial rock radio contests (and winning at least one judged by members of The Trews). I was only there for Teenage Kicks.
On a night defined by macho posturing and confused bravado, the Toronto band, stuck in the middle set, cranked out half an hour of honest, sweaty rock ‘n’ roll, devoid of pretense and full of monster riffs and fist-pumping choruses. They book-ended it with spot-on covers of “Helter Skelter” and “Rock and Roll All Nite,” filling the middle with a heavy dose of tunes from their upcoming debut album, Spoils of Youth. If the rest of it sounds anything like the first two previews – catchy sing-a-long head-nodder “Digging Up Old Bones” and the high-energy swagger of “Houdini” – it’ll be worth throwing on for a drive with the volume cranked all the way up.
It’s almost a miracle that it even exists at all, though. Under the Pyramid’s neon sign after their set, bassist Jeff van Helvoort explained that, “in true Teenage Kicks fashion,” Spoils of Youth faced myriad road bumps, including the departure of band members and a $40,000 bill for the time of an LA producer who treated them simply as a paycheque. They deemed most of what they recorded in California un-usable, and Jeff’s brother, singer and guitarist Peter van Helvoort, produced and recorded a chunk of it at home in Toronto.
Jeff talks about the goal of the whole thing – to play real, honest music, with integrity – and mentions Constantines as an inspiration, which is apt. Constantines were a band whose name is nearly synonymous with “work,” resilient rock ‘n’ roll that never lied to anyone, a group who died with their boots on (and are now resurrected, but that’s a different story). Juxtaposed between the two other bands tonight, it’s clear that Teenage Kicks is a subscriber to the Cons ideology – the one that celebrates sincerity, hard work, rolling up your sleeves, and doing what you do because you know you need to do it. And what more would you want from rock ‘n’ roll?
Teenage Kicks are playing the Park Theatre for JUNOFest on Mar. 29, with Pigeon Park, Take Me To The Pilot, Distances, and The Flatliners, where there will be no trace of St. Patrick’s Day greasiness.