{"id":1413,"date":"2010-11-29T14:23:25","date_gmt":"2010-11-29T20:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=1413"},"modified":"2010-11-29T14:23:25","modified_gmt":"2010-11-29T20:23:25","slug":"live-bait-wintersleep-win-ra-ra-riot-ra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2010\/11\/29\/live-bait-wintersleep-win-ra-ra-riot-ra\/","title":{"rendered":"Live Bait: Wintersleep win, Ra Ra Riot ra"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wintersleep & Ra Ra Riot
\n@ the Garrick
\nSaturday, November 20
\nBy Victoria King
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

No matter what part of the country you are from, so long as you were born under the Maple Leaf sun you are instantly claimed as Canadian. As a musician, whatever success you encounter and however many Junos you win, you can bet that your hometown will honour you with a ceremonial street inauguration or concert venue to stand in your honour. As it stands, I would be willing to bet that the guys from Wintersleep may go through this in 20 years or so. Following the great Canadian music stigma of \u2018WTF, they\u2019re Canadian,\u2019 Wintersleep recently released their fourth album New Inheritors<\/em>, and made a stop in Winnipeg along with Ra Ra Riot on November 22.<\/p>\n

For starters, I will be honest in admitting that I had never listened to Ra Ra Riot before that evening. I expected something loud and rowdy, as hinted to by their name, yet I was hesitant when I saw the band take the stage. Although they looked more like the type of kids that would be chilling outside the Garrick rather than playing onstage, this was definitely a giant \u201cI told you so\u201d moment. RRR kicked off the night with \u201cBoy.\u201d If you haven\u2019t heard it, take it from me, \u00a0I don\u2019t suggest you listen to it in public. Trying to contain my bobbing head and bouncing knees at a socially acceptable pace was a difficult task, but I was thankful to see that I wasn\u2019t the only one in the crowd who was totally down for RRR. \u00a0They played a solid opening, and for those in the crowd who resisted the urge to dance; fail.<\/p>\n

The stage for the night was minimal, excluding the stuffed dog sporting a wrestling belt, which was left as the one big question mark of the night. \u201cDrunk on Aluminum\u201d was the first track of the evening. Seriously, it was so good. The set included \u201cAstronaut,\u201d \u201cDead Letter and the Infinite Yes,\u201d \u201cBlack Camera,\u201d \u201cPreservation,\u201d \u201cWeighty Ghost\u201d and \u201cEcho Location.\u201d To be frank, I was actually quite surprised how much hard these guys rocked live. I went in expecting a balanced mix of an indie rock\/folk sound, but definitely got more than I expected in terms of an indie rock influence. The guitar came through so strong while the vocals maintained the same raw quality that makes their music so recognizable. On a side note, their was a pretty great \u2019Peg city moment when lead vocalist Paul Murphy asserted, \u201cPretty cold in Winnipeg\u201d only to be replied by \u201cThis ain\u2019t nothin\u2019!\u201d by some dude in the audience. To whoever did so, major cool points. \u201cOblivion\u201d, \u201cLaser Beams\u201d and \u201cBreath Normal, Nerves Normal\u201d made up the encore, along with Murphy\u2019s \u201cThank you Winnipeg, this was fucking awesome!\u201d<\/p>\n

The one gripe I do need make about the night is in regards to whoever was in charge of the sound system. For at least the first seven songs, the sound at front stage was pretty shitty, with the guitar seeming to drown out nearly everything else. I refused to accept the possibility that the band may not be as awesome live as on recording, so I checked out the middle of the venue. Turns out it was just the front of the stage, as the middle sounded great. Kinda craptastic on my part, but still a solid show.
\nWith that said, it is my prediction that Wintersleep will end up being one of those awesome bands that will forever be clumped in with all other eclectic Canadian groups; and while they may play in your cities and perform for your award shows, at the end of the day they\u2019re still from our east coast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wintersleep & Ra Ra Riot @ the Garrick Saturday, November 20 By Victoria King No matter what part of the country you are from, so long as you were born under the Maple Leaf sun you are instantly claimed as Canadian. As a musician, whatever success you encounter and however many Junos you win, you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-bait"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}