It was a red lipstick type of night at the Kool Haus last Saturday.

I met up the fabulous Bodi sisters in Toronto where we started the evening off right with some pizza and merlot. After donning the aforementioned red lipstick and Miss. A artfully splashed some smoke across my eyelids, we jumped in the cab to see Mother Mother!

And then…. traffic. Incredible, incredible amounts of traffic. As we pasted the SkyDome (re: Rogers Centre) our cab driver said something about the “Beaver Festival” being in town. The three of us sit in silence and I contemplate on what a ‘Beaver Festival’ might entail. Wood carving competitions? BeaverTail eating contests? Face painting stands? Beaver Club (Boy Scout juniors)  convention? But wait… something started tugging at my mind… what was all over my facebook newsfeed this morning? Who was everyone excited to see… BEIBER. “Wait, Beiber? Like Justin Beiber?” “Yeah, yeah, yeah” “Ohhhhhhhhhh”……… HOW DARE JUSTIN BEIBER PLAY AGAINST MOTHER MOTHER!!!!!!!!!

After an expensive cab ride later (thanks Beibs), we arrived. The Kool Haus is, get this, a very cool venue. I will definitely be using the photos I took of the lights and disco balls for some doodledrops in the future. One thing the Bodis and I were reminded of very quickly was how different Torontonian concert etiquette is compared to Montreal shows. Two words: personal space. Seriously- for real Toronto, what is your deal? Why do you need to get all up in my biznas? I need some room to ‘busta.’  The mosh of human bodies turned out to be a blessing and a curse as we made fast friends with all of our movement-constricted neighbours.

Pre-concert gems included everyone earnestly singing Beyonce’s “Halo” at the top of our lungs and overhearing a girl asking her friend if she knows how great it feels after a night of farting- “I’m sorry, a night of what?” “Partying” “I thought you said farting!” I turned around, apologized for eavesdropping and then we became best friends for life.

As the opening act, the FlorenceWelch/AnnieLennox-channelling, Hannah Georgas, took the stage my future favourite concert stranger-friend went “How’d everybody do that? How did everyone just get taller?” We spent the next few minutes fawning over the various cell phone apps in front of us capturing the stage: “Ohh yeeeeah,…sweet one… this is what Flikr is made out of. …That’s the stuff- oh you see that one!?”

“So are you like a big fan of Mother Mother?” He said. “Well, this is my fifth time seeing them.” I reply. It was instantaneous. Multiple heads from our little microcosm of concert-goers whipped around. “THIS IS YOUR FIFTH MOTHER MOTHER CONCERT?!” “That is seriously impressive!” From then on I was a Mother Mother tour guide- preparing expectation levels for our little dance-turbulent section of the crowd.

As I have recently posted, Mother Mother came out with a new album called The Sticks in September. So it was reasonable to think that the band would mostly play tracks from that LP. No, no, no my friends.  It was an ALL HITS MOTHER MOTHER SPECTACULAR: Verbatim, Hayloft, Ghosting, O My Heart, The Stand, Bit by Bit, Ball Cap…  Mel and I completely lost it when the first few notes to “Wrecking Ball” started. We were “fist[s] amidst the hands” punch-dancing around like mad women. As expected, the music was phenomenal, I felt that Molly Guldemond (featured above), the sister of lead Ryan Guldemond, got a little bit more spotlight in this show, which suited me just fine as I love her unique high-pitched vocals.

What was probably the most fun, besides the punch-dancing and the forced socializing and the wicked light show (not shown… yet), was scream-singing the crazy-awesome lyrics. The voices of three hundred fans combined on famous lines like  “I LIKE THE TREETOPS, ‘CAUSE THEY’RE REACHING JUST LIKE ME. I’M TIED UP IN KNOTS LIKE THE BRAMBLES AND THE WEEDS,” “IT TAKES A DEDICATED HAND TO PUT IT THROUGH THE WALL” and “OH MY HEART, IT’S A ROOF MADE OF STRAW IN THE JAW OF EL NINO.”

Sorry for all the caps lock in this post, but the concert was hella exciting.

I’m sharing “The Stand,” a single from their third album Eureka. To me it seems like an obvious pick, but then I realize not all of you are Sarah who came over between classes to nap and request this song a bajillion times (actual playcount on my itunes.)

It was also a tune where the crowd dropped any pretence of singing and just screeched it out.

“IT’S LIKE PARADISE! SPREAD OUT WITH A BUTTER KNIFE!”

“The Stand” by Mother Mother

 
CHECK OUT PREVIOUS POSTS OF MOTHER MOTHER:
Mother, May I?
It takes a dedicated hand to put it through the wall
In the Sticks