Music, musings and miscellanea

This review originally appeared at Chartattack.com

Never let it be said that Elephant 6 fans aren’t dedicated people.

It was a lesson learned by my friend, who, while standing in line at Toronto’s Lee’s Palace on Friday night, commented that he didn’t necessarily subscribe to the Church of Jeff Mangum the way that others do. This resulted in us receiving an earful from the guy in line ahead of us.

“You should have seen their gig at the Horseshoe back in ’98. It was mind-blowing. You won’t understand ’cause you weren’t there.”

Take that, hipsters.

Such is the devotion that E6 engendered during the ’90s. Built on the reputations of Neutral Milk Hotel,Olivia Tremor Control and The Apples In Stereo, the label/collective established a new approach to touring and releasing albums that blurred the lines between its member groups. It’s an approach that would be adopted by an entire new generation of musicians, including the Arts & Crafts crew right here in Toronto.

But after 10 years more or less out of the spotlight, these indie OGs have decided to leave the commune and hit the road to show the kids they inspired just how its done.

That crew started the show in the audience, next to the sound booth, singing in unison before marching their way onto the stage. With about a dozen E6 alum in the house, said stage filled up pretty quickly thanks to two drum sets and a tuba that were among the litany of instruments strewn about.

This also made moving around on-stage difficult, but that didn’t stop the collective members from changing their configuration with almost every song. It was refreshing to see a band not treat instruments like the banjo or the saw with affected preciousness, something today’s indie rockers seem to have projected onto any instrument that doesn’t fit the standard rock band mold.

To try and figure out every song they played would require a complete discography, plus a pretty intimate knowledge of indie and outsider music from the last 40 years. Suffice to say with a large number of its members on hand this night, Olivia Tremor Control’s catalogue was well represented, and I was able to pick out tunes by The Gerbils and Music Tapes.

Selections were presented as “this is a song Scott wrote,” or “this is one of Julian’s,” rather than attaching tunes to any singular project. This emphasized the fluid nature of the Elephant 6 oeuvre and the reverence its members have for one another’s music — egos are cast aside as whoever’s around lends a hand to best serve the song being played at that moment.

About an hour into their set came a brief intermission that ended with the unveiling of a snowman. The audience member who was able to throw the snowball through the moon on the other side of the venue would “melt” the snowman and bring on spring, Julian Koster explained in one of his many hilariously inventive stories. That audience member would also get to request any song by any band that they wanted.

But the musicians onstage vetoed the winner’s choice and instead went with AC/DC’s “Hells Bells,” which Will Cullen Hart had apparently wanted to play all tour. Minutemen and Royal Trux covers also made their way into the set, which ended up stretching almost three-and-a-half hours.

The encore, or more appropriately, the third act, stretched well passed the hour mark and at this point it was clear everyone onstage was playing for themselves. The show had unfortunately lost a lot of the momentum it had built up earlier, and the bar was half-empty. But you’ve got to hand it to a bunch of dudes (and dudette — Laura Carter was the lone female representative) in their forties who can outlast fans in their twenties.

The show ended the way it started, with the whole crew marching back into the audience, brass instruments and a drum in hand, encouraging everyone left in the venue to sing along to multiple rounds of Sun Ra’s “Enlightenment.”

Musical talent of this magnitude coming from a group of musicians with so much respect for both their audience and one another is incredibly rare in this age of hipster cool. Trying to put the Elephant 6 Holiday Surprise Tour’s unique and epic vibe in words is a rather difficult task. Perhaps it’s best summed up with: you had to be there, man.