City and Colour makes it personal in Vancouver
Dallas Green shows his country- rock roots at tour kickoff show
CITY AND COLOUR With The Low Anthem When: Thursday night ( again tonight) Where: Queen Elizabeth Theatre
Dallas Green is part of a special breed of singersongwriters.
His songs tend to be confessional and soul- baring, speaking of his own insecurities and his own trials and tribulations.
But while these songs are distinctly his, as a listener it is often all too easy to make Green’s words your own as part of a reflexive or healing process.
And then there is that voice: a soothing, crystalline sound that may be one of the best in the genre.
So it’s fairly easy to understand how Green’s popularity has been on the upturn of late.
His latest album Little Hell debuted at No. 1 on the Canadian Soundscan charts last June. It was also named Best Canadian Rock Album on itunes Rewind 2011.
His fans have come to see Green as a source of light when life gets dark, and judging by the first of two sold- out shows at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver Thursday night kicking off City and Colour’s Canadian tour, they have a very good reason to do so, though Green himself has admitted he finds the task a heavy burden at times.
In attendance, plenty of ball cap/ plaid- shirt- sporting guys, an assortment of club- ready girls, and more than a few couples on dates. Perhaps not surprisingly, a fair number of older fans as well, indicating Green’s reach as City and Colour goes far beyond his former screamo band Alexisonfire’s target audience.
In the opening slot, Rhode Island- based indie folk outfit The Low Anthem kicked things off with a Bob Dylan/ Steve Earle- inflected set layered with a nice array of odd instruments, from the dulcimer to the saw to cellphones as well as vintage keys, horns and cello atop the standard reverberated guitars.
As atmospheric and ethereal as the band’s slower and more experimental material was, it was the quintet’s rockier, Ccresque stuff that really hit the mark, the band’s extended closing jam Give It All Away ( from their latest pay- what- you- want album Have Fun With the Snake Wagon) seeing frontman Ben Knox handing out the few bills contained in his wallet to people in the front row.
( Did anyone else glimpse an impatient Dallas Green waiting on the sidelines as the band went beyond its allocated time?)
If The Low Anthem’s stage presentation felt cluttered and ramshackle, City and Colour’s was, by contrast, pretty slick.
Surrounded by eight rotating spotlights on black pillars, the eternally bearded, tattooed and bespectacled Green took the stage with his now- regular backing outfit consisting of guitarist Daniel Romano of Attack in Black, and bassist Scott Remila and drummer Dylan Green ( no relation to Dallas) of Raising the Fawn, with the added help of Aaron Goldstein on lap steel guitar, an instrument that would be omnipresent on many of the songs throughout the set.
If anything, there was a bit of a Nashville twist to the band’s set, Green and company sporting matching suits and opening with a countrified We Found Each Other in the Dark, the opening song on Little Hell, and a rocking rendition of Sleeping Sickness, from 2008’ s Bring Me Your Love.
From songs about his father ( The Grand Optimist) to material Green wrote for his wife, So You Think You Can Dance Canada host Leah Miller, who admittedly suffers from crippling night terrors ( Fragile Bird), each song was a page taken from real- life experience.
While Green’s open- book approach has always been City and Colour’s strength, some of the older material originally designed to be played in a mostly solo setting lost a bit of its intimacy within the band’s bigger sound.
But Green showed he hasn’t completely forgotten his solo roots, handing out a few oldies like Day Old Hate and Body In a Box, kindly asking the crowd to put away the cellphones and cameras to enjoy the moment happening “right in front of your face.”
“I’m not mad at you,” he added with a smile.
He would later poke fun at the clappers in the audience, complaining it’s always the ones who don’t know how to who start it.
Despite his often- pained material, Green hasn’t lost his fun- loving touch when it comes to stage banter.
Ultimately, that is Green’s true gift as a songwriter and performer: That ease with which everything flows in concert, that balance between bitter and sweet, and soft and loud.
And, again, there’s always that voice.