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NXNE Review: Oberhofer, Of Montreal, Portugal The Man, June 16, Yonge Dundas Square

Posted on
19 Jun 2012
by
Paul

Saturday night’s show at Yonge Dundas Square was definitely one of the most hyped of all of NXNE. While the two bands i was most interested in seeing were both ones i had seen just over a year ago, both Of Montreal and The Flaming Lips put on solid, entertaining shows, so it’s pretty hard to pass them up. I arrived early to check out Oberhofer, a band I had heard some hype on and was curious to check out. I don’t actually have much to say about Oberhofer’s set, so I’ll steal a page out of IKvsDK‘s playbook and just post what other people said on twitter. Let’s start with the man himself:

@IKvsDK Oberhofer is quite entertaining #nxne

OK, fair enough, the band played some decent, catchy indie rock, and I was somewhat entertained by frontman Brad Oberhofer’s stage antics and numerous “Woo’s” into the mic, but while they were good, I wasn’t overly impressed. I think this tweet says it best:

@leahbobet The Oberhofer set, we decide, is neither offensive nor exceptional. It’s a band. It’s there. #NXNE

After Oberhofer’s set, I was primed for Of Montreal’s trademark wackiness. It was a typically solid performance with colourful stagewear on the band’s part, people in pig masks crowd surfing, staged wrestling matches, and a guy who was briefly dressed as the god Pan I think. Fun times. I can only imagine what the guys preaching on the corner across the street made of the shenanigans. The party’s crashing us now, indeed.

Logically, the one-two punch of Of Montreal and The Flaming Lips back to back would have been a no brainer, but whoever scheduled this thing decided to slot Portugal The Man between those two made a bit of a miscalculation in my humble opinion. The Portland rockers started out promising enough, but that early promise shortly turned to “meh” as their set went on. Singer John Baldwin Gourley’s got a strong, bluesy voice, and the band was talented enough, but their set was a bit of a one note performance to me, much of it seeming a bit samey after awhile. I appreciated their cover of The Beatles’ “Helter Skelter,” but when they ended their set with the coda to “Hey Jude,” I found it to be veering on the edge of shameless crowd pandering. Two Beatles songs? Come on. While there was nothing wrong with their performance, they bored me a little bit. Then again, when sandwiched between two such colourful bands, it’s a little hard to really match that.

PrevPreviousNXNE Review: Omegas, June 15, The Shop @ Parts And Labour
NextNXNE Review: Dirty Mags, June 16, WrongbarNext

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