The trio We are the City was one of the two Canadian bands playing at the Mint on Friday night and their explosive-experimental rock took me by surprise. Their violent-then-quiet-tempestuous music was truly original with grandiose moments and unpredictable violent detours toward pop, rock, classic, jazz, or even pure quirkiness.
The trio announced they were from Vancouver, touring with Said the Whale, and they sounded like three very nice guys, profusely thanking the crowd, even giving away free downloads from their bandcamp page (http://wearethecity.bandcamp.com/album/high-school).
Cayne McKenzie on vocals and several keyboards, David Menzel on guitar, and Andrew Huculiak on drums were producing these majestic compositions full of false starts abruptly stopping in the middle of an explosive chaos and weird outbursts of distortion, while playing several songs from their 'High School' EP.
Then there was this sudden short song ‘Happy New Year’, quite different from the others, with a happy and infectious almost-Vampire-Weekend-like groove, sung by Andrew Huculiak who was using a drum machine since he was not behind his drum set anymore. It was a total surprise after these dark tempests.
McKenzie’s vocals were high pitched and his crazy keyboards could go from calm concerto parts to lyric symphonic ones, reminiscent of classic compositions, and I was thinking, may be as Muse do it? (not surprisingly, Cayne McKenzie was classically trained in piano for eight years). But it was way more unpredictable and experimental than any Muse’s song, with eruptions of wild energy turning into a synchronized and fierce head banging on the keyboard,… yes, there was a lot of head banging, probably as much as during a metal concert!