Preview
AFTRTASTE
Friday, February 7
The Black Swan
Saturday, February 8
Warehouse
At some point, every band has to play for a crowd of people scrunching their noses and covering their ears. If a group can weather that, they’re ready to move on to the wildly unpredictable sport of beer-tossing (widely practiced by more demonstrative audiences across the continent, regardless of their happiness or dissatisfaction).
After a few years of gigging, Aftrtaste finally earned its stripes after coming face-to-face with ear-pluggers last month.
Keep in mind that the identified "abstainers" in the front row knew that (a) they were in for live music and (b) Lite 96 was a hop, skip and a jump away from them and their VW car radio. Either way, Aftrtaste’s volume wasn’t what this particular couple, bless their hearts, had expected to hear at the Amnesty International Arts Jam. Aftrtaste took the stage between Tibetan dancers and a poetry reading, so you can guess what happened next.
The crowd was more mature than the ones they’re used to, says Scott Bell without a trace of sarcasm. But while some were nodding their heads to the beat, others were less enthused.
"Most notable was one couple in the front row," says Bell. "Given the nature of the presentation, it would’ve been considered quite rude to leave during a performance, so this couple plugged their ears and shut their eyes as much as they could. It was the only thing I could look at throughout our whole four-song set."
"It was pretty funny," continues Bell’s band-mate Ben Herold. "The weirdest thing is they kept them plugged at times when we weren’t even playing, like in between songs. I guess they came for the poetry readings and Tibetan dancers."
I guess, hey? While fast, melodic pop punk isn’t for everyone, bands like Sum 41, A Simple Plan and New Found Glory are the preferred choice of much of Canada’s youth. It’s also the essence of Aftrtaste – as exhibited on their promising new release, The Long Road Ahead – although they try to separate themselves from the rest of the pack.
"We don’t pay attention to that mainstream attention to A Simple Plan and punk stuff like that. We try to stray away from that," says Herold.
With tons of bands getting rich quick with music similar to Aftrtaste’s, isn’t that a bit of an oversight?
"If we focused on them, I think that’s where we’d find our music going," answers Bell. "But you said we’re not straying too far from them and I think that’s kind of a parallel in the direction that we’re going. We don’t want to meet up with them, we’d like to keep our own direction.
"We’d like to have more of a sincere connection with the audience rather than every song is about girls." |
