On Wednesday Night, The Alehouse presented Mother Mother, Dragonette and The Most Serene Republic.

The first band of the night was Mother Mother, they are a five piece band that is on tour all the way from the west coast. Going into the night I was in favourite of hearing Mother Mother. I was drawn to their show really by just sampling a couple of their songs on their myspace page. Their song “Touch Up” was the song that really brought me down to come and see them perform live. This is about the third time now that I have been drawn to a show because of the bands myspace page. What is unique about Mother Mother is the band is fronted by a trio of Lead singers or one lead singer and two back up singers it is up to you to decide which you prefer in choosing. When I was interviewing the band they said that Molly and Debra-Jean are backup vocals. The rest of the band includes Ryan on Lead Guitar and Vocals, Jeremy on Bass Guitar and Kenton on the Drums. I found that the timing that the band has to keep with each other is very crucial, because they have three people singing vocals throughout most of their songs. This is the first item that I immediately complimented the band on after they finished their set. 

Mother Mother's sound is a wide variety of different genres, there is an experimental indie pop (slight hip hop) side (B-52s), a couple of songs have a country sound and finally I found many of the songs have Rock influences written into the songs. I particularly liked the vocal and stage stylings of Debra-Jean, my eyes focused on her hand gestures throughout their set, also her vocals seemed to standout more throughout their songs. Her front center stage solo seemed to hit the right note with the crowd because at the end of the song she received a wide applause from the audience that was crowding dance floor section of The Ale House. 

Electro/Pop/Rock Dragonette was next to hit the stage, and hit the stage they did. Right away they were there to put on a high energy show. Their electro sound was playing away before the band took to the stage. Throughout Dragonette’s set they had their electro sound being played from the sound booth. I found it was hard to tell what the guitarist was actually playing. The crowd really seemed to open up more and was more into their music then what they were during Mother Mothers set. Their song “Competition” was the song that I liked the most throughout their set. It was the vocals that caught my attention the most throughout the song. I find in Dragonettes songs if the electro aspect of their sound was to be taken out of their music I don’t think that they would be able to stand out from other bands and their energy level in their music would go way down. Even though Dragonette wasn’t the headlining band I would have had them play last because of the energy that they put out in their stage performance.

The Most Serene Republic came onto the stage hitting pots and pans. I was wondering why I could see pots and pans on the stage and I didn’t think that they were going to use them in their set. This band is a definite example of experimental music. They blend in a couple of different instruments with their songs such as a trombone, a violin, and pots and pans. I think this was the loudest and heaviest Bass Guitar sound that I have listened to before, every chord that the Bass Player played just rocked the whole Ale House floor and you could feel it all throughout your legs and sometimes your upper body, which I thought was pretty cool. What really stands out in this band is the Lead Singer, his stage presence and movements are somewhat of Gord Downie but only a couple of things reminiscences that of Gord. Most of the time to me he really just didn’t seem to fit in with the music or what he was going to be doing next. He really puts their music as an Art exhibition than a Music show. I wasn’t really feeling The Most Serene Republic's music at all which made it not so hard for me to leave a live show, I stayed for about half an hour into their set before I called it quits. But it seemed to me that most of the crowd came out to see these guys but I still liked Mother Mother the most out of the night.

Matt Hartwick