Photo credit: Daniel Dorsa.
As thousands of bands and people descend upon the land of tacos and sunshine to fill their bellies with BBQ and their ears with music in Austin, those of us forgoing the SXSW festival circus thankfully still have options up north. That included Seattle five-piece Craft Spells, stopping by Toronto’s Hard Luck Bar in support of their second album, Nausea (2014). They found themselves in front of an eager and (perhaps unexpectedly) full crowd, vocalist/guitarist Justin Paul Vallesteros saying early on: “Thank you, so much. This is surprising for us.”
And they were lucky to get it. Had they been playing to an empty room or had the crowd been less enthusiastic that night, their Tuesday set could have been a complete unraveling.
At Hard Luck Bar, Craft Spells seemed like a band on the brink. Not the positive kind, either. It was an edge walk that seemed perilously close to the point of defeat – the band walking a tightrope balanced between frustration and angst. Luckily, they ended up rescued by a crowd willing to hold up a very large safety net.
A good indicator of the enthusiasm in the room could be found in the audience’s apparent enjoyment of openers The Bilinda Butchers. The San Francisco band were far from inspiring musically, and yet the crowd of mostly young 20-somethings were happy to bop along to the band’s bored, apathetic shoegaze.
I’ll commend The Bilinda Butchers for their instrumental work (because they did, in fact, sound competent and complete,) but this wasn’t enough to distract from shoddily delivered vocals that sounded both out-of-tune and lazy. Pairing that to rather predictable melodies and a non-energetic delivery just didn’t impress or manage to hold my attention – but I seemed to be in the minority in that regard. Perhaps I just wasn’t feeling the St. Patrick’s Day spirit that everyone else seemed fairly drunk on.
It was an enthusiasm that carried into Craft Spells and thank goodness for that. While the band (who inexplicably lack a Wikipedia page) started out strong in their delivery and initially seemed happy to be there, there was a distinct pessimism that closed out their set. Vallesteros began by introducing the group and making the first of two Drake references, stating: “Damn, it’s good to be in the 6.”
Before coming to see Craft Spells, I had a friend describe them as: “A band with about four-years worth of buzz.” She wasn’t totally wrong in that suggestion – the group formed in 2009 and put out their well-received Idle Labor debut in 2009 to critical compliments and on the growing Captured Tracks label. But unlike contemporaries such as The Drums or DIIV, their wave of buzz never seemed to crest. Instead it rolled gently to the shore thanks to a lack of identifiable, viral singles.
This isn’t a bad thing, but it appears to have left the band exhausted. Their bouncy indie rock early in the set on a song such as “Your Tomb” played well, the band piling on the details to present numbers that were easy to like. But they were also getting increasingly frustrated when said details didn’t translate in the Hard Luck Bar.
To be fair, Hard Luck is definitely not a place indie bands that care about sound should play. It’s great if you’re a fan of punk music – its dingy atmosphere and barebones setup seem right at home for a mosh pit. But if you’re looking for details and for nuances in melodies, you’re not going to get them here.
So it was after “You’re Tomb” when things started to go downhill, and fast. “You guys are doing really good,” Vallesteros told the audience. “Probably better than me at this point.”
What followed was hesitant vocal delivery on “Still Left With Me” and then complaints when the microphone eventually stopped working altogether. While it’s hard to blame a band for a venue’s faulty equipment – there are definitely ways to deal with said problems. The way Craft Spells handled them was far from inspiring because it seemed so very defeated. They gave up, Vallestros was clearly upset, and the rest of the show suffered for it. (Vallestros ended their “Ramona” encore by saying: “Thank you for being the best. I easily could have broken down right now.”)
But if he hadn’t of made such a big deal about the venue’s shortcomings – if professionalism had been the course of action and he had put on a brave face and played through whatever on-stage crap they were going through – this would be a very different review. It wouldn’t have been the audience that saved the band from destruction Instead, this review could and should have been about a band knowing that things aren’t always great, but understanding they’re good enough to win over an audience anyway.
Apparently and unfortunately, Craft Spells don’t have this kind of confidence. At this point in their career, I’m not sure they ever will… Even though they really are very good.
So maybe they spent too much time listening to If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late and let Drizzy’s brand of soul-searching, woe-ful rap get to them. Whatever the case, it showed signs of a band weary, tired, and ready to hang up their instruments. That’s an odd thing to witness at a concert where so much of it was so very promising. But I suppose promise can only last for so long before a band decides it’s not worth the effort.
