Concert Reviews

Braids at the Horseshoe Tavern

Photographs by Neil Van.

Even though the weather has dipped below the optimal early spring weather for the past week the inside of the Horseshoe Tavern had more than enough heat to go around. With buzzy Canadian shoegaze indie rock band BRAIDS in town to celebrate the release of their third album Deep in the Iris the small venue was packed. BRAIDS belongs to a new wave of Canadian music where electronic, ambient, jazz, RnB and rock influences all converge into something unique and new. Some of their fellow contemporaries include Purity Ring, Majical Cloudz, Moon King, Doldrums and more. With a sound that is hard to categorize beyond its dancey but not EDM and rocky but not Arcade Fire, you either instantly like the sound or ignore it. When the three piece band walked on stage lead singer Raphaelle Standell-Preston looked over the sea of tightly packed bodies and cracked “Sometimes I wish we had pyrotechnics, like we came out with flames going.” The crowd laughed along but the words “We released a new record and we’re going to play it for you guys” elicited shouts of ‘Woo!’ 

The band opened with a groovy cowbell heavy song. Drummer Austin Tufts provided reverb soaked falsetto vocals consisting of ohhing and ahhing along with music. No matter how much singing is involved, it is always impressive seeing a drummer able to do two different things at once. The impressive musicianship didn’t stop behind the kit as Taylor Smith stood behind a drum pad sequencer and would play piano melodies while finger tapping his guitar to play notes at the same time. The one note at a time approach on both the drum pad and guitar made you hear and feel each individual note as it came out making for a very clean sound. Interestingly enough the band brought their own lighting set up in the form of four set lights, one in each corner which brightly illuminated them. The lighting rig gave the Horseshoe a new look compared to the usual house light hue of yellow hazy lights.

At the band’s most high energy points there was a resemblance to Caribou’s form of dance music. The mostly female crowd quickly swayed back and forth, eyes closed feeling the fast paced tempo of the drums mixed with the soothing shoegaze guitar playing and Standell-Preston’s deeply personal singing. In a quieter moment of the night where Standell-Preston quietly played the guitar and whispered into the microphone, the crowd went very silent to be in the moment with her. It was so quiet you could only pick out a few voices way at the back of the room by the bar, people more interested in saying they were at a buzzy band show then being immersed into the music like everyone else. 

In an interview Tufts had claimed that one of his influences was Radiohead, a band that he listened to a lot during the recording process. It is fairly evident that In Rainbows and King of Limbs with their glitchy ‘dance-rock’ music are hovering over what they are trying to accomplish. Tufts ability to make every song sound unique made him a stand out performer for the night. While the whole band sounded great, I found my eyes drawn to him to see how his almost prog-rock style drumming was being performed. When the band played the lead single from the album Miniskirt, the crowd cheered the loudest. This feminist anthem has even more heft in person with Standell-Preston’s usually warped vocals clean as day with every line being punched with authority. During the second half of the song where it becomes mostly instrumental Smith was rocking pretty hard dancing along to the synth riffs. 

The few times Standell-Preston engaged the crowd, she always had a funny quip for us. Near the end of the set some guy tried shouting things from the crowd (which I could not hear) but Standell-Preston told him off in the nicest way possible by telling him they can hash out whatever he needs to be hashed out at the bar over a drink after the show. The band’s set was fairly short clocking in at just around an hour due to the fact that it was such new material that they are still learning to play for the crowd. During their last tour the band remarked how some of the songs didn’t translate well live and were planning on making sure their newer material didn’t suffer from the same problem. The moody dance music was plenty fun and as our photographer Neil Van remarked to me it makes for nice music on a rainy day. 

About author

Music Editor at Live in Limbo and Host of Contra Zoom podcast. Dakota is a graduate of Humber College's Acting for Film and Television. He now specializes in knowing all random trivia. He writes about music, sports and film. Dakota's life goal is visit all baseball stadiums, he's at 7.