Photographs by Katrina Lat
Uni Ika Ai swept onto stage first to serenade the crowd. I’ve heard people refer to bands’ sounds as “spacey” or “otherworldly”, but these guys absolutely took the cake on this one. It sounded like music beamed here from an alien planet – and no, I don’t mean from the Mos Eisley Cantina. Not only was the music often trance-inducing, it deviated wildly between songs: some songs harkened from a futuristic robotic society, while others were clearly written by a tribe of sentient, ocean-dwelling, whale-like creatures. It was clear to me when the keyboardist walked onto the stage in a bedazzled poncho that this wasn’t going to be typical fare, but even then I was surprised. Was it good? It’s hard for me to say honestly; I spent most of the show just trying to figure out what was going on. Maybe I’ll understand it in a few millenia.
After Uni Ika Ai took us on a trip to the stratosphere, Hannah Georgas brought us all right back down to earth. While her cadence and her demeanor are borderline angelic, her lyrics are so very human. With lyrics like “I’m not a player, not a hater, I’m your lover and I want your loving/So shortie, back up, baby, he’s mine and I want his loving,” it’s hard not to find pieces of yourself in her music. Her music ranges from groovy to gloomy, but always carries a hint of hope and love and dreaminess that keeps you absolutely enraptured.
Her voice is an incredible experience live. She has fantastic singing form and is very clearly experienced at consistently putting out clean, crisp music. The band also had an incredibly tight sound, and so, as a whole, the audio experience was consistently exceptional. I may be a bit biased though: I’m always a sucker for that deep bass that penetrates right to your core, and it was present from basically the first note of “Enemies” to the last note of “Waiting Game”. It also helped that I was literally leaning against the woofer for most of the show.
For the encore, her band evacuated the stage and she played some solo tunes. She opened with “Ode to Mom”, a ballad written about her father and for her mother, who, it turned out, was in the audience that night (and had specially requested the song – thanks Mrs. Georgas!). Both “Ode to Mom” and the following song, “The National”, were full of raw energy and emotion as the music had been stripped away to expose only her voice. She closed the show with “Don’t You”, an exuberant sing-a-long that left the evening on a very high and happy night. Hannah Georgas is the perfect show to go to for an evening of grooving, so hopefully this Ontario-born songstress will be back to please soon.
