The last 10 Things?

This edition of 10 Things, one of a handful of recurring series I've tried this year, is probably the final one, either for the year or for good. It's a grab bag of moments, mostly live shows, that I haven't written about yet across the last month or two:

1

On October 10th at the Revue Stage on Granville Island, I heard Ches Smith's Clone Row ensemble with guitarists Liberty Ellman and Mary Halvorson, plus bassist Nick Dunston. Smith is so tall that for his one bit of stage talk, he had to pick up the fully-extended boom mic stand to speak into the mic.

The Coastal Jazz-presented show didn't sell out, but it was full enough. Smith's drumming performance integrated what I think of as the freewheeling Ari Hoenig-like style with a variety of beat music patterns and glitchy time shifts. And then he played mallets, too!

We looked at Clone Row's new album back in the summer. They basically played the complex, progged-out music of that album, which has dual guitar riffing and counter-riffing, triggered samples, and improv sections both unaccompanied and collective. Hearing Dunston use a looper and delay effects to ring out ambient noises from his bass, and watching him sway in time as if coaxing them out of the instrument, was fun. You could tell all you needed to know about the contrast between the two guitarists from their seated postures, which they never left: Ellman's knees extended further than his toes as he leaned into every note, Halvorson's legs angled comfortably forward as she navigated the two-part guitar writing with poise and smiles.

2

The next night, I went to the Cobalt to hear the American indie rock trio Wombo touring their new album Danger in Fives.

Wombo's bassist-vocalist, Sydney Chadwick, has incredible pitch. As she moves up and down the bass' neck with single notes, power chords, and tenth intervals. her voice joins those pitches to become one unit. She starts a phrase on a sharp-eleventh better than many jazz vocalists. The band smashed through what seemed like a ton of short songs in just about 45 minutes.

This show had been slated to happen at the Kingsway Club, but like a few Infidels Jazz shows scheduled there earlier in the year, it needed to move. Unfortunately for my sleep, the new start time was 11:00 PM. The opener was the Montreal band Ribbon Skirt; their debut album called Bite Down came out in April.

Both bands take modern branches from the post-punk tree and have a lot of fun with them.

3

After doing 20 episodes as a co-host duo, Carson Tworow and I welcomed our first guest to the Upsample podcast this week. Our friend Madelyn Read works for the BC Co-Op Association on top of being a musician and songwriter, so we talked with her about the triangle of music-labour-business issues, as we do. There are two co-ops we wanted to bring up in particular: the now-defunct Ampled co-op, where I first got to know Read's music, and the would-be Bandcamp competitor launching soon called Subvert,