Jingle Bell Rock feat. Metric, Tokyo Police Club et al. - Live At The Burton Cummings Theatre

Jingle Bell Rock was a mix bag of an affair.

After braving the oppressive deep freeze that is Winnipeg at the moment, I arrived at The Burt right at seven (the official start) intending to catch ex-DFA1979 Sebastien Grainger and his new band The Mountains. My friend and I grabbed 10th row seats (floor was rush seating), and sat down just in time to see the last seconds of Grainger's set. WTF? we wondered. Confused, we triple-checked our tickets and they, of course, read 7:00 p.m.

An informative bartender clarified: the show had been bumped up an hour earlier than originally scheduled. We had no idea! The website said 7 and our tickets read 7, so we showed up at 7. Plus, we missed DJ Mike Relm’s set. 2/5 acts down before we even got there!


Still shivering (it was cold inside the Burt) and kinda pissed off, I tried cheering up once The Dears (above photo), all seven of them, took the stage. The septet played a healthy mixture of new and old to a thawing-out, unresponsive crowd. The sound was crisp and I liked some of what I heard yet the band seemed just as frozen as the audience (I wore my jacket all the way until the end of TPC) so this further added to the evening’s overall dismal feeling.



The first half of Tokyo Police Club’s set was uninspired, and I was bet-the-farm certain the whole Jingle Bell Rock soiree would amount to a colossal disappointment. About halfway, though, the band must have melted because the second half of their set was fluid and terrific. Just like that, this young indie-rock quintet morphed into a mobile, cohesive unit and frontman David Monks, with his slightly-distorted vocals and feverish guitar playing, proved he is more than capable of dazzling big crowds (by now the venue was almost full).


Now I have to warn you before you read on: I am not a fan of Metric. I was there to see Grainger, The Dears, and TPC. I have tried several times to get into Metric’s sassy neo-disco pop stylings, but always glaze over when I hear their stuff.

However, I was deeply curious about their live act, having read and heard first-hand reports of its electric awesomeness. I was really hoping to be won over. Unfortunately though, Metric and I just didn’t click. Sure Emily Haines is a formidable front-woman who oozes confidence and sensuality with each song (does she always wear such short dresses? Zounds!), but there’s something about this collective that I’m musically indifferent to. I’m not exactly sure what it is - I suppose I find their music just not, umm, fun.

But, looking around at the enchanted, hip-swaying crowd clearly enjoying themselves on this absurdly cold night, I was definitely in the minority.

Infinite Playlist: MGMT - Oracular Spectacular