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If I’ve managed to detect any kind of Canadian national identity in that country’s independent rock music, it has something to do with the strength, longevity, and meaningfulness of the Canadian friendship. Broken Social Scene advised their countrymen to forget it in people, and Arcade Fire heeded the suggestion when the collective misery of too many funerals threatened to sink them. More bands followed, intermingled, intermarried, and clapped brotherly hands to needful shoulders, and now we have John O’Regan, who started his Diamond Rings project during a bout of illness and a hospital stay, and who now tours and releases 7-inches with fellow Torontans and best buds PS I Love You in a sort of geeky parade of recently shed freakish adolescence, matured and refined and now flaunted as beautiful humanity.
Before I became familiar with O’Regan’s music, I thought of him as the “other” bedroom self-therapist of 2010, Perfume Genius being more at the forefront of my mind in those days. But really these two prettily stage-named men are flipsides of the same coin—if the two great activities one can do alone in one’s bedroom are (1) think about the past and (2) dance in only underwear and then in an increasingly layered and colorful array of thrift store clothes, then O’Regan represents the latter, and brings an enchanting vision of his bedroom self to the stage. At the Triple Rock last weekend, wearing the same jacket he wore opening for Robyn at First Avenue in February (a fashion faux pas in front of a small audience too nice and indifferent to everything but the music to care), he coolly flailed and punched his way through a brief set of highlights from last year’s Special Affections. Playing electric guitar during “Give It Up,” he briefly became Cobain, but otherwise he crooned in his deep, unmistakable voice, and danced, straight through to encore-ending “All Yr Songs” (the a-side of a 2009 split 7” with PS I Love You and some kind of massive hit).
He dedicated dense, roiling “Wait & See” and every song that came after it to Janet Jackson (whose Rhythm Nation 1814, you might recall, is as great as any Michael Jackson album and must be the lush sound of salvation in a sterile hospital room), and I wonder if he has dreams of massively engineered concerts and superstardom. But I hope he never over-scales his shows. For now it’s just him on a small stage, with his keyboards, machines and guitar and his gawky moves, and a few perfectly timed sunglasses and jacket removals, to reveal narrow eyes, the full length of his swirling arms, and more.
There’s a theory that in the age of the internet, musicians are getting too much favorable attention too soon, for nothing more than a nice pop song or two, and having their artistic growth stunted, preemptively cured of their ambition and human strivings toward greatness. But I’d argue instead that the internet is the great separator, and that the truly committed men and women won’t feel they’ve achieved so easily, or ever. O’Regan hasn’t yet created his greatest work, I reckon, but he will, and in the meantime youth is his raison d’etre and he’s made a lovely splash as a modest internet phenom, a writer of wonderful pop songs, and a winning personality who gives comfort to the sick and heartsore. There’s so much left to be heard… Will he continue to capitalize on his peculiar south-of-Gary Numan, north-of-Ian Curtis baritone, or will he expand his range toward the somersaultery of Japan’s David Sylvain? Will we call him Bowie, or Byrne, or Jackson? What will it mean when we call future others John O’Regan?
PS I Love You’s set was a minor revelation (as with all things music-related, even minor happenings are major). They play the most riff-rad rock ‘n’ roll I’ve heard in some time, and I’d be lying if I didn’t confess to also being deeply touched by the visual component, a large man and a wiry man (Paul Saulnier on guitar and Benjamin Nelson on drums) communing in noise. I took a few moments to imagine their early years together, perhaps spent listening to and talking about records in an otherwise hostile world. O’Regan took the stage and vocal duties for set-ending “Leftovers,” adding a towering third body type to the mix, and dubbed Saulnier the best guitarist in Toronto. I believe it after witnessing the man’s awesome fretwork, sometimes approaching Marnie Stern’s abstract squigglework (on “Butterflies and Boners”), other times lifting the melodic refrain and doing little variations on it (on “2012”), the rest of the time straight-up crunching (on “Facelove,” the b-side of the aforementioned split 7” with Diamond Rings, which will one day be the most coveted 7” of our times).
Local openers Aaron & The Sea, like the recently all-about-town Claps, make thoroughly convincing and tender synth-pop (now belonging just as much to this century as to the 80s), theirs being a more aggressive alignment of booming drums, loud synth textures and soulful vocals. Here as throughout the night, there was strength in small numbers, in the solidarity of the duo: the names don’t match up so exactly, but let’s call them Aaron (which I presumed to be the name of the soulful vocalist)—romancing us from afar, holding up his clenched fist with heel facing outward in a little no-no gesture, and then inserting some keyboard tones into the mix or enveloping the tableau in the strums of his guitar—and his Sea (the drummer)—the organizing Principal, the helping hands.
