Sometimes you need squealing solos, mosh pits and eyebrow scorching pyro. I mean, hey, who doesn’t a bit of that stirred into their Monday night, amiright? But sometimes, yeah sometimes, your chainsaw mangled, steamroller backed over heart just needs the mellow mood vibes provided by Dallas Green’s usual melancholy  City and Colour. Tunes with names like “Difficult Love”, “Lover Come Back” and “We found Each Other in the Dark”…oh yeah, that’s the sentimental sombre saccharine my stung sorrow-filled soul yearned for. (It also, apparently, requires a shitload of alliteration!)

I’ve been to this Green party before and, usually, it involves slow dirges under open skies, swaying with eyes closed while a certain I totally sais quoi wafts in the air about me. Upon discovering that the band was now entering into enclosed, mega-venues these days I had to wonder how the sound would translate into the stadium.  Would it be akin to, say, extracting a lounge jazz trio and popping into the middle of the Rungrado 1st of May?

The quick answer: nope. The long answer: hell nope, mainly because Dallas and the band cranked things up into rocker range instead of resting comfortably inside the gentle streams generally reserved for indie-folk. Sure, the first half of new cut “Astronaut” starts off on footing you might have come to expect but just over the midway point of this 6 minute epic you blast off into a cosmos of power chords and drum beats that built up to a cacophonous supernova explosion.

City and Colour performs at the Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa. Photo: Renée Doiron

This, the second track on the recent release A Pill for Loneliness, set the tone for the evening for the modest, but vocal, crowd inside the Canadian Tire Centre. Heavy mellow is a pretty sweet musical river to get washed up in, says I. Getting acquainted with the new album before the show, the sonic soundscape I took a deep dive in sort of reminded me of Pink Floyd for the modern age and that, my friends, is a whole lot of audible awesome that translates into something ethereal live.

Green’s voice has always been really soothing, one I admit I like to pop on when insomnia decides to come knocking at 1AM on a weekday. He’s like dropping an Ambien without the side effects. That said, you don’t want to be dozing live so the peppering of pumpier content is a nice throttle back to consciousness when the slower vibes dip you under.

If you came for isolated tearjerkers (hell, even LiVE 88.5 was asking people if they needed a tissue as we left the arena), you weren’t to be disappointed by what Green peppered into his beefier new aural retreats. Slowly the band stepped off stage until Dallas stood solo under the lights.

“I love you, Dallas,” came a call that would be echoed as the night went on.

“I know what you said but I totally heard that as ‘I love you, dad’,” chucked Green adding that at his age he was old enough to be father to the younger set in the crowd for which there were many.

City and Colour performs at the Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa. Photo: Renée Doiron

Green went on to acknowledge the somber content in most of his songs:

“I feel that if you’re here you already knew that. I mean, let’s be honest, most of them are about the same fucking thing…just trying to get something going. That’s what we’re all doing. We’re all fucked up. It just varies in degrees of how fucked up we are.”

Then, preceding the expected slow strum of the guitar strings, Green shared a quote from Beckett: “You’re on Earth. There’s no cure for that.”

Nope, there sure isn’t, but, Dallas, you weaver of sadness songs, your City and Colour’s particular shade of blue was the miracle medicine for this heart full of hurt. Much appreciated.

Setlist:
Astronaut
Strangers
Fragile Bird
If I Should Go Before You
Northern Blues
Two Coins
Runaway
Sensible Heart
Hello, I’m in Delaware
Little Hell
Northern Wind
Mountain of Madness
Lover Come Back
Difficult Love
Waiting…
As Much as I Ever Could

Encore:
Body in a Box
The Girl
Living in Lightning
We Found Each Other in the Dark Play
Sleeping Sickness

 

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