Toronto instrumental rock group Do Make Say Think played at Lincoln Hall last Saturday, December 5th, following a show at sister venue Schubas Tavern the night before.
Opening for the band were several songs from the Happiness Project, an experimental undertaking by Charles Spearin of DMST and contributing member of Canadian indie rock band Broken Social Scene. The songs in the Happiness Project begin with recordings of Spearin’s neighbors talking about happiness and what it means to them. The project focuses on the different inflections and rhythms that naturally sound when people speak. Using strings, horns, vocals and the talent lent by members of DMST, Spearin turned each person’s narratives of happy memories into different live, experimental jazz songs. The project is interesting as both a musical and a social test, and should be checked out by anyone interested in human interactions and sounds.
Do Make Say Think began shortly after the Happiness Project ended. Four more people joined the musicians from the Happiness Project, said, “Now we’re Do Make Say Think”, and began to play.
A common complaint about experimental bands is that the songs all blend together and start to sound the same. The combination of this fear and the initial repetitive lullaby sounds from the stage immediately threatened to calm me to sleep after a long night, but the shrieking jazz collision in the next movement of the same song helped to snap me into consciousness for at least the next hour of melodies. Perhaps not full consciousness, but that’s part of the appeal of Do Make Say Think: it’s easy to get lost in a song, prompting you to think about what’s going on in your own head and heightening the feelings you’re already having, much in the way certain drugs are known to do. Listening in a half dreamlike state, the songs played out as a personal soundtrack to my mind’s events. The band’s layered sounds seemed to have the same effect on most of the audience members, who swayed slowly in front of the stage and watched quietly from the balcony. The songs did have the tendency to blend together at times, but that just made for one really long, fascinating song with several components to it.
One of the main differences between Do Make Say Think and other post rock and experimental bands I’ve seen live is how natural the band members of DMST seem on stage, and how organic and comfortably the sounds escape from their instruments. They have climactic parts to their songs, and they enjoy them and move with the music, but they don’t make a production out of it, and they’re comfortable without trying to be too grandiose. They let the music speak for itself however it will, without using their body language to portray to the audience how important the music is.
Shortly before the encore, one of the band members asked if we wanted to hear “more Canadian fucking space fucking rock,” which is an excellent way to describe the kind of music the band plays. They played three of the four songs off of their latest album, Other Truths, which has just a touch of a western twang to it, and they seemed to have an increased level of positive energy and enthusiasm for their newer work. The nine musicians in the band all played to and fed off of each other, supporting each person and sound on stage, and not competing for anything. It wasn’t until 1:30 in the morning, after more than an hour and a half of playing, that the band sang for the first time in the night. After two hours they closed the night, fittingly, with the final track from Other Truths, Think, and sent us home to do just that.
