Goat Boys Revenge

Goat Boys Revenge

September 25, 2010

… My fiance and I had gone to the Biltmore in Vancouver to see Yukon Blonde perform and were definitely not disappointed.  However, the headlining act that night was not the boys from Kelowna.  The Wooden Sky headlined the show.

Having never heard The Wooden Sky before, we weren’t exactly sure what to expect.  Everything we had heard about the band suggested they were on the folk side of the equation.  A kind of Canadian “Mumford & Sons”.

Well things didn’t go exactly as planned for the opening night of The Wooden Sky’s cross Canada tour.  Whether it was a technical glitch or nerves, we may never know, but seconds into the first note and the band hit the brakes. 

Now I’m writing this, a week later with a smidgen of retrospect.  That night I was ready to walk out three songs into their set.  Yukon Blonde had just demolished their set and The Wooden Sky was just, well to be honest they were simply floundering.  The vocals were atrocious.  The lead singer, Gavin Gardiner, has an amazing voice.  But on this night he sounded like “Goat Boy”.  Now I don’t have time to explain the Goat Boy reference, if you don’t get it, google it.  That’s why Al Gore invented the internet.   And as for the rest of the band, it all just felt uncomfortable.     

Having now purchased The Wooden Sky’s album and seen a documentary of the band playing everywhere from grandma’s kitchen to a gondola dangling in mid air, I have to admit I love their sound.  And I’d love to see them again, despite what I have said about the Biltmore performance.

The next time I see The Wooden Sky, I just hope the stay true to their sound, cause if they do it will be one hell of a show.