The Stills @Mercury Lounge, Apr. 5th

Tonight, caught another in a recent wave of Canadians taking over the indie rock world. Met up with Julie1 and Wawa at the wonderfully small Mercury Lounge for a night featuring the Stills, who are touring a few small venues in advance of their 2nd album coming out soon. I had not seen them before, and enjoyed their first cd a lot.

On my all-knowing indie guide Amanda's recommendation, we got there early enough to catch the Sam Roberts Band. Sam is another Canadian with scruffy hair and scruffy beard and hipster Puma sneakers, so I was skeptical, but he and his band played some awesome rock. His sound reminded me a bit of Ryan Adams when he gets into those long jam segments of certain songs. I went after the evening to grab a cd but sadly the merch table had packed up already. I look forward to seeing Sam Roberts again, or at least buying a cd of his...

The Stills played a nice mix of new and old. The crowd went nuts any time they played a cut from the first album. I was particularly psyched to hear "Lola." The two lead singers of the Stills seemed like two goofy Canadians. It was also the first time in a long time that I bothered packing my camera, so I spent a good amount of time just fiddling with my camera and trying to get a few good shots. I think I'm leaning more and more towards leaving the camera at home. Overall, the Stills were great, but I think Julie1, Wawa and I agreed that Sam Roberts blew us away, so anybody following him had a lot to play up to.

Because we got to the Merc early for Sam Roberts we were able to get right up front center, happily, but between Sam Roberts and the Stills, I definitely lost several hearing cells. My ears still had that cloudy feeling the next morning when I got out of my bed.