There is an interesting kind of hypocrisy that goes with the territory called "rock and roll." In other musical genres, young artists are expected to learn from their antecedents, and to a certain extent, to mimic their heroes' moves in the nascent stages of their own careers, finally developing styles of their own. Early on, Muddy Waters took his style from Robert Johnson, and the young Miles Davis copied Louis Armstrong, although both artists went on to eclipse their forebears artistically, extending their respective genres, blues and jazz, beyond the parameters they inherited.
In rock and roll, however, this is only partly true: Green Day can get away with mimicry of the most obvious kind (are they the Ramones with English accents or The Clash with American accents?), and that's OK, because punk has a certain critical "cool" which has yet to abate. The Tea Party, however, hailing from Canada's version of The Motor City (Windsor, Ontario) draw on two classic rock bands which initially found enthusiastic audiences in Detroit, and whose influence there has never really waned: specifically, The Doors and Led Zeppelin, both mega-bands in the annals of "Detroit Rock City."
Because of this, the Tea Party has sometimes been critically panned-- especially by music critics from Toronto, a city whose most famous recent "rock" export has been the execrable Barenaked Ladies--for remaining true to their Motor City roots, and unfairly so, as they show every sign of going beyond the territory staked out by their musical forebears and creating a signature style of their own. This concert showcased a band on the verge of becoming a powerhouse rock unit to be reckoned with, the Tea Party conjuring up powerful echoes of not only of greats from the classic rock past, but also inviting comparison with more recent alternative hard rock peers like the great God Machine.
The show opened with the Canadian hit, "The River," (from their debut lp, Splendor Solis) which crashed along powerfully enough on its bluesy wah-wah riffery and lyrics a little too cliched for my tastes (i.e. references to the River Styx--which brings to mind the band Styx, which brings to mind "Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto" ..... ughh). The band themselves seemed to want to get this one out of the way immediately (the crowd went nuts, of course), and then proceeded to launch into a trilogy of very strong material from their new album The Edges of Twilight.
"Sister Awake" progressed through a couple of Eastern sounding phases (and a "Kashmir" vibe does indeed permeate the new album--a good thing, in my book) and ended up crashing and thundering on the strength of singer-guitarist Jeff Martin's insistent riffing and drummer Jeff Burrows' powerhouse drumming (a very complimentary and seldom made comparison to the greatest of all rock drummers, John Bonham, is apposite here). "SEES-TAH!" bellowed Martin, evoking the basso profundo of "Roadhouse Blues" Jim Morrison in the song's chorus, yet seemingly summoning his own, singular muse. Similarly intoxicating were the following "Fire In The Head," another guitar-charged number whose title sums up its effect quite nicely, and the epic, multilayered "Walk with Me", which saw Martin improvising the chorus from Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart", to this critic's extreme approval.
At times, the Tea Party can seem almost too ambitious, as if they want to demonstrate everything they can do in the span of one concert appearance, a forgivable fault that can be put down to youthful over-enthusiasm. This was the case in the middle "raga-rock" section of the show, replete with East Indian draperies and candles, which momentarily arrested the quite sizable momentum the band had built up with some delays and false starts. All it took, however, was the opening bars of the first album's barn-burner, "Sun Going Down" (which interpolates Robert Johnson's "Me and the Devil Blues") to get things back up to speed. Martin shone here on acoustic slide guitar, going back to Zeppelin's roots for a greasy jam in which he confronts ol' Satan himself and finds to his surprise that "he looked a helluva lot like me." The rapturous audience on this second night at the Danforth Music Hall was only too happy to follow Martin down Lucifer's well-worn path, trod by other rock icons from Aleister Crowley to one Jimmy Page.
The show hit its apex, however, with another of the strong Splendor Solis tunes, "Save Me", which is built around a percussive main rhythm and an exploding chorus. The band extended this one with a middle section based on a familiar drum pattern which soon revealed itself to be "Hurt" from Nine Inch Nails The Downward Spiral. Judging from the sing-along crowd reaction as Martin repeated the song's line "You can have it all," I would say that there is a sizable cross-over of NIN and Tea Party fans, dispelling the notion that the band merely attracts those trying to (re)create a "classic rock" experience.
Of the encores, the ballad "Correspondences" improved upon the Edges version, with some In Through The Out Door guitar licks replacing the original's piano fills. Finally, "A Certain Slant of Light," the band's signature tune, just missed falling flat because of the extreme volume at which it was played, murking up the mix and giving the impression that the band was tired of the song and trying to get by on volume instead of emotion. Still, the punters went ape.
Overall, a very good show. Things only look bright for The Tea Party as The Edges of Twilight was released Stateside. Go get em, boys.
