Night off, rock on

In the last Noise 101, we stated “Live Music Tuesday is dead.” Sure, it was a bold statement, but we didn’t have any reason to believe otherwise.

Among the people who read that article was Max Kerman, who just happens to be the frontman of Arkells. He then went out that night and put on one hell of a show that not only brought in Mount Royal students, but should leave them buzzing for an extended period of time.

Bringing a huge intensity boost to Wyckham House, Jan. 24 wasn’t the typical Thursday student night. Arkells, teaming up with Vancouver rockers Fields of Green, put on what will likely go down as one of MRU’s best shows of 2013.

Fields of Green started off the night out to prove they weren’t just some fill in taking up space before the headliners. The band arranged themselves in an interesting format, having all four members line up beside each other.

A general rule of thumb is that when the band goes out of their way to give everyone an equal chance to shine, they feel pretty confident that they’ve got something good to give. Fields of Green, while still in the budding years, should be a very good band once they’ve had a chance to mature.

Their performance showed great flashes of potential of what the band could easily become.

The act that everyone was waiting for was Arkells, and with good reason. With Calgary getting passed over for their tour with The Tragically Hip, MRU was very lucky to snag them for a night to play just for students.

Arkells are a fun band to listen to. They have a very clean and natural sound, and rely on their voices and instruments to carry them instead of using toys to enhance their music. This translates incredibly well live, because they are so comfortable with what they are doing that they don’t have to worry about not getting it right.

They are a band that thrives live, and that was on full display at Mount Royal.

Kerman insisted that the Wyckham House attendees throw on their dancing shoes, and then played hard enough to make it irresistible not to dance.

The night wasn’t without its fair share of silly fun, either. The band took a moment during Abigail to break into their own rendition of Taylor Swift’s We Are Never Getting Back Together and played Rock The Casbah, which was inspired by their dinner at local brewery “Red Rose”, which drew jeers from the crowd who clearly all love the actual local brewery in Calgary, Wild Rose Brewery.

Overall though, this was a fun night, and one that SAMRU should look back on as a job well done when trying to decide how to move forward. The band clearly loved playing for the students, and the students were very happy to have an excuse not to be studying.

After all, when everyone does their job, it’s a beautiful thing.