Song Spotlight: Living Hour's Big Shadow (a night at Zebulon)

Living Hour joined The Pains of Being Pure at Heart for a mini-tour along the West Coast, which included a sold out show at The Echoplex. They ended their coastal tour with a secret performance at the Rocknite showcase at Zebulon. I guess it wasn't totally secret, it was announced the day before Rocknite. It wasn't last minute either, due to the fact that Rocknite mentioned there would be a secret guest. I suppose the correct definition is that the set announcement was under embargo due to their The Echoplex performance.  

Living Hour at Zebulon

The Winnipeg based band formed in 2013 and is fronted by Sam Sarty. She had fun quizzing the crowd about Winnipeg, asking if the crowd knew where the city was located. The NHL fans in the crowd knew exactly where it was and also called out the band for living in a city with a bad team. The response, "The Jets suck. It's official. This year, at least." For me, I was thinking it was somewhere in the middle of Canada. Looking at a map, that is about accurate. Would I have known it was in Manitoba . . . nah. Wearing a ripped t-shirt, Sarty mentioned that in Winnipeg, they don't wear t-shirts until June. "We were going crazy with all the sun." If only they had come into town a week earlier, the weather would have been more dreary. 

I didn't see a setlist, but from what I could piece together, most of their tunes were from their fourth studio album titled Internal Drone Infinity. Here is what their Spotify bio has to say, "Anchored by Sam Sarty’s vivid lyricism, shaped by years as a projectionist conjuring stories in a dark theater, the band explores the quiet magic hidden in everyday life." For those who read my blog post on a semi-regular basis, you know love movies about as much as I love music so that provides an immediate connection with the band.  

Living Hour at Zebulon

The Spotify bio also describes their music as dreamy noise rock. That is such a great description of their band, which includes three guitarists. Sarty often sang at a whisper while an orchestral guitar rock sound filled the venue. She, herself, was part of that orchestral sound. Though she often played bass, she also picked up the guitar on occasion. That switching of instruments is one quality of the five-piece band that I loved. Three of the band members switched up instruments throughout the set. I'm not a music aficionado to knowthe value of band members switching things up (perhaps the band members just like mixing it up), but the trio included the main drummer who came up to the front of the stage for a song or two.  

Back to Winnipeg, their song "Texting" was about sending long text messages to someone, trying to explain the city. Sunwashed plastic garbage bin, blue now from the cornflower sun. It is a song with random thoughts about every day observations about a city that make it sound like every other city across North America (maybe just the globe in general). 

Living Hour at Zebulon

The song spotlight goes to "Big Shadow." The performance of this song encompasses best what I have written. The song lasted a little over 3 minutes and the first 1 minute and 20 seconds was an instrumental tour de force. It also started off with a switch of music duties with the drummer coming up front to play the guitar. Two of the guitarists (drummer) got down on their knees to jam in front of the amps and also went into face offs with each other for guitar battles.    

A song about two years of Sarty's life perhaps summed up at the start with the lyrics about drawn snakes. 

Say sorry to the plants that died above my head

I forgot who I bought them with

But I’m not much of a botanist

Partial Setlist (not necessarily in exact order): Stainless Steel Dreams, Big Shadow, Waiter, Feelings Meeting, Texting, Wheel.