April 28, 2013 – The Lad Classic, The Goodluck Assembly, Dearly Beloved and Little Foot Long Foot played the Silver Dollar back on Saturday, April 13th. The Lad Classic is a promising young rock band I caught at The Sister last year on a bill with Matt Groupie’s King Beez surf band. Although their gig was unfortunately missed this time, I’m looking forward seeing them again soon. You can download their great new acoustic EP Lightning for free here.
Ottawa’s Goodluck Assembly are highly regarded but I didn’t really find their pop songs particularly interesting or memorable.
Dearly Beloved
Dearly Beloved is a Toronto-based high energy pop rock band who played a wide range of music ranging from hard rock to pop to punk and the crowd loved every minute of it. The only complaint would be there were too few minutes in their set of just under half an hour.
Dearly Beloved is led by frontman, bassist, lead vocalist and principal songwriter Rob Higgins. Higgins along with vocalist Niva Chow and drummer Gavin Maguire form the core of the band but their sound is driven by guitarist Dave Kiner.
Last June when we featured Dearly Beloved in a NXNE edition Emerging Artist Spotlight article, their guitarist was Tristan Avakian, though Kiner was playing with the band at that point.
Highlight of the set was their traditional closing song Candy Coated. The show at the Silver Dollar was third in a row with Little Foot Long Foot after shows in Windsor and London in the preceding nights.
Little Foot Long Foot
Little Foot Long Foot has been playing around southern Ontario lately with shows in Kingston, Oshawa, Windsor and London but only once this year locally, back in January at the Bovine. The band was surprisingly absent from CMW and at least so far, hasn’t been announced for NXNE (but the complete NXNE line-up hasn’t been announced yet so that could still change).
Headliners LFLF were celebrating the release of their new single and video of Bridge Concerns on Saturday night. Bridge Concerns is a new song first played at their shows back in January. It’s another great Little Foot Long Foot rocker built on some heavy guitar riffs. The band seems to be moving in a grittier, bluesier direction than the more melodic “Oh, Hell” with its more prominent Deep Purple-influenced organ throughout. The new song definitely has a live feel to it, but just like the show at the Silver Dollar, Jeff Heisholt’s organ is hard to find in the mix. No longer new to the band, Heisholt is putting his mark on the band as producer of Bridge Concerns.
Little Foot Long Foot’s next show is May 17th at the Atria in Oshawa.
By Steve Mallinson
