Nov 5 2014 – After a long four month hiatus from local shows, Public Animal was finally back in action on Sunday night at the Horseshoe. Long is a relative word but when the frequency had been a show going on every couple months, four months seems like a damn long time. And just like their June show at the Horseshoe, the audience looked like it wouldn’t show, ten minutes before the show the venue was nearly deserted. It was an early 9pm start and Public Animal was the opener for Supersuckers. And just like last time, with about five minutes to spare the crowd showed up en masse flooding in as if they’d all arrived on the same bus.
It was the second time Public Animal had preceded Supersuckers on stage. Last time was Public Animal’s debut show at Lee’s Palace for NXNE 2013. At that show, Supersuckers frontman Eddie Spaghetti declared “I think we’ve all just seen our new favourite band tonight” (and declared the same thing again on Sunday night), so on this year’s stop in Toronto,.he asked the band to open (along with the Hamilton show on Saturday). Guitarist/vocalist Ian Burton made a point of thanking them, pointing out dryly, “As opposed to Canadian bands, they’re not afraid of us”, a slightly passive aggressive acknowledgement of reality and their dominant position as Canada’s hardest rocking band. It wasn’t a boastful statement though, in fact, his tone was more of wistful frustration. He appeared to want to say more but didn’t and instead tore into Vault Doors and melted the faces close to the stage. To the bands that are justifiably intimidated by Public Animal, I’d say, that’s completely understandable but just raise your game, rock harder, take no prisoners. There’s no better tutorial than a Public Animal show.
The self-proclaimed “Greatest Rock’n’Roll Band in the World”, the Supersuckers are a Tucson based southern garage rock/punk band. In fact, stylistically, they’re very similar to Toronto’s Danko Jones. As great a band as they are, their 1992 album The Songs All Sound The Same does sum things pretty well. The riffs are great but it’s hard to tell one song from another. There’s a little too much style and not enough substance. Speaking of Danko Jones, Jones was in the house and joined the band on stage for two songs at the end of the set. They jammed on a few brief bars of the James Gang classic, Funk 49, one of the greatest rock songs ever written, to close out the show.
Fortunately the wait for the next show won’t be nearly so long as the band is playing The Garrison on Friday, December 12th with USA Out of Vietnam, Dead Tired and Mountain Dust.
