Matthew Good w/ Mother Mother @ The Centre For Performing Arts -- 11/10/09

I won't talk too much at length about the second night, since a lot of what I covered the first night applies to the second. But I'll quickly go over the setlist and the differences between shows, and throw in a few pictures from both nights. As usual, the pictures are just taken with my phone, so they're not the best quality...

Before I start on tonights show, there were a couple things I missed from last night's show. First was Matt Good owning some dude in the crowd about the CBC. At one point he mentioned the show was being recorded for the CBC and got the usual response of "CBC sucks!". So he asked why and talked about how CBC is owned by us, the public, so it is accountable to us. Which is why the BBC is one of the best news organizations, since it, too, is publicly owned, while Fox News is owned by a bunch of jackasses. Capping it off with saying it's one of those things you have to actually give a shit about for it to work in your favour. Kind of like democracy.
The other thing was the lighting. Lighting is not really something you notice in most shows, unless it's really terrible, really distracting, or really good. This was definitely the latter. It's hard to describe, but suffice to say it really fit the moods of the songs and really enhanced the show, for both nights.

Mother Mother had pretty much the same set, just in a bit of a different order and one or two songs changed, so nothing too different from the first night.

As for Matthew Good, the show was actually pretty different than the night before.
He seemed to play a few more older songs, and hit most of the songs from Vancouver he didn't play last night. I was disappointed he didn't play Champions of Nothing and especially Vancouver National Anthem again, but Strange Days, Load Me Up (with a little bit of Love Will Tear Us Apart snuck in) and Everything is Automatic (with Good turning the chorus over to the crowd to sing), and especially Odette made up for it.
There was about half the songs in both sets that were the same, with the other half being different each night.
Everything seemed a bit looser the second night as well. There seemed to be a lot more joking and banter on stage, with a couple times him starting on one thing and going on a whole host of tangents, pretty much all hilarious. Matt's banter and humour have always been a huge part of why his live shows are so enjoyable, so it was great to see him a bit more talkative.
Some of the awesome stories, which will probably have no context here, included if Good was the leader in a One World Government, he would take all the arms from America and give them to a small country, like Jamaica or Mongolia. A decoy tourbus. And a tease of playing Suburbia by request (played the first verse, but couldn't go on due to wrong key) which somehow turned into a kids show theme, and Matt being creeped out by bassist Milos' creepy dance, which led to him doing his impeccable Borat accent. It got to the point where, near the end Good asked the crowd if it was weird to have so much wackiness going on between such serious songs.

All in all, I think the second night was the better of the two. Overall, a better setlist, what seemed like a much looser stage show and even a better crowd, it seemed at points.

setlist:
On Nights Like Tonight, Avalanche, The Boy Who Could Explode, Great Whales of the Sea, A Single Explosion, I'm A Window, Born Losers, Load Me Up, Last Parade, Odette, Apparitions, Empty's Theme Park
(encore) Metal Airplanes (acoustic), Strange Days (acoustic), Giant, Weapon, Everything is Automatic.

Matthew Good w/ Mother Mother @ The Centre For Performing Arts -- 11/09/09

It's probably no surprise that I have seen Matthew Good, who is my favourite musician, every year since '04. Either with a band or acoustic, venues large or small, I have never seen him live and been anything less than blown away. He's also had some great opening bands, and this tour is no less. I had known & seen Mother Mother before, and had been wanting to see them live again, so them being the opening band was an added bonus!

I fully admit, I wasn't a big fan of Mother Mother until I saw them opening for Sam Roberts, but since then they've grown on me and I'm more into them now than I was then. They definitely won me over that day with their infectious chords and near-perfectly harmonized melodies, and tonight was no different. It was a very solid set, which consisted mostly of their more well known songs, with a few others thrown in -- I think at least one new one as well. The entire set was energetic, but Hay Loft was probably the most so. They didn't talk much, but has a great stage presence nonetheless, letting the catchy indie-pop-rock speak for itself. And damn, are these folks talented. Singer & guitarist Ryan Guldemond pulled of a couple of incredible guitar solos while bassist Jeremy Page had a fantastic saxophone solo during one of the songs. That's not something you see enough in rock shows. My only complaint would have to be that it was too short.

After not too long (I've said before, but I have grown to love curfew shows) Matthew Good came out with his three member backing band. He kicked off the show with The Boy That Could Explode, followed by another few songs from the new album, Vancouver. He then delved into the catalogue a bit for some favourites, including Avalanche, which is always pretty amazing live, and Apparitions which had most of the crowd singing along. Just before he went into Vancouver National Anthem, he talked a bit about the bylaw making it illegal to protest the olympics and Burquitlam MLA Harry Bloy calling protestors "Terrorists" with "a limited intellect" (seriously). The main set ended with the combination of Weapon and Empty's Theme Park. I already knew Weapon was pretty epic live, but holy shit was Empty's a fantastic song live.
They came back out to the opening of Giant (still one of my favourite openers to any album ever) with everyone chanting and clapping along to the familiar: K-I-C-K-A-S-S. (claps) That's the way we spell success, before a couple more songs and ending with Champions of Nothing. The song seemed a bit reworked, with the opening being more acoustic then the rest of the band slowly coming in. It was another incredible song and fantastic way to end out the night.
There seemed to be a little less banter than usual, due to him getting over being sick just before the tour, but what little there was was definitely hilarious, in true Matt Good fashion. At one point he was joking about scalpers and them ripping people off, selling tickets for the wrong show: STP. "Man, Scott Weiland has put on weight.... and where's his fedora???"
Possibly the best moment of the night came out of riffing, going from Matt joking it wasn't quite "Bublé O'Clock", going to his bewilderment of how crooners like that work in an arena setting... which somehow led the band to start a jazz riff and Good improvising a lounge-y number of (an apparent true story) the time he looked out his window to find a ninja getting it on with a pirate. Pure gold.

An absolutely incredible night of music, and I can't wait to see either band live again.
OH WAIT! I'm going to the second show tonight!

setlist:
The Boy Who Would Explode, Great Whales of the Sea, Fought To Fight It, Born Losers, Avalanche, [lounge song], Apparitions, Vancouver National Anthem, Last Parade, A Silent Army in the Trees, Blue Skies Over Badlands, Weapon, Empty's Theme Park
(encore) Giant, Us Remains Impossible, Champions of Nothing.