Austra-a brief review

I went and saw Austra last Wednesday at Lucky Bar with my sister, this sort of marks a milestone for us both. It was my fist live show in a bar and her first time in a bar! I guess that's a little lame, but we're late bloomers that way.

Anyway a little background on the band. It was started by

Katie Stelmanis

who's from Toronto (Whoot Canadian!) her voice is awesome and eery sounding, mostly due to her training to be an Opera singer. She used to perform on her own, but started Austra, recently, I believe. I read about her in the May or July issue of Nylon magazine. I was mislead into listening to them because the magazine said they were like a female version of Nine Inch Nails, they definitely are not, but I decided I loved them anyway so of course I HAD TO attend the show.

I went to Lucky one Monday with a friend and saw the poster and got super excited so I wrote down the time and date there and then. I roped my sister into coming because I figured she would like the band and nobody else I know is really into indie music.

Anyway Austra turned out to be completely AMAZING! Her voice is even more awesome live! She also moved really well with her music, her clothing choice was a tad questionable, but it worked with her style of music and her hair was perfect. The other two back up singers were really good as well, the one smallish brunette girl had an amazing voice, but wasn't a very good dancer and the other girl didn't really sing but matched Katie's dancing style a lot better.

The other two performers were pretty decent as well. I wasn't crazy about Techromance, but they weren't bad, just a little boring. Rich Aucoin was a lot of fun, he got right in with the crowd and danced around and got us to sing along. He also had really cool videos to go with his performance. He really got the energy up before Austra came out, so everyone was all ready to go. Also he had one of those colourful parachute things, made my life, not joking. I never got to use one as a child.

Overall I thought Austra was awesome live, they did have one technical difficulty near the beginning, but it only result in them playing one of their best songs twice, so I'm not complaining. I would definitely go see them live again, next time they come to Victoria I'll be getting my tickets right away!