When I reviewed “Find A Better Way” by The Commoners last year, I simply said: “If there’s been a better roots rock ‘n’ roll record this year, then I’d like someone to send it to me, please.” And here, with the Toronto band making their second appearance in the Second City in six months, they get to prove how good they are.
As expected, The Commoners are little short of sensational.
It’s not that they are the most original band going around; indeed, it’s precisely because they are so classic that they are so good.
Let’s get a name said right from the start: The Black Crowes. A seminal band for me growing up, The Commoners are as close as anyone has come since to making me feel the same way.
The keyboards mixing with guitars on work like “Shake You Off” are simply wonderful, and even when they get acerbic, as they do on “Who Are You?” – dedicated to “the administrators who tell us who we are – there’s such skill.
Clearly not a band to rest on any laurels; instead, the set is punctuated with three new songs: “Devil Teasin’ Me” has been a fixture on Planet Rock recently, and others like “Restless” are signposts to the fact that it is going to be a classic.
Singer, Chris Medhurst, promises to “take things up a notch,” and “Fill My Cup” dutifully rocks out before they end their 40 minutes with the utterly wonderful “Find A Better Way,” and there is. Their way. The way of the common people, if you will. A little like Robert Jon And The Wreck or Blackberry Smoke emerged seemingly out of nowhere to be the hardest-working overnight sensations in rock ‘n’ roll, the way is set clear for The Commoners, some seven years after their debut, to do the same.
When a set starts with a cover, eyebrows might be raised, but when Samantha Fish and Jesse Dayton kick off, as it were, with MC5’s “Kick Out The Jams,” it is the perfect precursor.
First, because for the next hour and 45 minutes, that’s what they do – they fire one after another at you – and then also because if you didn’t expect a garage punk cover, then you had better get used to the unexpected by the end.
Earlier this year, Fish and Dayton released “Death Wish Blues,” a mighty collection of disparate threads, and they are here too. What they do here so well, like the album, is make them so cohesive.
They play all of the album. “Deathwish” itself sounds righteously indignant, but by the time they play “Settle For Less,” a little later, you can only marvel at the soloing from both.
In between those two, the sense of fun in all of this is evident; “Feels So Good” sees them both grinning, “Hello Stranger” brings the soul, while the rockabilly “Brand New Cadillac” is quite something, and in a way, that’s the recipe for the wider gig.
The one Samantha Fish original they play, “Bulletproof,” on which she plays the Cigar Box guitar as if she was born to, has a harder edge here, which is balanced beautifully by “No Apology.”
In the middle, the band disappears, leaving the two stars to a gorgeous “I’ll Be Here In The Morning” from Townes Van Zandt and Dayton-penned country blues “Baby’s Long Gone.”
Lesser musicians than this would have lost this in a sea of jamming. Not here; indeed, there’s just one guitar duel, which actually elevates “Dangerous People.”
By turns elsewhere, they are classic (“Supadupabad” – the best song Supersonic Blues Machine never wrote), dark on “Flooded Love,” or sultry on “Rippin’ And Runnin’, but whatever they do has class.
They put their stamp on “I Put A Spell On You,” and there’s a funky “Riders” before they return for the encore. Fish is asking what they should do, for Dayton to reply: “Whatever you like, Darlin’, I’m just along for the ride” in his best southern drawl. What they do is a lovely, gentle “You Know My Heart” before finishing in raucous fashion with R.L. Burnside’s “Goin’ Down South.”
A collaboration that has benefited everyone, not least the artists who sound completely energized, but also the audience too.
There’s always a risk that these types of things are more fun for the band than the crowd, and that most definitely did not happen here. This was a celebration of music and had tremendous warmth as well as skill.
ALL PHOTOS: KEITH TRACY
