Bands #7, #8 and #9 - Data Suggests You're Too Close
When a legend takes another form
I’m on a quest to see 100 bands in 500 days before I turn 50 on September 17, 2025 to prove how young I still am. It’s called denial, and I’m really leaning into it.
This is a show where I was definitely there for the opener.
POSTDATA is the solo project of Paul Murphy, the lead singer of Halifax legends Wintersleep. If you put a gun to my head and forced me to name my favorite currently active Canadian band I would say Wintersleep. I wouldn’t be happy about your tactics because that’s not a nice thing to do at all. But I’d be okay with my answer. So, I was there as a Paul Murphy fanboy.
I’ve never seen POSTDATA before. And despite really loving Wintersleep, they are not a band I have seen that much. Not nearly enough. Just four times, actually. But each show has a vivid memory for me. (And not just because, in an absolute travesty, only one of the venues still exists. I will do you a favour and not launch into my standard rant about the embarrassing state of venues in Calgary for a city this size. I'll save that for Tricia - she never tires of hearing it.)
The Gateway - This was my first time seeing them. We walked in and I handed my ticket to a guy standing by the door. He took it after a slight hesitation, and I went in. Later, that same ticket guy was up on stage playing keyboards for Wintersleep. Why longtime Wintersleep member Jon Samuel was standing by the door when I walked in, why he took my ticket when I handed to him, and why I am so consistently idiotic around musicians I respect and admire are all mysteries I have never answered. I must say, though - if the music thing doesn’t work out, Samuel has a future in customer service. It was a 5 star experience.
Mac Hall Ballroom - This show was during a horrible blizzard. Elliott Brood - the band with a man’s name - were the openers. But they ran into van issues coming from their last show. They were so late that Wintersleep finally played first, and the Brood didn’t arrive until Wintersleep was into their encore. I've never seen a band get set up faster, or look more frustrated by the life decisions that led them here.
Mac Hall Ballroom - The show itself was more straightforward, but I remember this one for two reasons. It was the last of many, many shows I went to in that grand old ballroom that has now been renovated into a venue for cocktail parties because the University of Calgary defines priorities very differently than I do. And it was the last show that I went to as part of a favorite, and fairly frequent, viewing trio before we were forced into a long hiatus. That gang wasn’t brought back together for several years, until we saw The Rural Alberta Advantage together in London, Ontario last spring.
The Palace - Late in the set, drummer Loel Campbell threw up in a bucket beside his drums, and partly on his drums. The band clearly knew what had happened. And they clearly had less than no sympathy for him. It seems as if Loel had been a bad boy, and that shutting up and playing was the only option open to him.
My awe of Murphy still has plenty of room to grow even after all these years, it turns out. The guy is a national treasure. A marvel. What a show.
He's just a little younger than me, and nothing about him screams rock star. He was dressed tonight in an untucked plaid shirt. He has a beard much like mine - pretty tight, and very gray. Every hair on his head has been forced to choose whether to turn gray or fall out. There is no third option. He looks like he works at a local hardware store - the kind where they have one of everything, and only they know where anything is. But he'd be terrible at that job - he's far too meek to pitch an upsell or ask if someone needs help.
Clark Kent needed a phone booth to turn into Superman. Murphy just closes his eyes. Gone is the mild everyman. And in his place is a force of nature. Every time I see him I wonder what he sees when he's singing with his eyes closed. I suspect that if he could bottle it he be rich. His voice could only be his. He sings with an emotion, contorted on his face, that seems impossible for who he is with open eyes. He transforms into his songs. It's remarkable. Then the song ends, he opens his eyes, and he's again instantly the kind of guy who, as a total stranger, you'd leave your kid with without hesitation.
Murphy was flying solo tonight - a sad statement, likely, on what it takes to make an opener’s cut of the ticket sales feel worthwhile in this time and this size of room given gas, hotel and food prices, and the size of this country. It was him and his guitar most of the time, and a bit of a backing track played off his phone the rest of the time. But if you close your eyes your swear you were listening to the album. That's very hard to do. He’s just so good.
Solo projects are an odd thing. Sometimes they sound completely different than the main band. Gord Downie’s solo stuff, for example, mostly didn't sound much like The Hip. In this case, though, the reason for the project existing is a bit more of a mystery. Murphy writes most of the songs for Wintersleep. And his songs for POSTDATA mostly would not be out of place on any of Wintersleep’s albums. And, two members of Wintersleep are frequently in POSTDATA’s band. Murphy clearly wanted to stretch his wings on his own - but not too much.
I read an article last week about an aboriginal artist in Toronto who is frustrated. He rightly asserts that because he’s both aboriginal and an artist, whatever he makes is aboriginal art. But archaic, unimaginative companies have refused him commissions because his paintings aren’t ‘aboriginal’ enough - not enough totem poles or bears, or whatever else lazy people expect. They want to shove him into a box he doesn’t want to be in. How dare they?!
Turns out that I’m a hypocrite. Sure, I’ll say that an artist should be free to do whatever they want or need to do to express themselves. I’ll tell you that it’s ridiculous that they should have to fit within any expectations based on who they are or what is in their past. Yet, while I was thoroughly enjoying and admiring what Murphy was doing on his own, there was a part of me that I’m not proud of that just wants him to go back to making Wintersleep albums again. He’s obviously happy, and his new work is really, really great. But it’s been five endless years since the last album. Poor me.
So, I guess my stance, deep down, is that artistic freedom is paramount - unless I really want that other thing you could be doing instead. Inspiring, isn’t it? I’m thinking of getting it printed on t-shirts.
There are some bands that create names that are very easy to search online. POSTDATA. Wintersleep. Both brilliantly easy to Google. The Tragically Hip, too. Others, though, are not designed to be found easily. When you search for the greatest Canadian band of all time, The Watchmen, you find comic books and movies. Rush is totally unsearchable - though, luckily, I can’t think of a single reason why someone would want to find anything about that wildly overrated band.
There are many other band names that can hide in plain sight online. Tonight's main event, Close Talker, is definitely in that group. Google their name and what you mostly get is references to a Seinfeld episode starring the legendary Judge Reinhold, or advice for dealing with coworkers who don’t respect your personal space.
I know this because I tried to learn more than I already knew about them leading up to the show - which was pretty much nothing. I knew they were from Saskatoon, and that they'd been around for a good long while - a dozen years, as it turns out. But their songs and my ears had never knowingly crossed paths.
I discover a lot of new music through a web of connections. I know and like one band. They mention a band on social media, or tour with a band, or cover a song by a band, and I check those out. And so it goes.
That often leads to geographic groupings emerging. Early in our relationship, for example, Tricia and I were listening to several bands from Regina. Neither of us had ever been there, but we started with one good one and it grew. But as prolific as Regina has been at times, Saskatoon just hasn’t. I don’t listen to hardly any Saskatoon bands - because there aren’t many to listen to, as far as I know.
Friends of my favorite bands become my musical friends, too - it’s like getting married. I don’t know which bands Close Talker has been close with, but it seems like they weren’t ones I have been into, either. They just haven’t come up.
So, they are really good, they have played music that overlaps with my interests for over a decade in a city only several hours away from me by car, and I listen to new music all the time, but I have never really crossed paths with them. No wonder it’s so tough to be an indie musician in this country.
Close Talker is only a three piece, but they really believe in maximizing resources. the lead guitarist is also the keyboard player. And more than once he played both at the same time - his left hand working the frets of the guitar while his right played the keys. And he played a mean tambourine more than once, too. And not only was the lead singer singing, but he was also using a double neck, which I have only very rarely seen in real life. It’s a bass and a guitar in one - two necks and a freakishly large body. So he can be either instrument depending on what is needed. Kinda cool. Goofy looking, but cool.
Have you ever seen one of those family pictures of some super famous, super handsome actor where he looks like he was forged solid gold, and the rest of his brothers or sisters just look like ordinary people - but ordinary people who look a little like a very famous guy? They look like what the famous guy would have looked like if he didn’t hit the jackpot in the genetic lottery. Mark Wahlberg is a decent example.
If you told me that the lead singer of Close Talker was Ryan Gosling’s more ordinary brother I wouldn’t question it. This thought popped into my head about three seconds into their first song, and I couldn’t shake it. It was almost distracting. I looked up a picture or two and didn’t see it as clearly. But in that room, with the lighting as it was, it was spooky. And I wasn’t even drinking, so it’s not the beer talking.
Calgary isn’t the best music city by any means. But even by the standards of this place, people should be ashamed of the showing tonight. The room was only half full. For a lineup this good, with tickets that were cheap by any standard, on a Thursday night - embarrassing. We need to do better, or even more bands will start skipping this place on their tours. Ugh.
I was visiting friends before the show, so I arrived just minutes before POSTDATA took the stage. Or were supposed to. Normally things running way late at shows drives me crazy. But in this case it meant I got a bonus band - Calgary's Little Super Dangerous started their opening set well after it was supposed to be over.
It was a good reminder of how much work bands put into being what they are. They were good, but you could just tell they were early in their journey as a band. They were obviously trying new things, and you could see the smiles on their faces - a mix of joy and relief - when they worked. You could feel their nerves like they were your own. The drum kit was at the front of the stage because that's where Close Talker like it. But the drummer, who was very good, hit harder and played more aggressively than Animal, so you really, really heard him. The lead singer had a really beautiful guitar, but it was pristine. It hasn't yet been dropped, banged around by baggage handlers, burnt during a late night practice, or anything else.
This is a band that has already worked hard, and will grow a lot with more work. As they say, the fundamentals are solid. But it shows how hard is it to make it look as easy as the pros do. Remarkably, late in the set the band let us know that their first album will be out next month, and that this was their first show since Canada Day - 10 months ago. No wonder they seemed new. I look forward to next time to see how far they've come.
The details: POSTDATA, with supporting headliners Close Talker, and Little Super Dangerous, Thursday, April 25, 2024, 8 pm, Festival Hall
Up next: No rest for the wicked - back at it again Friday night with a show that will help me lose a key virginity. It could be an odd one.
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