Sybris / The Outfit / Anathallo
Jan 21, 2006
The Skate Park of Tampa, Florida

www.myspace.com/theoutfitlive  
www.anathallo.com/
www.sybrismusic.com/

I haven’t been hitting up as many shows as I’d like to be cause of all this damn school work, but you can bet your sweet buns I made it out of the house to catch Sybris when they strolled through town. Their debut album, with all that fluid bass and soaring guitar, sent shivers up my spine all this school year, reminding me what a good alternative rock band can sound like (and I mean alternative in that sort of way). As fate would have it my girlfriends friend’s band, The Outfit, was the opening act, so you see, I killed two birds here. There was another band called Anathallo filling the middle slot who played some heartfelt, twelve-member band blues. Well not blues, but you know what I mean…

The show went pretty much as I expected, which is to say, well. I kind of already figured that a lot of shoegaze-y bands never really sound that great live, and Sybris, they do have that wall of sound thing going on sometimes. Needless to say, it was the quiet parts that were more intriguing in the live setting. Which is understandable cause I bet it’s hard as fuck trying to recreate what they did in the studio.

They played pretty much the entirety of the album and “Hobo Detail Shop” put a big stupid smile on my face. The bass drum seemed to be causing some problems during the set—a damn cinder block couldn’t hold the thing in place. Angela Mullenhour sang well enough to remind me why I think she’s got one of the best voices in rock today and the band made me proud of writing this. Something really odd happened at the show though. See, the place was packed for The Outfit, crowded for Anathallo, and just populated for Sybris. Isn’t that shit supposed to work the other way around? Chalk one up to Toronto supporting its indie talent.

 - Andrew Iliadis

/february 2006/