By Chelsea Thornton (Staff Writer) – Email
The Railway Club is an odd-shaped venue for live music: L-shaped, most of the seating isn’t within view of the stage. The upshot of this arrangement is that the area in front of the stage is consequently packed with standing bodies – the perfect canvas for a high energy show. On Friday January 28, Subtle Like a T-Rex delivered exactly that. As the first band of the night to play, they were immediately able to change the mood in the bar from relaxed Friday-night drinking to fully-fledged show time atmosphere.
Subtle Like a T-Rex is a Coquitlam band featuring Mike Michalik on guitar, keyboards, and vocals, Tim Charman on bass, keyboards and vocals, Kevin Britten on drums and vocals, Jose Ramirez on percussion, xylophone and vocals, and Jesse Zenchuck on lead vocals. The fast-paced guitar and bass, rap-speed lyrics, heavy drums, and eclectic but cleverly used percussion and xylophone combine to create a sometimes frantic tone, broken up by moments of calmer quirkiness. The band describes their style as “essentially about a dozen radically different styles of music held together by duct tape and heavy duty rope.” During the show it became obvious that the band is held together by much more than hardware store items. Although the music was hard to classify within any one musical category, the set was definitely cohesive and recognizable.
The obvious challenge of playing live is the chance of something going wrong. What if you miss your cue or forget the words? What if some drunken guy in the audience upchucks on your amp? What if you forgot to wear pants and you suddenly realize you are playing in your underwear? Or what if the lead guitarist’s string breaks? Subtle Like a T-Rex had to deal with the last worst-case scenario. During the second-to-last song of the set, a string snapped mid-song. Guitarist Mike Michalik explains: “the broken string could not have happened at a less convenient time. It broke right before my only solo of the set and thanks to the floating bridge on my guitar the tuning of every string jumped up half a step when the other string broke, so I had to try to transpose everything into the right key as I played it,” he writes. “Luckily for me I think everyone was drunk enough not to notice my mistakes too much.” The truth is, drunk or sober, nobody in the crowd seemed to notice. Michalik’s lightning quick adjustment even managed to fool the guitar player next to me, who said that he didn’t realize the string broke until the band announced it after the song. After a quick-retuning, the band completed their set, closing with “As Above So Below,” which the band claims is their favourite song “just because it is so epic.”
Subtle Like a T-Rex are currently recording their second EP, Which Way to 21 at Nimbus Recording Studios in Vancouver.
