This article was originally published on beingtheremag.com, an independent music and film magazine that ran from 2004 to 2007. It is presented here as part of the Being There Magazine archive.
By Adam Anklewicz | Being There Magazine, November/December 2005
Venue: The Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto, Ontario, Canada | Date: October 14, 2005
Give me a little banjo to throw the blues away. Playing their brand of “death country,” as too many people have been calling it, Elliott Brood packed Toronto’s legendary Horseshoe Tavern to officially launch their new record Ambassador. The CD release party had the band playing most of the tracks from their debut full-length disc and a few oldies from their EP.
In suits and ties, Elliott Brood were the roaming salesmen true to their faux-history. Mark Sasso alternated between banjo, acoustic guitar and ukulele; Casey Laforet played acoustic guitar as well as banging bass lines with his feet; Steve Pitkin played suitcase drums.
There was a lot of screaming and shouting coming from the audience as well as the band. Through their album Laforet often provides backing vocals that are just screaming “alright!” or “now he’s threatening to fall!” Laforet replicated the sound of the record and had the audience shouting too. Whether screaming to request their love song for Ontario, “Oh, Alberta” or just screaming along to the songs, the audience were a non-stop love affair with Elliott Brood, whose level of intoxication probably helped.
Playing most of their album from the start to the end, the band also played some of their older songs and a White Stripes cover later in the show. Included in the older songs were the above-mentioned “Oh, Alberta,” a fan favourite. I think the main appeal to this song is the lyric, “PEI po-ta-to,” or perhaps “North Dakota, don’t you know that you don’t belong in this song, where did we go wrong?” Maybe it’s the rhyming of Ontario with stereo. Either way it seemed to be the most popular of the evening.
The show was great, alcohol was consumed, glass was broken, the crowd couldn’t stay in the audience and Laforet couldn’t stay on the stage.