Grand Analog (photo: Blake Morneau)
Maybe Wednesday night isn’t the best night to have a hip-hop show. I don’t know what hip-hop heads in Victoria, BC do on Wednesday nights, but apparently coming out to support one of the finest hip-hop acts in all of Canada isn’t it. It’s a fucking shame, too, because Grand Analog made Lucky Bar bounce like a trampoline last night for the unfortunately few that made it out. MC extraordinaire Odario Williams commented recently that Lucky Bar was his favourite venue in Western Canada, and his cohorts in Grand Analog attacked it like they were never going to be there again.
When I say “attack” here, I mean it in the friendliest of ways. Grand Analog isn’t coming to assault you with grimy, street hip-hop. They’re going to make you dance, make you shake and put a big, silly grin on your face.
From the moment the Toronto-by-way-of-Winnipeg group hit “Lion Head,” from their latest album, Modern Thunder, the small crowd was sucked to the front of the stage and giving full attention with bodies moving. But no one was moving more than Williams himself. Dressed like some kind of hipster hip-hop super hero, A Great Rhyme Dropper, I suppose, he was captivating as he bounced around, twirling and shimmying throughout the set.
There were lots of big, shiny parts in Grand Analog’s set to engage the crowd with sing-alongs that pushed the energy up every time they made an appearance. It was the middle of a long week and it really felt like everyone in Lucky needed those cathartic howls at the beginning of the joyous “Howl (Like Wolves).” Okay, maybe that was just me who needed it, but everyone else was smiling as much as me.
It’d been a minute since I’d seen Grand Analog, and I can’t stress how great it was to see them in full flight again, proving once more the heights that Canadian hip-hop can reach.
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