Ohbijou, Frida Hyvonen and Under Byen made up the three acts who performed last Thursday at the Mod Club for Canadian Music Week. The festival, which was established in 1960 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the birth of then Canadian Federation of Music Teachers’ Associations was renamed Canada Music Week in 1961 and brought together various Music Teachers’ Associations from across the provinces to promote and celebrate the beauty of musical pedagogy. If that doesn’t blow your mind, the whole thing used to be held in November to coincide with St. Cecilia Day, a day that honours the Patron Saint of Church Music. Thankfully, registration requirements have subsequently expanded and not only were two thirds of this particular showcase Scandinavian, it was also a great opportunity to be exposed to a gratifying albeit decidedly unCanadian sonic experience.

Hyvonen, a singer songwriter from northern Sweden, Umea to be exact, the hometown of fellow indie act Sahara Hotnights, gave a relatively mellow and heartfelt performance. Sitting entirely at a piano with her back turned to the audience, her music and physical appearance gave the impression of a damaged china doll, an indie Courtney Love in vintage dress and heavy makeup, performing with significantly less arrogance and perhaps more talent (Billy Corgan doesn’t write her songs). The audience was certainly receptive and Hyvonen playful as her sense of humour punctuated quiet moments of banter while she acknowledged the obvious absurd juxtaposition plugging her record while singing otherwise painfully emotive songs on love, relationships, and other things pressing to young Swedish pianists.

Following Hyvonen, Under Byen (pronounced Oh’nah-Boon), the Danish ‘sensations’ that have been garnering great reviews in the popular press, most notably from Rolling Stone’s David Fricke, whose oft cited soundbyte “Welcome to the best band in Denmark, probably the best band in the world”, has graced nearly every bio published on the band, took the stage as the final act. Currently on tour to promote their new album, Samme Stof Som Stof (which despite provoking an immediate desire to translate phonetically as a statement on existential boredom, actually means a more perplexing Same Fabric As Fabric), the band has been compared alternately to Portishead, Bjork, Mogwai and Sigur Ros. While each of these comparisons is certainly warranted and musically detectable, the band put on an absolutely scorching display of their own brand of experimental space rock with everything from slow trip-hoppy jams to absolute mind-melting psychedelic freakouts featuring, among other things, a distortion filled electric-saw solo. Excellent attention to lighting props and projected kaleidoscopic visuals accentuated an intense performance that also featured violins and horns among the usual rock instrumentation. Nils Grondahl, in particular, the aforementioned electric-saw virtuoso reminds of Johnny Greenwood, playing what seems like nearly everything, that it’s a surprise to discover he is neither songwriter nor an original founding member of the band.

Although much has been said about the excellence of the Mod Club as a concert venue, and the acoustics and atmosphere were no different this time around, I feel compelled to remark on the early open doors time which caused at least this writer to miss the first and only Canadian act, Ohbijou. While the other two acts entirely proved the value of the experience, the fact that such a noted venue feels required to start shows early and forcing opening bands to play to relatively sparse crowds, compounded by a need to evacuate the premises in time for a live-to-air popular music show, it certainly calls attention to a lack of commitment in showcasing live music during CMW. Hopefully in the future exceptions can be made during promotional events so that all those who filled out the crowd for our Scandinavian friends can also enjoy some local homegrown talent, for whom the festival was historically created.