Setlist:  I. Love at the End of the World, With a Bullet, Lions of the Kalahari, Fixed to Ruin, Up Sister, Sundance, Bridge to Nowhere, Hard Road, Dead End, Words on Fire, Brother Down, Them Kids.

E: Detroit ’67, Mind Flood (~16 min)

Pictures (credit: Marc)

I’ve seen the Sam Roberts Band four times now. The first was a hometown show in Montreal back in September 2003.  Having just launched a tour with American band Guster, Roberts danced around the stage with his Jack Daniels, knowing he was on the cusp of total domination of the anglo-Canadian music scene.  

The second time I saw SRB was a November 2006 show at the Bowery Ballroom in New York with Jason Collett (of Broken Social Scene).  All the McGill people came out of the NYC woodwork, creating a larger-than expected crowd for an international show.  Roberts didn’t disappoint.

The third time was a 2007 Canada Day celebration in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, featuring an all-Montreal (and personal faves) lineup of SRB, The Stills, and Malajube.  This was a tougher show to watch because of the audience logistics (and the fact that beer bottles weren’t allowed inside the fence).  But given that the lineup was fantastic as a whole, Roberts didn’t break out the same way.

And once again, I saw them play at the Bowery last night, in celebration of the US release of their latest LP, Love at the End of the World (released a year later than in Canada and six months later than in Spain).  Unlike a lot of rock bands, SRB never disappoints to put on an excellent show; his frenetic energy is as comfortable with an intimate American crowd (though largely ex-pat and McGillies) as it is with his hometown crowd 5 1/2 years ago.

See, for Roberts, it’s all about the music, it’s all about rock and roll, it’s all about having a good time.  Credit is equally due to Roberts’s backing band, who carry his same energy through the rhythms and melodies that make the live show that much more sublime than listening to the studio recordings. Which is why the down-tempo songs have the ability to entrance the crowd into swaying with the rhythms as much as the up-tempo songs catch the crowd bopping and jumping with similar levels of freneticism.  

Roberts himself is the ultimate in showmanship-as-musician; a quality that lacks in most contemporary frontmen.  Want proof?  All you had to do was watch Roberts move the crowd from one extreme to the next during his 16-minute rendition of “Mind Flood.”  Even newer LATEOTW songs such as “Up Sister” and “Them Kids” got the crowd flailing.

The fact that Sam Roberts is on his third LP and has yet to cross into the American mainstream (beyond Buffalo, which gets Canadian radio stations) still boggles my mind.  It also leads me to question exactly how American mainstream music is determined.  After all, Roberts has developed a refreshing blend of Zeppelin, Stones, and Floyd — the type of music that evokes a nostalgic, classic rock feel, without all the pop/production pretensions.

I still maintain that Roberts will find success here in the United States, though it will require him to get a better distribution deal and marketing muscle.  At the point where his mainstream Canadian success has shown that the music alone isn’t sufficient to break into the American market, it will be a shame if he doesn’t continue to breakout here.