Glass Candy

The Sweatshop, Vancouver BC October 31

BY Brock ThiessenPublished Nov 25, 2008

In more ways than one, Glass Candy live is just as much party as concert, and a kick-ass party at that. With their disco period in full swing, the former Portland no-wavers have become all about the movement, doing their damnedest to make sure each and every body gets sweaty, stays sweaty and dances itself into a blinding, dance-induced stupor.

And considering this Halloween show was packed far beyond legal capacity, Glass Candy’s Ida No and Johnny Jewel had their work cut out for them. Yet sure enough, the pair’s disco-lite grooves grabbed hold from song one, quickly getting the teeming ghouls’n’ghosts bumping, grinding and getting up to god knows what else.

With Jewel sticking to his console of thumping rhythm boxes and sleazy synths, No played the role of hostess, leading the tracks with her cool, breathy vocals and dance-steppin’ theatrics. And despite the element of evilness that comes with Halloween — not to mention from the papier-mâché skeleton that towered over the stage — the Italians Do It Better-signed stalwarts left their darker cuts at home, preferring to break out insanely upbeat renditions of tracks like "Candy Castles,” "Miss Broadway” and the near-classic "Rolling Down the Hills.”

The show may have lost a bit of Jewel’s production genius (mostly on account of the venue’s less-than-kind acoustics), but to make up for it Glass Candy threw what must have been 100 copies of their B/E/A/T/B/O/X album into the audience, which only got the crowd that much crazier.

By show’s end, Glass Candy easily proved they rock the party as good in person as on record, making for yet another reason why they stand as one of neo-disco’s undisputed MVPs.

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