Yoko Casionos / Mother Mother / The Details

With temperatures plummeting outside and the cloud of an impending work and school week looming overhead, the Collective played host to a variety of luminous pop music. Winnipeg-based openers the Details performed energetically, lunging across the stage and playing material from their debut EP Marching Sound, along with a number of unreleased songs. Celebrating their one-year anniversary as a group, their melodic indie rock sounded in peak form, previewing intricate and impressive material from their forthcoming full-length CD, due out in the summer. Vancouver’s musically diverse Mother Mother followed, opening with the title track from their Touch Up album. The band’s multi-layered harmonies were in excellent form but their onstage energy lagged as two of the three singers spent much of the night completely motionless with eyes shut tight and hands clutching microphones. The group’s varied playing and singing, which at times recalled the likes of Fleetwood Mac and the Violent Femmes, was note-perfect but the performance skills frequently seemed lethargic. The lull in the evening’s liveliness was short-lived, however, as the Yoko Casionos took to the stage with a high level of enthusiasm. The band’s power pop was in excellent shape with melodies booming throughout the club. Despite battling a sore throat, co-lead vocalist Misty Reid still capably hit the high notes and the entire group played with unflagging purpose with guitars regularly raised in the air. Delivering rousing versions of "Cameras On” and "Loose Cannon” from their debut These Are the New Old Times, they coaxed the small crowd to clap vigorously along to the beats from songs. Later in the set the Yoko Casionos covered "Black Nite Crash” by shoegazer greats Ride and ended the evening with the dub influenced "Nice to Meet You,” showing the band’s wider talents.