Sunday Dec 6

GRIEVOUS ANGELS CHRISTMAS SHOW

Many musicians talk the talk when it comes to social justice messaging in their songs, but few walk the walk like the Grievous Angels have for close to four decades.

Of course, maintaining that reputation helps when co-founder and principle songwriter Charlie Angus has been an NDP Member of Parliament since 2004, representing the riding of Timmins-James Bay. But the Grievous Angels have always been, and continue to be, a collective unit dedicated to carving out a unique place within the alternative country and folk worlds with songs and live performances that reflect the tragic beauty of life in Canada’s blue collar northern frontier.

  The band’s current seven-piece line-up is returning with Last Call For Cinderella—its first album since 2021’s Summer Before The Storm—a 10-song collection that presents a fragile picture of the growing dissonance and fear permeating this moment in history.

That notion is fully captured on Last Call For Cinderella’s first single “This Is How The City Falls,” written by Angus in the aftermath of 2022’s month- long convoy occupation of downtown Ottawa, during which Canada’s normally quiet capital was thrown into chaos by a conspiracy theory-fuelled mob.   As an artist who has followed in the footsteps of Woody Guthrie, Dylan, Springsteen, Joe Strummer and Billy Bragg, Charlie Angus remains unflinching in his observations of modern society, as heard on many of Last Call For Cinderella’s standout tracks such as "Sleepwalking” and “I Could Tell.” However, other songs run the gamut of emotions, like the poignant ballads “Last Wedding Band” and “Close Your Eyes,” and the unexpectedly funky “Litany Of The Saints,” co-written by Angus’s old Toronto pal and Broken Social Scene member Jason Collett.

Call it a soundtrack in a time of climate crisis, disinformation and economic insecurity, Last Call For Cinderella is the latest pledge from Charlie Angus to be a voice for the voiceless, something he’s done since emerging from the Toronto punk scene in the early 1980s with the band L’Etranger.

Following that band’s break-up, Angus worked with the homeless in downtown Toronto while forming Grievous Angels as a street busking project. The street gig quickly grew into national attention through acclaimed albums such as 1990’s Juno-nominated One Job Town and 1996’s Waiting For The Cage, which the Toronto Star called a “groundbreaking achievement.”   Having played everywhere in Canada, from major folk festivals to picket lines, from touring with Stompin’ Tom Connors to performing for residential school survivors, the Grievous Angels are a national treasure.

And with Last Call For Cinderella, they prove that their country needs them now more than ever.

Doors open at 1pm Music starts at 2pm $35 plus taxes