WPGU Presents: Plants & Animals, Grandkids & The Leadership Review

Canadian band Plants and Animals make it out to Urbana’s Canopy Club Tuesday, March 1st for a show with local acts Grandkids and The Leadership. For an early show, P&A rocked it like it was way past any engineering student’s bedtime.

The Leadership

Despite a few minor technical difficulties, The Leadership played a solid set with fervent energy. They’ve had a recent change in lineup, with a new bassist and drummer — and their drummer absolutely killed it. What’s better than the songs off of The Leadership’s debut album, Frontiers, is the energy they create live. The Void Room at The Canopy Club has pretty small stage — but that didn’t stop guitarist Jared Park and vocalist Jonathon Childers from jumping around, getting rowdy and putting on a proper rock ‘n roll show.

Grandkids

Grandkids brought a change of momentum with them as they took the stage. On lead guitar and vocals, Vivian McConnell soothed the crowd as she sang “As The Gull Flies”, while Adam Gorcowski accompanied her on cello, bouncing his bow on the strings and then skittering it across them to make harmonics that sound like real birds. Midway through their set, Grankids passed out a stack of free copies of their new EP “Sister Walls” to everyone in the audience… Please see: “Free stuff is always a crowd favorite”

Plants & Animals

Plants and Animals took the stage and went about their business — and business was good. From the get-go this trio had a tight, impressive sound. Guitarist Warren Spicer fittingly wore a shirt with a Tiger on it, unfortunately the other two men in the band did not follow suit. One unusual and refreshing thing about P&A – in a lot of their work, all three of them share vocal harmonies. Their voices mesh well and build upon each other to make great harmonies that accompany catchy guitar riffs. Matt Woodley’s style on the drums perfectly accents the melody and flow of all of the band’s songs. They played a pretty fair amount of new material, such as one slower n00b titled “Broke Down” with clever lyrics and a slow, tender guitar melody. All in all, the band put on an above average show and was well worth the $12 admission.

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