The Ex live in Vancouver: review and photos, June 26 2026

Terrie and Kat by Allan MacInnis

That was great... my favourite reviews of last night were from Ed Hurrell and Nick Mitchum... Nick came to see Gord but hadn't heard of the Ex... Ed was blown away... "Now that's a band!" I pointed my phone and said, "Give'm a thumbs up, guys!" Their faces say more than I will...

Happy campers after the show

In fact, a few friends came, some directly on  my invite, and maybe my Straight article actually helped with this one... hope so... venue wasn't full but with competion from FIFA and Ak'Chamel it was all right! I woulda done more if I coulda.. run through the streets of the city like Kevin McCarthy at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers... "They're here! You must listen! You must go to this show!"

The band were very patient with my excesses and signed everything... except Terrie I think missed my Brass Unbound album... and I left the cover of my Kurdistan 7" in my bag (oops). Thought I'd lost it, even! They sold all their merch, including the Zea albums Arnold said he'd bring (they sold in Montreal)... no t-shirts... no setlists to steal, either, since they just played the songs in order off the album (I think), and one encore...  

Openers Grdina and Lillinger smoked it up but I realize that I'm a vulgarian, the oud is interesting and beautiful but I liked hearing Gord ROCK OUT most, which he did plenty of... Lillinger was so expressive (with his face as much as his drumming!) that he almost looked like someone (Bill Paxton, maybe?) playing a drummer in a 1983 movie about a punk band... they weren't a punk band but played with the intensity of a punk band... Grdina was like a hyper-intense John McLaughlin, jacked on steroids and stimulants circa Love Devotion Surrender (I don't know if John McLaughlin was ever jacked on steroids and stimulants and I doubt Gord was either but he PLAYED like he was, dig?)... laid down a few hooky loops, essentially basslines, and then built sheets of building intensity on top of them, pushing you upwards towards the ecstacy, like he wanted to make your brain ejaculate its contents onto the ceiling... I haven't seen him enough this year...

(Bob will have this from another angle, not sure what Terrie was doing, was part of the chorus of one song later in the night, Terrie doing this "tellya a secret" thing as he joined in...)

And The Ex was amazing, everything I'd hoped for... It's just as well I don't live in Europe, I'd see them every show, I would just go see the Ex and the New Model Army every gig and never see or do anything else... I did note, though, that the sound was better from the right side of the stage, at least up front: Terrie's monitor made his guitar anarchy too dominant on the left! I liked the rhythm a bit more dominant in my mix, so I eventually moved over, but Terrie's a real character... smiled through the night, goofed around with the audience, poking and prodding them and even deliberately (playfully) knocking over someone's beer that they had put on the stage; he even played his guitar on the edge of the stage (or with some sort of lid-like circular thing -- maybe part of a drum -- or with a metal camping cup, or with a drumstick or sometimes with the fingers of his right hand, but not in anything like a conventional fingerpicking way... almost more like a bassist... fascinating to watch)... earlier he giggled when I told him that if you watch the Youtube video of his last show in Vancouver, when he played here with Han Bennink and Brodie West, there's a fat man seated up front with a really terrible hairdo: "That's me!"

You were left wondering if Terrie is always this happy onstage... he bounced from foot to foot all night, smiling even when he had a guitar pick in his teeth... his guitar looked like it survived a war or three... I wonder how long he's had it? Had almost as much character as he does!

There were a couple of real characters in the audience, too, including a slightly aggro (but still jubilant) dude in a beret who had seen them in Seattle... he yells that at the band at the start of this clip... Kat is like "uh, okay, thanks"... but his enthusiasm was sincere and palpable... he woulda moshed if there'd been a moshpit... I was glad there wasn't (moshpits aren't rhyhmic enough for this kind of music) but I was happy there were people dancing besides me...! 

Shot another clip too, one of Arnold's songs... I think it's "Spider & Fly" but Bob is snoring on the couch here (he's crashing) as I type this... so I can't easily check... it was the song after "The Evidence."

They traded up their encore... my Straight article is wrong, they didn't do "Soon All Cities", they did "The Heart Conductor" off 27 Passports. Which is also great. The other error in the article is that Andy doesn't really play "bass", he plays guitar, but he is often doing bass parts ON his guitar, if that makes sense... I must investigate... I will investigate... Bob's photos are better than mine but we'll save'm for a magazine... I sure hope I get to see this band again...

Amazing night. At their current rate of performance in Vancouver, we can expect them again in 2061... hope they come back sooner than that!