When I stumbled across London’s Mad Staring Eyes mid-way through their set last month at North by Northeast, I thought to myself that I’d discovered the new kings of pub rock. When bass player Dan Lee handed me a copy of Bored of Looking Cool, and I saw they have a track called “King of Pub Rock,” I figured I wasn’t alone in my opinion. They’re also one of the few bands I’ve ever seen to list Ian Dury as an influence, so there you go.

Like their predecessors in the genre, MSE play straight-up rock with a raucous attitude. They’ve got a great bunch of tunes on this disc, however this recording comes a little short of capturing the band’s frenetic live energy. It does, however, do a rather nostalgic tip of the hat to the heyday of pub rock simply due to the fact that it sounds like it could’ve been recorded in the early ’80s (the dated keyboard textures on tunes like “Out of my Head” definitely drive that point home).

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Featuring: The Books Elusive, Stand, Mad Staring Eyes, Monotonix, Jennifer Foster, Stop Theif and People in Planes

I decided to kick off NXNE 2008 by going to the Big Bop (651 Queen West @ Bathurst) so I could bounce between Holy Joe’s and Reverb to take in as much as I could.

I showed up just in time to catch the first song by Toronto’s The Books Elusive upstairs at Holy Joe’s. This high energy duo proved to be lots of fun. With Lynne Dubuc on vocals and guitar and Damon de Szegheo on drums and vocals, my first thoughts were of a gender reversed White Stripes, though that’s probably oversimplifying things.

To sum them up in just one word, I’d call them proto-minimalist. de Szegheo absolutely pummeled his kit, which is always a lot of fun to see. He switched to mallets to add a gentler touch for one number, but it wasn’t long before the rubber tips came flying off.

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Interviewing Toronto’s The I Spies was one of the more surreal experiences I’ve had leading up to North by Northeast. On a three-way call with singer/guitarist/keyboardist Johnny Kay (in his kitchen “cooking up a whole mess of farfalle pasta”) and lead guitarist/singer/keyboardist James Roberston (on his cell being chauffeured around town), I found myself in the middle of an arsenal of snappy one-liners and in-jokes that one might expect from a comedy troupe.

That’s not to say that their music is a joke by any stretch of the imagination. The I Spies deliver powerful guitar-fueled pop songs reminiscent of the early days of new wave (Television, not Culture Club). With energy to spare and hooks galore, their debut album, In the Night, stands as testament to a local act ready to take on the world.

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