It’s about 12:30 on a Wednesday in December 2008, usually a dead night anywhere, but Toronto’s Dakota Tavern is an exception to the rule. A band is quickly setting up after a parade of short sets by different acts as part of Jason Collett’s Basement Revue. Their name is Zeus. A friend and I discuss maybe going somewhere else to get a drink, but as the band launches into its first song, my friend and I stop talking to each other and gravitate to the stage like classic-rock-starved zombies. I hadn’t been that impressed with a band sight-unseen/sound-unheard in a long time.
Cut to February 2010: Zeus' debut album is out, and the tunes they played that night sound as fresh and catchy as I had remembered them. They might seem like an odd fit on such an indie-centric label as Arts & Crafts, but it’s that type of lateral thinking that has gained the label such notoriety. It’s easy to compare them to the Beatles or the Kinks, but what’s so bad about that? It‘s not easy to take such well-trod influences and make them your own. They also touch on some great hard rock riffs, occasionally married to southern rock comfort, along with the sort of group harmonies that you just don’t hear anymore. The fact that this group has three different singer-songwriters speaks volumes of their ability to work as one well-oiled cohesive unit. As their name implies, these aspiring gods of rock are getting their mythmaking off to a solid start.
(Zeus will be playing a free live in-store performance here at Soundscapes on Sat. Mar 6 @ 6pm.)