People were surprised by it. The Great Lake Swimmers of Toronto had sold out the back stage at Black Cat on a Tuesday night. Personally, I think this is what happened. People woke up on Sunday, checked the forecast for Monday and Tuesday, saw that the weather would absolutely suck, and began mulling over where they would like to huddle while the cold mist blew outside. Some of them ended up here. The Swimmers have…

A couple of weeks back, we found ourselves at IOTA paying $10 to see two bands we were previously unfamiliar with (Iowa City’s Death Ships and Chapel Hill’s The Old Ceremony). The experience left us feeling satisfied and slightly adventurous. We wanted to make a regular habit of checking out bands based on 30-second clips and “borrowed” tracks from elbo.ws. And that’s partly why we were at IOTA last night to see mellow Canadian folksters…