Miller audience speechless after Wordless Music

At Thursday night’s Wordless Music series performance at Miller Theatre, the series’ title seemed a bit off.

The evening’s program included selections from Charles Spearin’s initiative the Happiness Project, and a long set by his Toronto-based instrumental band Do Make Say Think.

The term “wordless” was perhaps misleading, because the Broken Social Scene founding member’s Project was rooted in language, words, and coversation. A year ago, Spearin began inviting neighbors from his downtown Toronto neighborhood over for a series of casual interviews in which he asked them questions about happiness and its meaning.

Listening to the recordings, Spearin noticed the musicality of his subjects’ voices, as well as their varied and diverse responses. He set about trying to create melodies from the responses, and enlisted his musical friends to help, ultimately arranging the melodies as songs.

Last night, Spearin and other musicians (including some members of DMST) performed these songs, along with the interviews that inspired them. Beginning with bare musical imitations of the voices, the melodies grew and developed into full-fledged songs, featuring repeated sound clips from the interviews. The use of the recordings, a sort of motif in post-rock music, was developed in a truly inspired way.

Neighborhood characters­—which include Spearin’s two-year-old daughter, a deaf woman who became able to hear in her 30s, and an older man with 13 siblings—spoke on the subject of happiness, as saxophones, trumpets, and other instruments translated their words into music, as if from one language to another.

Following the performance of the Happiness Project, Spearin rejoined Do Make Say Think for a set in which they performed songs from their older albums, as well as new songs from the forthcoming album Other Truths.

During this second half of the evening, the volume went way up, as did the banter, swearing, and on-stage beer drinking. The band’s signature distorted guitars, spacey electronic effects, and loud bass was a major shift from the comparatively subdued Happiness Project.

As the atmosphere became decidedly more rock ’n’ roll, at least three older audience members exited stealthily from the concert.

Though the set was at times repetitive, it was more often powerful, intense, and surprising. The songs built up beautifully, and the audience members, restricted by their seats, bobbed their heads in satisfied unison.

DMST’s performance personified the intersection of classical and amplified music at which the Wordless Music series aims to place itself.
Guitarist and keyboardist Justin Small said jokingly, “Next time we’re going to play in a legendary shithole, not a fancy place like this.”