DJs Killed The Emo Star
Another Toronto double feature
Dear Friends, foes, and love interests,
Sometimes you have to disappear for a month (or two (or three)) before popping up with a couple thousand in investor funding and a dense backlog in content to be written.
For anyone wondering, no I did not win the People's Choice Award I told you about in this post. That went to a group of lovely ladies who created a company called Hydro Bud. They are working to solve food insecurity by implementing hydroponic systems in Toronto food banks. However, I did win the Social Impact Fund, an honorarium from the Jack Rosen fund, and a SOCAN (Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada) pitch competition. You might have seen some of my winnings from the latter on Instagram, where I unwrapped a mysterious package.
In case you're confused, in addition to Fan Behaviour I've slowly been starting a project (currently) called Venue Behaviour, where I have been working to incorporate environmental sustainability into small-sized music venues. Eventually, I will write a whole long piece about it, but for now, I'm having to let all my thoughts marinate.
I am currently letting my brain have a big, well-deserved, rest as I just graduated from my undergraduate program! It was a big achievement for me, but the grind didn’t stop once my exams did. I was my graduating class’ valedictorian, so the pressure stayed on for much longer than expected. You can actually watch my speech on YouTube (not posted by me, I’m not THAT vain) here at the time stamp 01:03:18.
Now that we're all caught up, let's get into what we're here for - the music. On April Fool’s Day, I was barely let in the door with my camera to see a singer I love so much that I was choking back tears while she performed. Then, five days later, I got to see one of my favourite Ottawa bands perform their first-ever Toronto show that ended up being a sold-out five-band banger of a night. Strap in, I've got a lot to say.
Breaking Fast at the Velvet Underground
While en route to Toronto to see Eliza McLamb, me and my friends each sequentially admitted that none of us were particularly excited to go to a concert. It was April 1st, a day that for many was a holiday because of Easter. For us chipper university students, it was a day of mandatory classes. I had just driven the two hours from my parents’ house to Waterloo and was now driving approximately two more hours on the 401 into Toronto, so I was a little bit tired. My friends had similarly taxing weekends and we were all feeling low energy. We knew that once the music started we would be into it, but getting there felt like a slog.
None of us had ever visited the Velvet Underground before. The venue is small, but built like a large theatre, with multiple levels of security at the door, drinking wristbands, and metal detectors. A clearly well-worn venue, they have thousands of dollars of equipment hanging from exposed wood rafters. The memories of thousands of footprints were carved into the floor. The Velvet Underground felt more like a concert venue than somewhere local music lovers to hang out.
I will say I had some difficulty getting into the venue, none of which was the venue’s fault. Their staff was actually really well prepared for this and treated well.
Back in November, I received my initial confirmation that I would be able to get a press pass for this show. This was the first press pass I had ever applied for and it gave me a lot of confidence to continue to apply for and receive passes. In the months following, the certainty surrounding my press pass was diminished, and I became so panicked that I wouldn't be able to attend due to the low tickets in Toronto that I bought a regular concert ticket five days before the show.
I will spare you all of my anxieties to say that I was able to enter the venue with a press pass after some phone calls had been made while I was standing at the box office. I am grateful that I had a backup plan, because otherwise, I would have probably been shaking on my drive to Toronto. Now the only thing I have to figure out is whether or not this ticket was a business expense or a health one.
For those who are unaware, this March and April was the holy month of Ramadan. I do not celebrate, but some of my friends attending the show with me did, and so they had to be very calculated with this concert.
Haniah was first and had her granola bar confiscated by security. Thank goodness they took it from her, no one could have determined the devastation that a singular granola bar could have had on the entire outcome of the concert. However, two of my new friends were able to sneak in a handful of dates, allowing them to break fast in the middle of the crowd with dates, chips from the concession stand, and flow alkaline water, which is some of the most disgusting water I've ever tasted in my life, aside from Waterloo's tap water.
There was only one opener, Mini Trees, a surprise to little me who is used to three-performer bills. They are an LA-based solo artist who performs with a two-piece backing band. During their set I opted not to force my way to the front, instead taking photos with my camera held high in both hands, with a wine glass held between my thighs. Why did I feel the need to do that?
It was Mini Trees’ first time in Canada, and they had brought a collection of synths and guitars up with them. Their music is soft and indie, very melancholic stuff that you would expect to hear at a trendy coffee shop. Maybe even the kind of coffee shop where your friend would go up to the cool barista and ask whose “on aux” (as the kids say.
I Mini Trees constructed their set in a really good way, because they opened with a lot of slow glittery songs and ramped into an energetic set. I find that a lot of small openers maintain the same level of energy across their entire set, but this was a noticeable - and appreciated - crescendo.
The one part of their set I didn't like was when Mini Trees said, “I love autotune!” before turning the auto-tune on their voice. I disagree.
After their set, it was time for me to shove my way to the front and take some photos. It was awkward because there was no photo barricade, but I also wanted to hold myself to only getting in people’s way for three songs. Luckily, I ended up meeting quite a few journalists and videographers in the crowd, people who understood the feeling of guilt that I was experiencing, and we're more than happy to give up some space to me.
Appearing on stage in double braids and pop-tab earrings, Eliza McLamb was greeted with an immense amount of noise from the crowd. Throughout her performance, there was a conspicuous lack of phones. The majority of people filmed a couple of moments, but I was really feeling the influence of the Luddite teens that night.
I first started listening to Eliza’s music after having listened to her podcast, Binchtopia, for about 6 months. I had originally tried to listen to her song Irish Exit, but at the time it didn't really speak to me. Later she put out an EP called Salt Circle and I fully fell in love with it. I think about it all the time and it inspires me to write the lyrics that I might think people will see as outlandish but mean the most to me. I do really enjoy Eliza's new album, Going Through It, but if you want to understand my love for her, you should first listen to Salt Circle.
I will admit that her most recent album is not my favourite out of her body of work. There are definitely songs on there that I really love such as 16 and Anything You Want. However, I definitely prefer her EP. I hate saying stuff like this because I like to be honest, but I also realize that saying I like an artist's previous work is a little bit pretentious. However, I think that in the age of Taylor Swift's era's tour we are more able to recognize that an artist is constantly going through transformation. Taylor forces us to reckon with the fact that artists, especially women, go through many iterative cycles constantly reinventing themselves as they go through life. Each piece of art they put out is representative of them at a specific period in their life, and just because we have favourites of those eras does not mean that we are any less of a fan.
For example, when midnights came out I hated it. I told many people but I didn't like it and I was really disappointed with it. Now, over a year later, I don't skip those songs when they come on shuffle. I am in a different era of my life and that means that the music I like is different. This is all a very roundabout way to say that I love Eliza's music, but if you want to learn why I like her as an artist you should listen to her EP and not her most recent album.
I was very happy to see that Eliza was going to be playing in Toronto for this tour, as I know in the past she played in Vancouver which is closer to her - then - home state of LA, but I was unsure if she would make the northern trip into Ontario. She was very excited to be playing in Canada, turning her tour international, and was very interested and enthralled with our “waxy money.” When my friend was buying merch the person tending the table had to ask us which colour our change would be.
Eliza has always had country roots in her music, having come from North Carolina, but it's most apparent in her new album. One of the most touching songs on this album is 16, a very raw that speaks candidly in situational photographs using very little metaphor. This song is blunt and brutal and this song very plainly with few embellishments, allowing the lyrics to speak entirely for themselves. It sounds as if the song has been recorded through a phone, giving it a voicemail-like quality, as if it is a story being shared with a friend who does not have time to pick up. To say I was shocked when she performed this live would be an understatement.
I had been listening to the album before the concert and I remember thinking so clearly that it was such a shame I would never be able to hear this song live because it's so beautiful, but I could never imagine being able to get up on stage and perform this song because of how raw it is. To hear all of the emotion in this song live was unforgettable.
The show itself, like Eliza's album, had amazing sound mixing and played to her voice. I was a little bit underwhelmed with her physical performance, she didn't really move around a lot on stage, but I gave her a bit of allowance because for the majority of her performance, she was trapped behind her guitar. However, the day after her Toronto performance, Eliza posted online that she was incredibly sick and had to cancel her following show. She had mentioned having a bit of a cold on stage, but clearly took a turn for the worse. So in retrospect, it is quite understandable why she was focusing more on her vocal performance as opposed to her physical one.
Elisa's performance had a very profound and physical effect on me. It's quite apparent from my show notes that I go from taking jot notes in point form as part of a list into writing small sections of poetry. The tone of my notes turns into full sentence is and complete thoughts that are very metaphorical and dreamlike in nature. I think the best performances are the ones that make me just want to sit down and write poems while I continue to listen and watch. I also spent a couple of songs trying not to cry because I felt embarrassed about how emotionally moved I was. I later talked to my friend Shannon, who was at the concert, about those moments and she said that she was also moved in the same way.
It is also very strange to see someone who I absolutely revere play on a stage the same size as many of my friends have played on. She is so very real, and she was so very close to me - isn't that odd?
What Would We Do Without You, Emo Night?!
Arriving in Toronto with a bushel of baked goods from a nut-free, gluten-free, and occasionally dairy-free bakery in Kitchener was a risky move, especially when I was supplying dessert for the car picnic Abbie and I planned before going to Sneaky Dees. Abbie brought sushi and we delighted in the fact that although our treats were lacking in any potential allergen, they were not lacking in flavour.
We finished our elegant meal and made our way towards the venue, which ended up being a second-floor establishment nested over top of a Mexican restaurant of the same name. The masses say the restaurant below is amazing, but my boyfriend later reported that it's mediocre - you choose who to trust. Abbie and I did not stop to check, as we were on our way upstairs to catch the first band who coincidentally started right as we walked in the door.
Opening up the night was Ottawa's hard rock darlings, F!TH. While watching them play I was struck with the strange feeling of realizing that I saw this band play their first-ever show and I was now seeing them give a fully choreographed performance in a city six hours away. It was strange to have seen them perform sets where they were begged for an encore but didn't have anything else prepared to now have a full discography to pull from.
The band played really well, they seemed to have a lot of fun on stage even though the crowd was pretty meager for the opener since the event was forced to start at 6:00 p.m. - more on that later.
The upstairs of Sneaky Dee’s was fully covered in stickers, doodles, and tags. The approximately 200-person capacity venue was what Devon from F!TH called, “a cross between the 27 Club and The Dom,” two venues that happen to sit side by side.
The venue was long like Ottawa’s 27 Club with a mix of occasional seating and a bar situated out of the way of the stage, but it also was decorated like Ottawa's most well-known punk bar. Later on in the night, we would learn that the floor bounced with concerning velocity as more people entered the crowd.
This show, which happened to be on April 6th, consisted of a five-band bill meaning that the sets were short and sweet. The crowd was a little bit more sour, everybody seemed to be having a great time, but I have never had my feet stepped on so many times in a crowd before. From exploring many venues over the past couple of months to check out their local scenes I've noticed that not all of them are as polite as the Ottawa scene, but this Toronto show was very shove-y and very rude. I'll touch on that a little bit more later.
One of my main motivators of the night was to pick up a F!TH branded baseball cap. After the bands set I beelined to the merch table to say hi to my friends and throw my money at them. It's up to you to determine if this was successful or not:
The second band was Reality Denied, who opened their set with a song I am still unable to identify, but was very reminiscent of a wrestling theme. They were very heavy and the crowd was very excited for them right out of the gate. They had a lot more people in attendance, which I'm honestly unsure if that was because of the time or their popularity in the city. During the interludes between their performance, the band played a variety of popular and theme tune tracks to fill the space which I'm not so sure that I loved, to be honest. I more prefer when the band plays interludes that they have come up with, but anything is better than dead air. If you can't convince your singer to talk between songs, then you got to play something.
During Reality Denied’s set there was pretty intense competition for the best photography spots, clearly, there are a lot of amateur photographers in Toronto and I am very glad I didn't bring my camera (see: the lack of photos in this section). Both because I didn't want to compete with them and because the crowd was aggressive and quite uncaring of letting photographers and venue staff through the crowd. I can only describe it as hostile.
Reality Denied also brought Kohle, the frontman of Over It to play one song with them. I saw Over It when I was in Niagara so it was an awesome surprise to see him again, as they quickly became a favourite of mine.
The third band of the night was RUST, a band whose lead singer had accidenteally slipped one of his long locks into my beer bottle earlier in the crowd. Not during a mosh, if you were wondering, but by just shoving me out of the way during the break between bands. Didn’t really endear the band to me, shockingly. But RUST ended up having a great set and the hair perpetrator ended up having a fantastic voice. I will say that their “mosh pit” was aggressive in a not fun way. We get it guys, you’re super macho and can beat up the air *insert eye roll*.
Don’t worry though, once the lead singer of DON’T TRY got on stage he called out the previous moshpit situation saying, “Common this is useless.” The Quebec City band quickly reclaimed the floor and fans were able to actually get close to the stage. Speaking of their frontman whose name is mysteriously missing from the internet, his scream sounded so relaxed and natural on stage, which is shocking since the band were closing off a one-month tour with this sold-out Toronto show.
I know about DON’T TRY from their awesome 2023 album, Shoe Knife, which is full of straight bangers – if you can call metal tracks bangers. The band is all intensity all the time, both live and on their recordings they don’t seem to take a breath. A lot of the time it is important for a band to learn about the value of empty space in their music, but DON’T TRY annihilates that empty space, verging on overstimulating the senses in the best way. This music was 100% built to be loved live.
Four-band bills are tough to do well, and five-band bills are twice as hard, but this night in Sneaky Dee’s was stacked and the energy was THERE. However, each band’s minor technical difficulties or simple seconds of delays stacked up against Rarity¸ the final band of the night.
Rarity has a sound I can only describe as raw. Their song Brain Dance scratches my brain just right and makes my skin feel like it’s on fire – in a good way, for once. This Hamilton-based band just released their new full-length album, Lower Feeling, after finishing their first tour where they could afford to bring along crew. Rarity finished their month-long bender with two sold-out shows, one in Ottawa and the final set in Toronto.
I felt so sweaty, crushed, and fully rejuvenated watching Rarity tear apart Sneaky Dee’s. However, the venue staff had to fight their way through the crowd to say that the massive bill was approaching their end time, as the venue had booked a club event akin to an “emo night” afterwards, and nobody took that lightly. Kicking a headlining band off stage during a sold-out show is fucked, there’s no way of saying that lightly. I have no idea how that Avril Lavine tribute show went afterwards, but Rarity made sure to take the piss out of the venue before letting the fans choose the final songs to be played.
The band rode the massive floor PA system as the venue was tapping their foot waiting for Rarity to close down their set. Sneaky Dee’s did an excellent job of making a bunch of enemies that night. I certainly am not excited to head back, even if one of my favourite bands is set to tour through there in the fall.
To their credit, Rarity did a good job of letting their anger be known, but not letting the crowd run away with those emotions – redirecting them to enjoy the night fully. They were truly amazing, one of the stand-out bands from my years of reviewing. They have a warmth that radiates from them even though they are all thrashing and screaming.
After watching five performances, Abbie and I decided we needed more music, so we walked down the street to the Monarch Tavern, arriving minutes before the Sun Junkies took the stage.
I have more about the Sun Junkies coming soon, so don’t fret that I won’t talk about them in this post.
I will say, in the warming spring air, I felt like myself, even if I was “a hanger-on of the band” as Eliza would say.
Sickening (derogatory)
People really need to stop going to concerts when they're sick. I didn't think this was going to be a controversial take, but I thought we all learned that you should put on a mask if you have a cold and want to go into public. Masks are sexy and they give off the vibe of, “I'm so hot and cool and I care about the people around me.”
I get that people wanna keep up with their plans, I get that people want to do things and that they feel incredibly isolated when they're sick. I had a very very horrible mystery illness in April that was so bad I had to go to the doctor. I felt so lonely and awful. But the thing was, if I wanted to see people once I started to feel better but still wasn't completely healed, I put a mask on. I even wore a mask in my own home because my roommates weren't sick and I don't think they were interested in coughing so hard that they vomited (yes, that was happening to me multiple times a day).
I am not immuno-compromised and I could never understand the fear that someone with an autoimmune disease must feel when they have to go into large settings where people are possibly walking around sick, but I am very susceptible to colds and they do not treat me well. I don't want to be sick, you don't want to be sick, no one wants to be sick. So if you're sick either put on a mask or stay home.
Okay, rant over.
In the coming weeks, I have stuff coming out about a Palestine benefit show I went to, JoeP, and an interview with Serena Yang, all of which you should keep your eyes open for. Make sure to subscribe for all of that and listen to this month’s playlist for all of the songs I featured here!
Talk soon,
E