By: Alex Curley (@CurleyAlex) –
Sarah Blackwood of Walk Off The Earth. (Photo: Curtis Sindrey/Aesthetic Magazine Toronto)
A large crowd gathered at Toronto’s Kool Haus as lights spun in a dizzying display, whirling like stars in a galactic waltz. As overhead monitors displayed a live feed from Montreal and Vancouver, where people gathered for the same event, the country was abuzz.
Samsung’s social media team worked overtime as they managed a massive screen for tweets that concert goers could send throughout the event with the #GS4Canada hashtag.
With two stages set up, the main stage for Walk Off The Earth and the other for a mysterious hologram of Samsung’s logo, fans were in for a treat.
Promotions staff demoed the new phone to attendees throughout the room as a DJ spun Top 40 hits for the crowd.
One by one the members of Walk Off The Earth took to the stage, all wearing grey sweatshirts with R.E.V.O in fluorescent paint on the back as they burst into the title track from 2012’s R.E.V.O.
The band’s inoffensive and working class sound swept over the crowd in an inspirational wave of plucked guitar and thrumming bass.
The simple lyrics of their song “Revolution in my Head,” proclaimed “The revolution is in my head,” and “I’m never coming down.”
The band then went into their stellar cover of B.o.B.’s “Magic” with Gianni Luminati’s scat-style vocal work blending well with Ryan Marshall’s catchy soft rock chorus of “I’ve got the magic.”
A classic song from the band’s busking days followed called “Corner of Queen.” With simple lyrics about busking on the streets of Toronto, it showed how far the band has come.
While setting up for the next song, Sarah Blackwood smiled and joked, “I appear to be pregnant,” as she rubbed her large 7-month pregnant stomach, “You have no idea how hot it is up here.”
The band’s performance illustrated their maturity and a humbleness as they played to a crowd that loved them.
As they pulled out a large guitar and began the familiar chords to Gotye’s “Someone That I Used To Know,” the crowd cheered in excitement. Just like the music video that introduced them to the world, they played and sang in unison with big smiles as the audience hummed along.
The new Samsung Galaxy S4 as demoed at Samsung’s preview party in Toronto. (Photo: Curtis Sindrey/Aesthetic Magazine Toronto)
They followed up with a harder version of “Sometimes,” which was vaguely reminiscent of Rage Against The Machine with Blackwood’s vocals softening Luminati’s harsh scat vocals. An epic mid-song guitar solo brought to mind the hard rock revival style of Monster Truck.
Closing their set, they teased the crowd of a summer that has yet to arrive with the bubbly call and answer song, “Summer Vibe.” Holding hand-made signs with the lyrics so the crowd can sing along, they won everyone over once they were through.
As they quickly shuffled offstage, the capacity crowd waited through a sales pitch of the Galaxy S4’s features while a hologram of the Galaxy S4 highlighted each detail.
Finally, the image of the Galaxy S4 disappeared from the side stage and was replaced with a larger than life ghostly image of Feist, which was being broadcast simultaneously in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. While interesting, the hologram was very dependent on being viewed from the front, lending a pop-up book quality to the image.
Hologram-Feist was a recording of the Juno Award winning artist, which sadly lacked her trademark flare for live performance, playing songs from her Polaris Music Prize winning 2011 album Metals, including “A Commotion,” and “How Come You Never Go There.”
The audience was between disdain at the gimmick and feeling the need to record the life-size Feist on their iPhones.
Feist said in a statement, “To get a chance to be a hologram is kind of playing into every childhood fantasy dream of the magic of smoke and mirrors and really lives up to a lot of my dreams in terms of the things I have been trying to do live for years.”
Musion, a UK-based enterainment company created the Feist hologram, using the Musion Eyeliner system, which is best known for resurrecting Tupac at Coachella 2012. The system used an old stage magic trick known as Pepper’s Ghost to project an image on a transparent barrier.
Luckily, Feist will perform at the Montreal International Jazz Festival in person on May 3rd.
As Feist disappeared into the ether, Walk Off The Earth took back the main stage with some rousing drums, which led into their new single “Red Hands.”
The band then broke into their epic Taylor Swift cover of “I Knew You Were Trouble” and was also joined on stage by larger-than-life beat-boxer KRNFX.
The crowd ate it up and KRNFX treated them to an astounding breakdown before he left the stage to rousing applause.
The band than went into the happy ukulele tune with “No Ulterior Motives” and radio-friendly “Shake” from R.E.V.O., and as the crowd waved along, they performed a cover of “Little Boxes” by Malvina Reynolds, made famous by the television show Weeds.
As they completed their set with “Money Tree” and “Gang of Four,” from R.E.V.O., they proved that they have learned just as much from their covers as they have from their original work and they put on a spectacular family friendly show.
Sarah and Gianni’s baby is due to be born sometime in June and the band will play the Vancouver Island Musicfest on July 12th and the Little Lake Musicfest on July 17th in Peterborough.
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