By: Curtis Sindrey (@SindreyCurtis) –
Graham Plant (left) and Dean Povinsky (right) of Wildlife. (Photo: Curtis Sindrey/Aesthetic Magazine Toronto)
With Toronto fully embracing Spring, The Royal Ontario Museum launched the third season of their popular ROM Friday Night Live series earlier this month and the third edition of the event, which took place last night, featured a performance by Toronto-based indie rock quintet Wildlife.
After several spins of Daft Punk’s massive new single “Get Lucky”, and other top 40 tunes from the likes of DJ M-ROCK and others, Wildlife frontman Dean Povinsky and his brothers in arms, bassist Derek Bosomworth, drummer Dwayne Christie, and guitarist Dean Povinsky combined the furiousness of punk rock with the melodic sensibility of singalong pop music in the ROM’s spacious Currelly Gallery.
Playing a short set of songs under the watchful eye of a massive Futalognkosaurus fossil, they plucked songs from their new LP …On The Heart, which saw release in March, including “Lightning Tent”, “Don’t Fear”, and “Dangerous Times”, along with tracks from their 2008 debut album, Strike Hard, Young Diamond, including “Born To Ruin”, “One For The Body”, and “Killing For Fun”, which closed the set with a massive singalong with the crowd for the song’s uplifting refrain.
This was only the second-ever museum performance for Wildlife, having played with The Wooden Sky and Ayla Brooke at the Royal Alberta Museum last November. With the ROM’s ambiance of antiquity and Wildlife’s intensity, their pairing may have seemed odd, but it’s Wildlife’s youthful exuberance and their reputation for being a living breathing entity, hence the matching jet black outfits and teal armbands, which were absent during their set, that allowed their performance to capture the tether between the past and the present.
The ROM, like many other cultural institutions, strive to entice young people to get them through their doors. If the ROM continue booking bands like Wildlife, and A Tribe Called Red’s DJ Bear Witness, they shouldn’t have a problem with bridging the gap between the past and the i-Generation.
If you want to check out the next ROM Friday Night Live next Friday, called ROMic-on, click here for more information.
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