By: Patrick Topping (@ptopp_ing) –
Dragonette. (Photo: Ryan Emberley)
Festival Music House boasts its reputation for being the best party at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), and rightly so with their second night at Toronto’s newest venue Adelaide Hall featuring powerful and engaging performances by July Talk and Dragonette, rounded out by the solo acoustic Anglo-Cuban songs by Alex Cuba, the astral disco-funk of Maylee Todd, and super-saturated digital-retro Rich Aucoin.
The nature of a TIFF event entails industry and industry-adjacent folks standing with folded arms amidst the continuous murmur of industry talk. The crowd at Festival Music House event was mostly publicists, agents, managers, and media and broadcast teams, with a couple of celebrity sightings (*cough* William H. Macy *cough*). Thankfully, music industry folk love good music and where some events take the approach of “kill them with kindness”, the lineup at Festival Music House delivered a full-court press of powerful catchy, engaging, anthemic music. At its peak, July Talk’s sweaty boot & rally swagger overcame the crowd’s hangups and Dragonette’s pulsing deep pop-electro cuts had the crowd throbbing.
The night started shortly after 8 PM with Alex Cuba taking the stage solo with a tender, stripped down acoustic offering of his pop Anglo-Cuban music. Cuba’s warm-breathed reedy vocals and Latin rhythmic guitar were a perfect fit for the start of the evening as songs drifted through different dynamics, from the serenading of “Ruido en el Sistemo” to the bouncy, percussive “Como Si Nada”. Cuba also brought a unique twist by translating some his predominantly Spanish lyrics into English, most notably for the chorus of the sonorous pop song “Todo En La Vida”. Cuba brought a playful end to his set by asking for the English-speaking crowd to join him on the catchy chorus of “Si Pero No”
The evening continued as the DJ piped old-school hip-hop and R&B through the P.A. to build the mood for spritely songstress Maylee Todd. Todd, clad in sparkled leggings and a bangled denim shirt, brought a touch of whimsy by starting her 9 PM set on a harp with “Successive Mutations”, which found the plucked groove as the song sprouted into a psychedelic jazz excursion. The set was well-balanced between upbeat disco-funk and cool R&B tracks, notably “I Tried” which features tightly-knit rhythmic melodies between guitar, bass, and keyboards and showcasing Todd’s pitchy high-octave vocals, recalling early-soul era singers. The set hit a high mark with “Baby’s Got It”, channelingJamiroquai nu-disco funk grooves, a catchy chorus, choreographed dancing (with backup dancers!), and a molten silver guitar solo.
July Talk were the black sheep of the night for Festival Music House, their thunderous Western-rock and bombastic in-your-face live performances seemingly out of place sandwiched between R&B Maylee Todd and electro-pop Dragonette. But the band delivered a vigorous performance launching with the thunderous track “The Garden”. The linchpin to July Talk is vocalist Leah Fay, whose sparky persona hits the right (or wrong?) buttons to rile up guitarist and vocal counterpart Peter Dreimanis, bringing an electric Bonny & Clyde dynamic to stage.
Dreimanis brings a virile persona to the stage, at one point growling to the crowd “if you’re too cool to get rowdy, then I don’t want to hang out with you all”, needless to say the crowd obliged. The simmering duet “I’ve Rationed Well” included a breakdown and extended section in the buoyant vein of The Clash, with Dreimanis dancing in an Ian Curtis-manner.
As Dragonette hit the stage at 11 PM, the showcase had turned into a proper party and dance floor space was sparse. The catchiness of the trio’s electro-pop music is undeniable as lead singer Martina Sorbara’s chirpy vocals soared over fluttered synths, pulsing bass grooves, and four-to-the-floor rhythms. Anthemic track “Live In This City” was a “welcome” to out-of-towners and a celebration for all of Toronto’s music industry folks in attendance, as the dance floor bounced up and down in sync with Sorbara. The high point of the set included the crowdsingalong to pop-centric track “Giddy Up”, which segued immediately into “Let It Go”. Sorbara showed her playful side throughout the set, engaging with camera-phones pointed in her direction and teasing the infamous “it’s coming up, it’s coming up, it’s dare ”intro from Gorillaztrack “12 Dare”, before blasting into their set-closer “Riot”.
Closing out the night was Halifax-based, bleach-blonde Rich Aucoin. The energetic showman incorporated quirky elements including confetti blasts, climbing up venue walls to the 2nd story balcony, joining the audience on the floor and dancing loops, and handing out giant parachutes to the audience. His humanist lyricism encourages chant-alongs to chorus refrains like “remember what we’ve been” and “we won’t leave it all in our heads”.
His approach borrows from the Flaming Lips camp, ala Wayne Coyne as every-man frontman speaking to audiences in uplifting words of encouragement. The set’s reliance on multimedia was cumbersome, relying on YouTube videos better left in the past, including a full track centred around a Charlie Sheen catchphrase. Ultimately, every song of his set felt like high school prom in senior year: a pervasive exuberance, a sense of community with those still in attendance, goofball antics, and blasts of confetti, all underpinned by the realization that, eventually, it would have to end.
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Dragonette
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July Talk
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Maylee Todd
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Alex Cuba
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