Over The Top Diary #1

Late last week, Toronto played host to the annual Over The Top Festival, an all-ages event that draws some of the coolest bands the kids never get a chance to see. We sent writer Pras Rajagopalan to check out the action. Here's his report of Thursday's action...

The Music Gallery
The Music Gallery, with its brilliant acoustics, is one of the finest, most overlooked venues to host live music in Toronto. When Brooklyn's Grizzly Bear took to the stage to play their midnight psych-space ditties, the venue had all the contained intimacy of a hollowed-out redwood. Imagine stalking through a dense arboreal forest at 2 a.m. with unseen fauna chirping, buzzing, croaking and creeping around you, and you might have an understanding of how Grizzly Bear sound. Using a melancholy amalgam of reeds, strings, looped samples, organs and alien harmonies, the band were startlingly brilliant on this night. The note-perfect harmonies were flawless and, at times, almost too much to take. This performance was unquestionably my highlight of the night. It also completely overshadowed Toronto troubadour Gentleman Reg, who preceded Grizzly Bear. Reg and his back-up band nevertheless ran through a charming set of inventive twee pop. The singer was in fine form, appearing relaxed and in good humour, and barely broke a sweat while alternating between breathless hush and hearty ululation.

Sneaky Dee's
The second half of my night, predictably enough, would prove to be entirely different. Local math rockers DD/MM/YYYY clearly won the award for the band best suited for sufferers of ADD. Their short shout-punk set was made up of material culled mostly from the livelier first half of their latest release, Blue Screen. Changes in time signatures seemed to be the order of the day as the band put in an energetic performance that had audience members flinging themselves at each other. This trend would continue with Japanther, a bass and drum throb-punk duo from New York whose M.O. is basically pummeling the crap out of their respective instruments over an assortment of samples and adrenaline-fuelled shouts. The shirtless drummer's infectious enthusiasm seemed to rub off on the spectators, as they gleefully started body surfing (!) and moshing. The next 30 minutes were nothing more than a blur of sweat, noise, yells, hair and sore toes. I emerged sweaty and tired, feeling like I had just run a four-minute mile. On this night, that vital combination of sound, spirit and interaction caused the audience to turn into a heaving, shoving, noisy mass of people moved entirely by music (and maybe a little alcohol).