TV On The Radio Topline Busy Weekend

Kool Haus

Toronto, ON

on Mar 3 2007

Noah Love (CHARTattack)

03/05/2007 3:00pm

There were two sold-out shows worth talking about this weekend, so here you get two reviews for the price of one. The first was at Lee's Palace on Saturday, where Shout Out Out Out Out played their second consecutive Toronto sell out, bringing along Toronto's Two Koreas and Norway's 120 Days for the ride.

The Koreas battled sound problems for the first few songs of their set, but once those were sorted out, the group put on a high energy set of their Fall-esque rock. Though the audience members didn't really move much at a show that would later turn into a dance riot, the band were well received and frontman Stuart Berman seems to get more confident on stage every time I see them.

By the time 120 Days arrived, the house was packed and the crowd quickly embraced the shoegazing rockers. And how could you not? They were about 18 years old. It's hard not to root for the kids, especially when they're actually pretty good at manufacturing tracks that evoke My Bloody Valentine and fellow Norwegians Serena Maneesh.

But none of that compared to the way Lee's lit up at the appearance of Edmonton's Shout Out Out Out Out. Mayhem like that for a show like that in a venue this size I have never seen. The band's set, which covered almost all of last year's excellent (and Juno-nominated) Not Saying/Just Saying and featured a few older songs for good measure, was rife with stage invasions, blinding visuals and — I kid you not — crowd surfing.

It's one thing that I haven't seen crowd surfing since going to a few punk shows back in 2000. It's another thing entirely that it took place at Lee's, a venue the size of a large backyard. All in all, it was one of the best crowds I've ever witnessed, and a performance that was worthy of the insane reaction.

Almost as crazy were Subtle, who opened for TV On The Radio at the Kool Haus on Sunday night. Since I can't really put into words exactly what the band do, I came up with a math equation. It goes like this:

TV On The Radio + mid-'90s David Bowie x Buck 65 = Subtle.

Frontman Adam Drucker (a.k.a. Doseone to Anticon fans) bounded all over the stage changing vocal styles at the drop of a hat while his ridiculously talented band twisted pop hooks and electronic beats around his frantic lyrics. It seemed like the TVOTR's fans were a little confused, but, at the very least, this was a performance they won't soon forget.

The same can't really be said for TV On The Radio, who were as energetic and tight as they were at the Opera House last fall, but suffered from playing a cookie-cutter set list (no pun intended) that barely deviated from their previous appearance, possibly not at all. The Brooklyn group have a sound that's big enough to sound good in the cavernous Kool Haus, and it served to their advantage here, where at Opera House they sort of overpowered the speakers.

I give TVOTR a solid A for effort. They played the best tracks from Return To Cookie Mountain and Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, plus a couple of EP songs, much like they did last time around. Tunde Adebimpe was as boisterous and compelling as he always is, but there was a bit of a workmanlike quality to the performance that took away any sense of spontaneity. If you've never seen TV On The Radio before, I highly recommend checking them out. But once is enough.