Bruce Peninsula's Release Show Wows Audience

The Polish Combatants Hall is a musty old building located just south of Toronto's College Street and its performance room looks like your average high school auditorium. Its floors also make it look like it could double as a gymnasium on a bit more notice. It even has fold-up chairs.

Minus the instruments on stage on Sunday night and hipsters drinking incredibly potent Polish beer, you would have been fooled into thinking you were about to witness a high school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Otherwise, that would have been the only possible reason for adorning a stage with garlands of fake ivy and streamers.

Toronto's Snowblink somewhat alleviated this high school feeling when they took the stage, though singer Daniela Gesundheit's guitar had some antlers attached to it, which only hammered home that Torontonians were in for an interesting night of music. Things became more ethereal from here on in.

Gesundheit (who's also a member of Bruce Peninsula and has either the best stage name or surname ever) and her bandmates got major points for handing out bells and poppers to audience members before taking the stage. They also scored big when Gesundheit told the crowd to "throw the poppers on the ground whenever you feel amorous feelings for someone in the room."

Sure, it might have been a gimmick, but you have to make people remember you somehow. There were a lot of poppers thrown on the ground during the band's set.

Snowblink is primarily Gesundheit's solo outlet, and she and her bandmates play an interesting brand of indie folk. Gesundheit's voice sounds a lot like St. Vincent's Annie Clark and, though it might be fashionable to write Snowblink off as boring, their set was anything but. If Toronto only remembers the outfit as "that band with that lady who gave everyone bells and poppers," it will be unfortunate because their set reeked of great things to come.

Alex Lukashevsky, by contrast, became boring after his second song. Lukashevsky's been a fixture on the Toronto scene for a few years with his songs that combine off-kilter, somewhat atonal classical guitar licks that are definitely influenced by 20th century Russian composers, three-part harmonies and witty lyrics ("you can't have gravy without grief").

Unfortunately, there's only so much of that you can take in a live environment before it all starts to sound the same. While Lukashevsky and his back-up singers pulled out some truly wacky harmonies and licks during their set, it became pretty clear that Snowblink had showed him up and most of the audience was eagerly awaiting the headliners.

More than 300 people had filled the Polish Combatants Hall to see Bruce Peninsula by the time they took the stage. Their set included "Steamroller," "2nd 4th World War" and "Shutters" from their recently released A Mountain Is A Mouth debut.

It quickly became obvious why this massive musical collective have garnered such a following over their three-year existence. It might be easy to say it's difficult to watch them live since all the singers are forced to stand at the front of the stage and block the bassist, percussionist and drummer. But their performances are so engaging that you're instantly drawn in and it's difficult to remove yourself from what you've seen afterwards.

Three-part harmonies are difficult enough to execute, but watching at least five or six people singing at any given time in a choir overtop guitar licks that are nearly math rock-esque is nothing short of awesome.

Former group member Katie Stelmanis was invited on stage for two songs, one of which was "2nd 4th War." Another song — which ended in a complete mess (that's not an insult) of chants, incredible harmonies, stomps, clapping, drums and thundering rhythms — brought the crowd to their feet in applause. This was either because they thought the band were finished their set or they were so floored by what they'd seen that the sheer electricity in the room made them all instantly get out of their seats. Singer/guitarist Neil Haverty was so surprised at the enthusiasm that all he could say was "Sit down..."

While it might be difficult for a 10-plus-member band to tour, let's hope this isn't the case for Bruce Peninsula. Their lineup will probably continue to evolve and change (which it's already doing, considering Kari Peddle is the only original member of the band's choir), but let's hope for Canadian music's sake that they don't go away because they're truly unique.