Phoenix Worthy Of Their Growing Fame

Saturday (Dec. 5) night's gig at Sound Academy offered one of the oddest musical pairings Toronto has seen for sometime.

Phoenix and Holy Fuck's fanbases do overlap, but Phoenix's recent ascent into the North American mainstream would no doubt bring out a whole new segment of fans who had never heard of Holy Fuck. The question, then, was would fans of the French headliner's smoothed over pop-rock accept naughty-named purveyors of lo-fi electronic rock?

By the time Holy Fuck hit the stage, the Sound Academy already looked as packed as it could get. The quartet set up in a tight circle with lead knob tweakers Brian Borcherdt and Graham Walsh facing one another amongst a mess of chords protruding from the array of keyboards and effects pedals.

A quick hello and the band were off, delivering a tight set of lo-fi dance instrumentals. The heart of their live show lies in the hands of bass player Matt McQuaid and drummer Matt Schulz; they held the band together while Walsh and Borcherdt created all manner of electronic noises.

Holy Fuck are a surprisingly energetic band considering their cerebral music, with both Walsh and Borcherdt leaping around the stage while still hitting their marks throughout the set. The warm, though somewhat cursory reception the crowd gave the band made it clear that while Holy Fuck's set had gone over well, people made the trek down to the once-was-The Docks for one reason.

Amazingly, more people managed to make their way into the bar in between sets, adding to the anticipation for the night's headliner. Phoenix emerged 15 minutes late to a recorded track that wouldn't have been out of place at the opening ceremonies for the Olympics, before launching into "Lisztomania." Frontman Thomas Mars got the crowd, which was already singing along, clapping as well.

The Parisian group focused heavily on their breakthrough, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. The seven-minute epic "Love Like A Sunset" was unsurprisingly a set highlight. But they weren't afraid to drop hits from their previous records Alphabetical and It's Never Been Like That into the set.

Phoenix really came alive during older tracks like "Run Run Run" and "Napoleon Says." Their ability to recreate Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix's slick sounds live — with the help of two ancillary musicians — is admirable, but the tracks came off as a little stale at times.

The night's version of "Fences" was a particular letdown. But the older tunes showed a much rawer version of the band. It didn't really make a difference to most in the audience, who sang along with almost every word and treated the sextet to rapturous rounds of applause after every song.

Phoenix retired for a brief respite after playing for over an hour before Mars and one of the band's two guitarists returned to the stage for a stripped down version of "Everything Is Everything." They finished the night with spritely hit "1901," which the group stretched into an epic closer.

After working through the standard album length version of the track, Mars waded into the crowd, making his way halfway to the back of the venue, then standing up on the bar and leading the surging crowd through another round of the song's "Falling, falling, falling" chorus. He then crowd surfed his way back to the stage where he invited the crowd to join him before the band finished the song.

It was a fitting end to a night where Phoenix more than proved themselves worthy of their newfound fame.