Toronto - Man, that was quite a show. As you may noted by my previous posts, I have been listening to the Klaxons for quite a while and I was a fan of theirs, and coming into the concert, I was expecting your typical Toronto crowd..quiet, subdued, too cool for school. You know the type. However, I was very very wrong.
Maybe by now you have heard that the press has labelled the Klaxons the leaders of nu-rave (a term they despise, and I don’t understand). Anyways, that means one thing..glowsticks and there were plenty of glowsticks that night. Before the show, I scanned the crowd, it seemed to be pretty normal crowd, I did a few people wearing their baseball caps sideways, which is always odd. I mean, how many shows have I been to where people wear their baseball hats sideways? Am I in Woodbridge? Missisauga? I didn’t know.
So the Klaxons came on around 10:20, and they were your typical indie act from England, skinny as hell, hair from the 80s, looking slightly drunk. Right away they launched into “The Bouncer”, a song off of their Xan Valleys EP. Not even something off their album. What happened next? the crowd went fucking nuts. Not the entire crowd, but everyone in front of me who were in the little middle area. I was freakin shocked. Like these people went NUTS. It was insane, maybe I am old but I was so glad I was just a few feet. It was an all out mosh pit, which I thought went extinct in the late 90s.
I’d have to say, the Klaxons were very smart with their playlist, they started off with a good rock song to get people going, and just in case you didn’t realize this show was gonna be a party, immediately after “The Bouncer” finished, the sirens started blaring and they launched into another rocker song - Atlantis to Interzone. Now I might not be a crazy music expert, but when sirens go off in a freakin song, you know its time to rock.
Basically, from that point on, the Klaxons had the floor. I mean, obviously people in the back, they are gonna just stand around but this was the first time I’ve seen a mosh pit sustained a good hour AND people were dancing on the sides. The show was awesome, despite some equipment problems. The crowd was crazy, and there was one dude who stage dove 3 times. Now this guy was clearly insane. The first dive was semi cautious, the second time he went a little higher and the third dive was clearly a suicide attempt. I mean the guy jumped on stage and jumped as high and as far as he possible could, and probably did a face plant into someone/the ground.
All in all, this was probably the best indie-rock act I have seen in a while and show wise, better then either Arctic Monkeys or Franz Ferdinand when they debut in Toronto. I’m not saying they’ll be as big as either of those bands, but they put on quite the show.
+ insane crowd
+ sirens
+ good set time (1 hour, no encore)
- picky bouncer wouldnt let my friend bring his camera in
- no swag
on that note, I can’t wait til these guys get some money and have a light show to go with their tunes.
rating: 4.5/5
15 Apr 07 10:31 pm
this was a really good show. The crowd really was awesome. I saw them in NYC too on the 10th..Wasn’t as good as Toronto because the kids were too chill.
03 Oct 07 10:58 am
[...] Klaxons get on stage around 9:40, at this point I’m expecting ‘quite a show’ as per Ricky’s review but after watching their set, I’d just like to add ‘fuckin’ after ‘a’ and before ’show’. Those kids are amazing. Right off the bat they had people rush to the floor to hip-shake to the ear bleeder ‘Bouncer’ and kept the dancefloor masses consistently moving throughout the entire gig. In order to avoid writing a duplicate review I’ll just kindly ask you to refer to Ricky’s, which pretty much expresses my sentiments, although I felt the crowd slightly more subduded, maybe because it was sparse or the BC bud was more primo than usual. [...]
11 Oct 07 8:00 am
[...] Onto the show. Man was it completely different from last time. Last time, as you can read in a previous post of mine (here) was pure shenanigans. Glow sticks, surfers, stage divers, people dressed like they were colorblind..everywhere. This time around, typical Toronto crowd. I don’t even think people knew what the first tune was (the bouncer) because it wasn’t on the album. So basically, this was a ‘lets go to this hyped up band and check them out’ kind of crowd. The person standing besides me was just obsessed with taking pictures with his dinky little point and shoot camera, from quite a bit away. I wanted to tell him to give it up, but I’ll let him soak in his disappointment when he loads the crappy pics he took on his imac. Him and his girlfriend were both wearing earplugs too. Man, if you are gonna wear earplugs at a concert, it just proves that you should be seeing rod stewart or clay aiken or something. Get out of there. [...]