Toronto – It’s amazing what a few extremely catchy tracks and a hard working ethos can get you these days. A great example of this would be Two Door Cinema Club, a Northern Irish indie pop band signed to the ever so popular Kitsune label. The band released their debut record Tourist History early last year and has remained on the indie radar ever since, largely due to extensive touring. In that time, they have seen singles like Something Good Can Work, I Can Talk and What You Know reach modest success on the charts. Yet here they were, Saturday night, playing a sold out Kool Haus on the same album barely a year after making their Toronto debut at the tiny Wrongbar.
With an already excited crowd in hand, TDCC took the stage shortly after eleven and regaled the willing crowd with their brand of accessible indie pop music. The band certainly can write some wonderful hooks and the live versions of their songs certainly come off as energetic, as evident by the semi mosh pit that erupted from opening track Cigarettes in the Theatre to the set closer I Can Talk. The band mostly stuck with the music, and didn’t really say much to the crowd aside from the obligatory thank-yous but the crowd treated it all the same, showing love from the get go. My only problem with the band is that all their songs seem to have the same drum beat and follow the same formula (gentle verses, singalong chorus) , but hey, why fix something that clearly isn’t broken?
I Can Talk by Two Door Cinema Club
Opening for TDCC was Bombay Bicycle Club, a band that took a slower rise to the top (well, they really are at midpoint, probably). Mixing new tracks off A Different Kind of Fix with a few older, more familiar material, Bombay Bicycle Club got a great response from the crowd with their folk but really kinda rock brand of music. I felt mostly average about the show, but this was during a week where I saw some extravagant acts so perhaps three guys with guitars singing their hearts out didn’t really register with me as much as it would other people.