It’s 3am on a Friday night. I’m on very little sleep. My feet are starting to hurt. So why the hell am I still up, beer in hand, watching yet another band, yet alone one I’ve seen before? Well, for one thing, because it’s not really a music festival if I don’t punish my body with too little sleep and too much of everything else. For another, because the band I was here to see is a pretty good one.
The Disraelis are no newcomers to the Toronto scene. They’ve been around for a good while, playing their brand of ’80s style postpunk with a dash of shoegaze around town at bars like The Silver Dollar and they do it well. Since the last time I had seen them, the band had undergone a bit of a lineup change, with two former members of The Hoa Hoa’s joining singer/bassist Cameron Ingles for this new iteration of the band (some former members have gone on to form the similarly ’80s-inspired band The Holiday Crowd). Anchored by Ingles’ killer basslines, the band laid down a solid, at times hypnotic groove that held the attention of the packed house at The Silver Dollar. On a final note, I’d like to make mention of the fact that Ingles was wearing what appeared to be a turtleneck t-shirt. I wasn’t really aware that such an item even existed.