What a great weekend. Good music, great friends, amazing weather and a cosy outdoor vibe just reinforces something I’ve known all along – outdoor music festivals are a great way to spend the weekend. Despite the threat of daunting weather this weekend, the music gods pulled through and we were blessed with calm weather throughout our time at Fort York.
It will be sad if there are no more Field Trips because as a community, we really need stuff like this in times like these.
Let’s take a look at some of the acts we saw on Saturday.
Portugal The Man
The Alaskan band played their sunset set with a great ferocity that added a nice punch to what was otherwise a pretty tame affair thus far. I had never seen them live before and was pleasantly surprised.
Cloud Nothings
Being a Raptors fan, I have a lot of hurt feelings over anything from Ohio right now. Despite my hatred, I still enjoyed the Cloud Nothings set on Saturday, Their 2014 track “I’m Not Part of Me” is a great song and well, they played it. The new album seems to follow the energetic guitar rock sound that they have utilized to much success on previous records. Why break a good thing?
A Tribe Called Red
People need to dance at outdoor festivals. It doesn’t feel like a music festival unless you are jumping up and down and dancing in a field and let me tell you, A Tribe Called Red definitely provided that on Saturday. As per usual, the trio were accompanied by their own dancers who would inspire the crowd to move and move they did.
The Pharcyde
My favorite act from Saturday, The Pharcyde brought the party to the people at the Fort York stage. Blessed with an expansive back catalog and a tight live show, The Pharcyde had everyone in the crowd on their feet, fist pumping, and dancing while delivering classic tracks. A particularly touching moment happened when they asked the crowd to raised one hand for Dilla. A great, energetic show.
Broken Social Scene
The hometown band playing the hometown festival, Broken Social Scene brought out all their guns on Saturday and reminded the world what a powerful music entity they can be when they can get everyone together. The whole gang was there, and that wasn’t enough as they brought on even more people to the stage. At some point I was wondering if there was an eventbrite invite out there somewhere to join the stage.
With the release of new album Hug of Thunder looming, BSS drew a fine line between testing out new music and playing the hits that got them there. Starting off the set with an all male lineup for “Cause = Time” before giving the ladies a grand entrance for “7/4 Shoreline” was a nice touch. This was my first time seeing the band, and their sound live is much more powerful than their album. Everything just has a lot more oomph to it. All in all, a splendid way to end the night.
All photos by Elisabeth Isles, who flew a red-eye flight from Devonshire England to be at the show.