Since it was recently the first week of university for many students, there were a number of campus events going on around Waterloo. Most notably, on the Friday of Welcome Week, the University hosted three bands on the V1 Green for a free concert. The bands playing were three fairly notable Canadian bands – The Beaches, Mother Mother, and The Arkells. For a free concert, it’s nice to see bands of this calibre playing, and they all seemed legitimately excited to be there.
Opener The Beaches is comprised of four females from Toronto who play fuzzy alt-rock/riot grrl punk. From what I can glean through the little information available about them, they are only just out of high school. Their set on Friday was very energetic, and a lot heavier than I expected from a band named the Beaches. The band seems to take their cues from The Pixies and Bikini Kill, and know the power of guitar feedback and adenoidal vocals. They seemed excited just to be playing, and they all spent a good amount of time whipping their hair around as they played. My expectations for them were nearly zero, and they exceeded them in every way. However, at the time they were playing the crowd was still filing in, and crowd response was a little lacklustre, although that’s to be expected when the band is nearly unknown.
The next act on the bill was Mother Mother, who are a jangly indie-pop band hailing from Vancouver. Since a have a soft spot twee boy-girl duet vocals, this was actually the band I was most excited to see and they came through in terms of musicianship and crowd engagement. The two lead vocalists spent much of the time between songs chatting to the crowd and even taking crowd suggestions. They played all of their well-known songs including “Wrecking Ball” and “O My Heart” but the biggest response from the crowd came when they decided to cover Nirvana’s “In Bloom.” It was an extremely well done cover and probably the highlight of my night; however I’m not sure if their intent was to honour the 20th anniversary of In Utero, but in retrospect playing a song off of Nevermind probably wasn’t the best way to do it. The crowd reaction to Mother Mother was a lot more intense than the reaction to The Beaches, with an unexpected number of people knowing most of the words to the full set.
Lastly, The Arkells took the stage as the final act of the night. People in the crowd seemed most enthused about seeing them, probably because they are the most recognizable of the three bands, at least in Southwestern Ontario. However, even early on, people were throwing the free glowsticks that were so abundant at the show. Eventually, they began throwing them at the band, even hitting the guitarist a few times. But the band brushed off the poor behaviour, and played happily despite the cold weather. They played most of their well-known songs, including “Oh, The Boss is Coming!” and the Tragically Hip-esque “Kiss Cam.” However, what I was most impressed by was the lead singer’s knowledge of Waterloo and the surrounding area. I know he is from Hamilton, which obviously isn’t far away, but it seemed like he’d done his research before he took the stage. He gave shout-outs to Village 1, Chainsaw, and even Starlight. Unfortunately, I left the set early due to the increasingly cold weather, but what from what I heard from others who stayed, The Arkells kept the energy levels up until the very end.
However, the highlight of the week did not occur, for me at least, at the concerts at Waterloo. On Wednesday, Passion Pit played at the Turret bar at Laurier. They were supposed to play outdoors, at Laurier’s athletic complex, however it got moved indoors due to thunderstorms. The smaller venue suited Passion Pit just fine, and the close quarters allowed everyone to feed off of each other’s energy. Passion Pit played through all of their hits from Manners and Gossamer, starting off with the uplifting “Make Light” and ending their incredible two song encore with a massive rendition of “Little Secrets.” I was approximately seven people away from Michael Angelakos and was possibly sweatier than I have ever been.
The city welcomed some great bands during this Welcome Week, both at Laurier and Waterloo. It was a great way to get the new students comfortable with the school, and I hope that both schools will continue to attract bands of this calibre in the future.
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