With all the jokes about Winnipeg being one of the coldest places in Canada, Apollo Suns break that stigma very quickly. This is a band that can heat up a club in less than one song. They did just that at Baby G’s recently. Their opening piece was as Epic as a large Movie Soundtrack! From there you found that enslaving sound slide up your backbone and you couldn’t help but crawl towards the stage to have your face melted off by the intensities of the horn section.
This high energy band grabs onto you instantly and never lets go, as they pound and sweat their very focused and relentless indiscriminatory endurance all over your weaken resistance. This is a band that can look extremely polished while flogging complete chaos at the same time. This is truly a rattling experience of not knowing if you are coming or going…
They are on a North American tour pushing their new album Departures. I will do a review on this album very soon, so keep on reading my blasted friends. All I can tell you is that this album is filled with moment of high energy Jazz, Rock, Psychedelia and Soul. I am sure there is more, but there was just too much information to take in at one of their shows. I am one of those people who loves to live in the moment and you have to live this way because this band maneuvers so quickly, you simple cannot hold onto their moments too long because you would miss all the next moments.
Half the fun is watching all of their stage antics. This is a band who loves to have fun and it shows all the way through their show. This is a band that raises the bar on fun very high. At one point they had the tight and loyal fans yelling Eh!, like a true Canadian. Apollo Suns let us in on a private joke as they are getting their American fans on this tour to do the same thing. This is a band that will Canadianize the Americans! I even learned people came in from Waterloo to see this show, since this was the closest they were coming to their hometown. That is loyalty.
I think this may be a moment for Blast Toronto stand up and start letting our readers know, that there are some band that you must come and witness live. I know you will write me later and thank me for my recommendation. I am going to start with Apollo Suns. I saw them for the first time at the Beaches Jazz festival this past summer and I waited for months to see them again in November. It was worth the wait because I got to witness a full blown out show! At one point I was so exhausted rocking out that I sat down and the next thing, they are leaving the stage where I couldn’t believe the show was over already. It was the longest blink of an eye I have ever had. The crowd was yelling seven more, and I would have endured that even though my body couldn’t.
Here are some images of Apollo Suns:
Apollo Suns had an opening band from Toronto called Trash Panda Brass. If I had a tagline for this band, it would be something like this. Have no fear; the horny queer band is here! Yes they are a 5 piece horn band with a drummer and they are proudly queer. They walked on stage with no mikes and began yelling at the crowd. They wanted us to sing out to their instrumental cover songs. They opened with Stevie Wonder’s Superstition, launched into 9 to 5 by Dolly Parton, and eventually got the crowd singing loudly to Katy Perry.
They kept the crowd alive and well with songs like Barbie Girl- Good timing because of the movie and kept us smiling with Brittney Spears. They finished off their set with another Katy Perry song with “I kissed a girl”, and I know they liked it. This was the perfect opening band, and I liked it.
Here are some images of Trash Panda Brass: