Silverchair
W/ The Living End
G’Day Toronto
February 15, 2007
Dundas Square

Heading to a concert at Dundas Square in the middle of February isn’t something I even remotely considered a possibility. Walking into the biosphere they built for the G’Day Toronto festival to promote Australian tourism was like walking into a building that was always there. I don’t know how they managed to pull if off, but once you were inside there was almost no way that you would’ve known that you weren’t in a permanent building. Since this concert was mainly for contest winners and the select few that actually bought tickets before it sold out (which for most was before they even know there was an event), the atmosphere was excited and quite drunken really.

Those who were familiar with The Living End gravitated toward the stage and those who weren’t moved forward during the first two songs. For lack of a better term The Living End are Australia’s Green Day and their mix of punk, rock and the slightest bit of rockabilly is contagious. One of the most entertaining live bands to hit Toronto in the past couple months, the band did everything from running around the stage to the bassist (who had an amazing upright double bass) climbing on various objects bass included. Though the only song some people recognized was “Roll On” it was easy to see why the band is so popular back home and slightly confusing to why we haven’t heard more about them here.

Since this was Silverchair’s first concert in Toronto in roughly six years, I was expecting to hear quite a bit of their older material. Instead, the audience, who were clamouring to get as close to the band as possible, were presented with a set of mainly new songs and stuff off of Diorama, the band’s least known album in Canada. Silverchair arrived late into Toronto and didn’t get a soundcheck which caused the sound to be a little sketchy during their opener of “Emotion Sickness” but by their third song, “The Greatest View” things were sounding better and everyone was enjoying the fact that they got to see a band this big with an audience of only a few hundred.

While it’s nice to be in a crowd that gets to hear new songs off an upcoming album quite a while before it’s release, when a band has as many hits as Silverchair does, they almost have an obligation to play them since for the most part, that’s why people are there. The band played nothing off of their giant album Frogstomp and added to “Emotion Sickness;” “Ana’s Song,” “The Door” (in which Daniel Johns played the guitar solo with his teeth) and “Freak” was the extent of pre-Diorama songs played that night.

But even without knowing the songs Johns and co. kept the fans entertained. The new songs varied from slow and spacey to those with a dance rock vibe and even though they may not have come across perfectly live, they’re the type of songs that seem like they’ll sound great recorded.

Seeing Silverchair was one of the few things I’d wished I did when I was 15, and while they might not have played all the songs I wanted to hear, at least I can say I’ve seen them.


- Alyssa Caplin


For more pics of the night go here...






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