By Peter Quincy Ng
Photo: Peter Quincy Ng
July 11th, 2009 –7:30PM Harbourfront Centre at the Redpath Stage
While pretty much everyone who was at the Beats Breaks and Culture event this Saturday was there to see Broken Social Scene, on the smaller Redpath stage not far from the night’s big act was one of Toronto’s best kept secrets. The Parallels first built themselves when ex-Crystal Castles drummer Cameron Findlay started pursuing his own side-project. These tracks eventually found their way onto popular Internet blog Discodust and eventually with the addition of former Tuxedo Mask member Joey Kehoe and fledging solo artist Holly Dodson both joining last October, the Parallels were conceived.
As countless fans were preparing for the onset of Broken Social Scene’s performance the Toronto trio took stage to a rather intimate crowd with curious onlookers slowly taking notice of one of Toronto’s freshest sounds. The Parallels combine dark electronic synth twinkles reminiscent of the Chromatics’ with heavily arpeggiated trills and Holly Dodson’s sweet Italo-disco vox. As a fan described it, the Parallels are the perfect mix of past, future and present. With their brand new track and tentatively titled “In the Fine Light”, the Parallels all clad in black took to the stage with Cameron’s rapid-fire drums instantly catching the attention of uninterested passersby.
With the following song, the sound improved drastically this time highlighting Joey’s haunting synth sounds and steady keyboard arpeggios, while Holly’s vocoder gave a truly eerie feel to the appropriately titled “Dry Blood”. The mood later lightened up with “Nightmares” where you start to get a feel of the band’s unique sound. This was characterized by Holly Dodson’s sugar-sweet vocals, which ooze of your type-casted Madonna 1980’s pop classic and was particularly evident in “Reservoir” the song that personally made me a fan.
As the band reverted to “Magnetics” the sugary-sweet 80’s pop-feel faded, Holly hit the synths as her flowing black robe blew gently in the wind and the band gradually reverted to their dark, futurist and robotic feel. The band’s ability to change from dark to light and soft to heavy is truly something to witness and something that many other bands fail to inspire.
As they closed off with “Midnight Voices”, the Parallels finished off with an astounding show given the half an hour slot they were allotted. With minimal setup and given the cons of playing outdoors (such as the usual extremely uneven sound) they came off with a cleanly-cut sound for their seven-track ensemble and managed to re-solidify themselves as one of Toronto’s bands to watch.
Setlist:
1) In the Fine Light (tentative)
2) Dry Blood
3) Nightmares
4) Reservoir
5) Magnetics
6) Vienna
7) Midnight Voices