By Peter Quincy Ng
Photo Credit: Peter Quincy Ng
The Dø and openers F O X F I R E
Wrongbar, September 30, 2009
While The Do is relatively unknown to the North American audience, that didn’t stop a crowd of French passport holders and Quebecois from bearing a cold Toronto night on a Wednesday. While Wrongbar was filling up with chatter in French, Foxfire a small but well-known band in the Toronto indie scene took to the stage at 9:20PM. Originally three members more, indie sextet Foxfire is an interesting blend of dueling male and female vocals whose genre-blending styles range anywhere from disco, synthpop to funk. The band played a melodic nine-song set, a more than generous amount for any opener. Songs played included the electropop fused “Too Late for Love”; disco-funk laced “Love is Not Enough” and most notably “Change the Future” which displayed vocalist Hannah Krapivinsky’s strong vocals supported by rapid guitar riffs most reminiscent of the Chromatics.
While Toronto’s Foxfire set the tone for the night, it would be another hour before The Dø would hit the stage. As the night raced on, The Do finally took to the stage walking casually past the audience as they kicked off the set with “Playground Hustle”. While bassist and keyboardist Dan Levy whistled away on a strange little pipe, frontwoman Olivia Merilahti sang along with a childish glee to a quirky cowbell-filled beat. With the first song on the set with a fierce interlude, Olivia yelling through a megaphone and a drum solo raging through the end, the extended “Playground Hustle” paid homage to their dramatic movie soundtrack writing days. What almost instantly followed without interruption was their next song “At Last”, a slow melancholic ballad that glistens with Olivia’s characteristic wail.
The set turned quite and just when the mood calmed down, Dan Levy exclaimed: “Oh once there was a bridge ladies and gentlemen!” stirring confusion in the audience. Olivia immediately responded with “and once the bridge broke down…because of you” the band kicked it up by strumming along to an unpolished, boisterous and somewhat deranged version of “The Bridge is Broken”. As the strumming became more ferocious and the clamor of the cymbals became more evident Olivia madly yelled incessantly “It’s a little messed up around here!” over and over, suddenly the song immediately cut. An unlikely MC, Olivia spit the excessively fast and maniacal rhymes of “Queen Dot Kong” before reverting back to “The Bridge is Broken”. The rampage continued with “Tammie” another heavy hitter that like everything else on the set so far ended up into a spiraling rampage.
With the stage worked up and an hour past their scheduled time, Olivia promised that her next song “Travel Light” was going to be completely different that what you’ve seen. Indeed this was quite the change from the loud and seemingly reckless set and “Travel Light” seemed to slowly evolve into a dark and atmospheric tale of self-defeat. “Language itself is an instrument” as Olivia told me the day earlier the next song was the purest and most heartfelt example of that. Paying tribute to her Finnish heritage “Unisassi Laulelet” was itself a marvel of globalization; the fusion of African drums to Finnic lyrics to an audience that probably didn’t have any Finns within it.
While the last song probably didn’t have anyone from the audience singing along, their debut hit “On My Shoulders” which undoubtedly brought The Dø to have a number one album in France certainly got the crowd singing and dancing. Olivia then took to the stage with an acoustic guitar and told them she had a pleasant surprise for everyone: a new song. While the band left and said they weren’t confident or comfortable with the lyrics of the uncompleted song, by misfortune they were immediately brought back to stage as the sound from the acoustic guitar wouldn’t let. Olivia then apologized with the remark “Sorry maybe some other time. Let’s play “Aha”” and without a single jeer from the audience played on with the band one last time and with Dan throwing his xylophone down on the floor “rockstar” style as the band finally closed off.
After a short cry for an encore Olivia was left to play alone and this time told the audience she wanted the audience to sing along. She even went onto say the lyrics are simple, thus giving no excuses for poor audience participation. Fitting for a spectacular night with France’s top indie band, the audience sang along to Olivia’s teenage drama song chanting “Stay a little bit more/Don’t let my heart turn sore” before she made her final attempt to salvage the acoustic guitar. Miraculously the sound engineer got things working again and Olivia left the night with tentatively titled “Smash Them All”. While the song lacked the flair of previous efforts off their debut album “A Mouthful” it was nevertheless a pleasant surprise to see what The Dø had in store for album number two. In all, The Dø played a set that could humble any artist with each song having something slightly different than their CD studio-made counterparts, the sound was loud but never ringing and the vocals and instrumentals were spot on.
Setlist for F O X F I R E
Too Late for Love
Love is Not Enough
Days of Heaven
With Somebody
Illuminations
Winterlude
Lay it on
Change the Future
Black Light Dick Fight
Setlist for The Dø
Playground Hustle
At Last
The Bridge is Broken
Queen Dot Kong
Tammie
Travel Light
Unisassi Laulelet
On My Shoulders
Aha
Stay
Smash Them All