Toronto. January. City Hall. -4 degrees. 8:00 PM. Bank-sponsored warm-up tents. Moms. Dads. Kids on shoulders. Disabled elderly people on scooters. Drunk junior high girls. Old people dancing. Tourists. Ice skating. Conversations about property tax. Fire pits. Hot chocolate. Long underwear. The Olympic torch. Snow. Toques. Flasks of rye. Top 40 radio DJs. 3-fingered mittens. Corporate sponsorship. Municipal government placation. Hip-hop? It's the 2009 Toronto WinterCity Festival!
Shad opened the night, with a short but strong set, spitting some of the most clever lines that have come from North of the 49th parallel in a long time. He was accompanied by a live backing band, including some slick work on the ones and twos, with himself adding some acoustic guitar to the mix. The crowd was small but appreciative, especially when he broke into CBC Radio 3-approved "I Get Down" and ended with an ode to life during recession.
During the downtime between sets, the crowd thinned and congregated around fire pits and french fry trucks to stay warm. We're real classy here in Toronto.
When Thunderheist's ferocious emcee Isis took the stage "Suenos Dulces," built on a sample of the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams," the crowd began to respond. She was helped by DJ Grahm Zilla, who tweaked the low-end, transforming the ’80s pop classic into dirty crunchy electro-funk. Rapping in Spanish over pulsing electronic grunge, Thunderheist gave the growing audience, now building around the outdoor stage, a taste of the bricolage of baile funk, NYC-style, and a post-colonial "fuck you, let's dance" ethos that has kept asses shaking since her early days in Montreal. Commanding the stage with four B-girls clad in purple Surfstyle jackets, Isis attempted to bring the post-MIA raucous energy of Thunderheist's club shows to a municipal government-sponsored event attended by a huge cross section of the Toronto population. It was a difficult sell, but not insurmountable.
"Dulces" flowed directly into "Bubblegum," and the mass of 14 year olds dancing at the front of the temporary stage went nuts. Having consumed sports bottles of vodka during the Shad set, they were here for the party, as were the 50-something Latin American tourists who were losing their shit, salsa dancing near the back of the crowd. The energy wasn't exactly contagious, but the often-neglected audience of too-young and too-old were keeping the show moving. After every second song, Isis would produce a frustrated but positive laugh while attempting to inspire the crowd to stay warm and start dancing.
Working their way through material from their debut LP, to be released March 31 by Big Dada, the show's intensity began to build with Isis' smooth, non-ironic throwback cadence and nearly flawless flow crashing against Grahm Zilla's consumed-and-regurgitated samples of The Knife's "Heartbeats" and Kool and The Gang's "Jungle Boogie," adding live cowbell and handclaps to the mix. As the electro-duo burst into "Jerk It," their raunchy call to action, for a moment the towering concaves of Toronto's city hall seemed to disappear, the air warmed and the oddly corporate and government environment seemed like a party -- a very strange party -- maybe not one you'd like to attend, but a party nonetheless.