It’s nice to see a band enjoy their moment. Sylvan Esso is undeniably in that honeymoon phase.
As evidence by their sold out Monday night show in Toronto, people have been listening to the duo’s 2014 debut and very much enjoying it. The crowd packed the legendary Toronto venue (a capacity upgrade from the originally scheduled Drake Underground) for a dance party. It’s not the kind of dance party that’s entirely conducive to shaking your limbs with reckless abandon, mind you. Sylvan Esso make more the thought-out sways-meet-hips kind of music thanks to their slowed whom-whomp electronics.
The North Carolina band – last here during CMW and once before that at the Phoenix, then on opening duties for Justin Vernon’s Volcano Choir outfit – was casual in their stage presentation, coming off more like dorky, approachable friends than musicians ready to break it big. Gone were pretensions. In its place: pure happiness and a strong delivery.
Musically, they’re fairly minimal with just vocals and electronics centering the project. It’s something that’s admittedly difficult to appreciate on record, but worked wonders live. Vocalist Amelia Meath carries her voice with an unrelenting purity – doing it all to her own interpretive dance moves, to boot. Next to her stood producer Nick Sanborn, similarly enthusiastic of the night’s events, smiling behind his desk of buttons and keys.
A sing along was inevitable for single “Coffee”, as was the case for the crescendoing “H.S.K.T.”, on which the audience sang back the referenced body parts of head, shoulders, knees, and toes.
It was a 45-minute set that flew by – some enterprising individuals in the crowd begging Sanborn and Meath to play their album a second time. They didn’t, but they did indulge in an encore, returning after lengthy applause for a cover of Porches’ “The Cosmos” before ending with the self-described slow and sway-ey “Come Down”, the closing track on their self-titled album.
It was a simple show, but it was wonderful to witness because Sylvan Esso’s live set gave the album something it was thoroughly missing – a human connection. It also helped a lot that the pair behind the microphones seemed to be taking it all in and truly appreciating the response.
