Photographs by Sean Chin.
We’ve been graced by Elliphant’s presence before when she opened for M.I.A. during Canadian Music Week earlier this year. We’ve even sat down with Ellinor Olovsdotter and talked about her successes and her views on the music industry on our podcast. Not too long after this interview, she was called an upcoming star by Billboard. If there’s anyone who’s called this starlet’s rise, it’s us here at Live and Limbo. Luckily, Elliphant is still on her way up and can be seen in smaller venues (although she has told us she has played big sets before, so who knows how much longer this will be). Nonetheless, regardless of what size stage she plays, she is not only still terrific live, but she may have even gotten better from the last time we saw her.
The first time we covered her, she was intense, without question. Her show at The Hoxton, however, was actually fierce. For the first half of her set, she was feisty and more than just heavily into her music. She had a power within her. She fought the masses in a way Rage Against The Machine’s Zach De La Rocha would. She carried such a punch in her rapping. Her movements around the stage were still catlike in nature, and she was still a part of her own rave. She will never get tired, it seems, and it is all the better that she devoted some of this energy to speaking to her crowd. She brought up her save the grey campaign that fights to help endangered animals, but she suggested that this battle can be applied to people as well. She mentioned people with ADD and ADHD and those who use substances. She made a shout out to anyone who was forgotten, given up on, shoved aside and left behind; No matter what species.
Towards the latter half of her set, she was all smiles. She wore her towel on her head like she was a nun and she got the crowd to chant her name. Her message was delivered, and the rest of her time was to celebrate life. Her set ended, and she vanished into the night. There she went: This Swedish rapper/singer hybrid that struck Toronto once had appeared once more. There is a rare case where some opening acts just shouldn’t be openers. I cannot wait for the day where Elliphant returns as a headliner, and there will be the few of us that witnessed her bombastic shows before. We will be around to say “we told you so”. I can only hope that the amount of people that can say this is much larger in number than I feel it is now, because Elliphant is only going up from here, and anyone who misses the ride will be kicking themselves. As Elliphant herself says, you’ve just “gotta keep movin'”, and you’ll be doing yourself a favor if you catch her live while she is still gunning it forwards.
