
Photographs by Angelo Marchini.
Los Angeles native’s Silversun Pickups hit Toronto’s Danforth Music Hall on their North American Tour supporting their newest album, Better Nature (2016). The new-gaze quartet has received positive reviews towards their latest record. Previously, the band released a singles compilation album, comprised of all their top hits, which allowed fans to still be engaged with the band before filling in the two year gap with a new album. The band is currently on tour with supporting act, ROMES.
ROMES, a Canadian quartet from Toronto, opened the night on a pop filled contrast. Not too far off from the headliners, The Silversun Pickups, the band, had their own uniqueness to them. Comprised of four males who formed their band earlier last year, they released with debut EP, Believe (2016) and used it as the tier of their set list to perform an memorable show. Lead singer, Jacob Alexander, was energetic throughout songs like, “Tryna Be”, a song filled with a light repetitive riff and a banging bass line. The one year old band were impressive to say the least, a nice mixture of dream-pop and alt is definitely one of the reasons to check out this band.
Silversun Pickups took stage and the band is greeted with a roaring crowd. Lead singer, Brian Aubert, begins the show with “Cradle” the first track off their newest album, Better Nature (2016). The audience is more interested rather than energetic as it was everyone’s first time hearing the song live. This was a common theme throughout the night as each song played off the new album; couples and older fans among the audience stood in awe and remained composed and paid attention. Aubert was filled with words throughout the whole show, between performances, he would stop to thank Toronto fans, and express his love for Toronto as well as bassist, Nikki, who he stated was a bit shy to perform “Circadian Rhythm (Last Dance).” Brian directed the audience’s attention to Nikki’s vocals during the second verse of the song. One of the best moments of the night was when the band performed, “Lazy Eye” a cult favorite off their debut album, Carnavas (2006), as the band played the ending of the song with a solo performance and jammed through the ending. The band encored with three songs, “TapeDeck”, “Dots and Dashes”, and “The Wild Kind.”