Written & Photographs by Taylor Luftig
Maybe the lovely folks at Arts & Crafts had more than our pure enjoyment in mind when they begun planning Field Trip 2013, a celebration of 10 years of working with local talent. I like to believe that the festival was put on in order to relieve us of the disappointment that comes with hearing Avril Lavigne on the radio, again. In line with Halifax Pop Explosion and CBC Festival, Field Trip Music & Arts Festival was a reminder that Canadian artistic and musical talent needs to be celebrated more often. The festival not only provided an opportunity to embrace the Canadian music scene, but with art exhibits by local artists and food trucks/stands galore, Toronto culture and the energy of the city embedded itself in the overarching feeling of the day.
If the line up comprised of Canadian indie talent such as Timbre Timbre, Zeus, Stars, Feist, Bloc Party, and Dan Mangan wasn’t enough of a pull factor, Broken Social Scene announced a week prior to the show that they would be playing the entirety of ‘You Forgot it in People’ for the first time live.
Dan Mangan’s live show proved to be a reflection of his albums and songs; slow progressing with the ability to hook you in and harbour your attention until you’re hoping that his raspy voice will serenade you infinitely. Shy, and somewhat reserved, Dan lacked a level of stage presence that his guitarist seemed to carry with ease. Despite this, he had no trouble captivating the audience in his own unique way, that by the end of his set, it was forgivable that he scrapped the first two verses of crowd favourite ‘Robots’.
I was more than pleasantly taken aback the moment the members of Broken Social Scene took to the stage. Since ninth grade, I have made a note of going to live shows of bands that carry a certain minimum level of stage presence, but in no way was I expecting what the band put forth. Seeing the members grace the stage and begin playing was like watching the reunion of your favourite TV show cast ten years later on a talk show. The immediate energy and transfer of smiles was infectious. The set provided a stage for a bunch of members of different families coming together to form one massive explosion of Canadian goodness. Although fans expressed their worry of the band playing ‘Anthems for a Seventeen Year-old Girl’ sans Emily Haines, the lovely women of BSS delivered a performance that surely had the crowd forgetting about the absence of the Metric front-woman. ‘Stars and Sons’ had the crowd clapping on cue with enough enthusiasm to match the band as they warmed up to their hometown fans for the first time since 2011. After treating Toronto fans to such a magical set, we can only hope that Brendan Canning and the folks at Arts & Crafts can round the troops again for another hometown festival…Field Trip 2014, anyone?
