The Presets at The Danforth Music Hall

It’s understandably a huge challenge to play to a small crowd. This is something that’s amplified if a) you’re playing to a huge room and; b) your band’s purpose happens to be getting people to dance. As such, you couldn’t help but feel a little bad for Australia’s The Presets, playing to a sparse gathering of people at The Danforth Music Hall on Wednesday, October 29, 2014 for their Check Yo Ponytail tour.

It’d be an overstatement to say that the room was even half full. Even with the balcony of the 1,500-capacity space closed off, the floor itself was sparse – maybe about 10-rows of bodies deep. While it would be unfair to call the response to The Presets’ electronic music tepid, any climactic moments they achieved over the course of their hour and 20 minute set were quick to dissipate. 

On record, the band is sleek and energetic. It’s a sound that’s brought them commercial and critical success, Apocalypso winning the ARIA music award in their homeland and a key factor in opening the floodgates for Australian electronic music. 

But even with a fancy light show, the pair wasn’t quite able to pull it off live. While vocalist/keyboardist Julian Hamilton and drummer/keyboardist Kim Moyes play well with each other, the size of the stage itself made their sound almost cold and dystopic. 

To be fair, they didn’t have the benefits of a sweaty club. Much of their material seemed to be swallowed whole in the cavernous space with singles such as Pacifica’s (2012) “Ghosts” and Apocalypso’s (2008) “This Boy’s in Love” building up an ultimately unsustainable energy.

While the crowd tried to dance to numbers such as “Youth in Trouble” and “My People”, the Wednesday atmosphere was not in The Presets favour. While Hamilton showed some fight – running out from behind his electronic perch to encourage the audience from the front of the stage – it seemed the efforts at energy raising was for naught. 

“Thank you Toronto. We’ve been here a bunch of times and we love it every time we come down,” Hamilton told the crowd near the end of their two-song encore (and bless their hearts for returning to the stage for that.) With the bass-beat heavy “Sweat to Surrender” and the pulsating ballad of “Anywhere” closing out the night, I left thinking it could have been great – but unfortunately for them, a lot of the contributing factors to “greatness” seem to lie outside of The Presets’ sound.