Photograph by Neil Van (2015).
Walking down a mostly empty College St., a gang of people hanging outside of The Smiling Buddha let me know I was in the right place. When I got inside I had realized that the room had cleared out for a break between sets. With an incredible line up of incredible local acts hailing from different towns in Ontario, the night proved that some of the best musical acts are home grown in our very backyard.
After a quick sound check, the band Chastity would open up hard and heavy with their song Manning Hill. The following songs including Saliva and You’re Scary Now had melodic chords that would transition to heavy riffs and glaring feedback. With the small and intimate size of the venue, the vocalist spent the entire set in the crowd just in front of the stage. The Whitby band’s set was short and left me wanting to hear more from this amazing band.
Nicole Dollanganger took to the stage in an ominous navy blue light. Her beautiful yet haunting sounds mesmerised the crowd. Her first song served as a perfect intro with dark and heavy electric strings contrastingly compliment Nicole’s alluring siren-like voice. Her second song, Lemonade received reactions of excitement and praise was hard and loud with beautiful and melodic verses. After another excitable tune called You’re So Cool, the band played a new song called Beautiful and Bad which was one of the first songs co-written with her guitarist. The song carried with a dark riff and driving drums in between hard and blaring instruments which contrastingly compliments Nicole’s divine vocals. With a guitar in hand, her last song, Angels of Porn was announced with a hugely excitable reaction and one person who was sad the set was coming to an end. Nicole Dollanganger’s charmingly humbling personally sparkled like her blush in between songs as she announced songs and thanked everyone for coming out. Again, with a short set, I found myself looking up and listening to all of Stouffville siren’s songs that I could get my hands on.
Unfortunately, I had caught the opening band Drofnosura as they were packing up and was looking forward to what experimental sounds the Toronto band shared.
It has been an unfathomably long time since I went to such an intimate show that left me mesmerised and satisfied on a musical level such as my evening at The Smiling Buddha. Its because of this show that I’ve gained an audible craving for the nightmarishly pleasurable and ready to dive in headfirst into the audible unknown.
