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Concert reviews Music

Daniel Caesar’s stirring voice captivates at Mod Club

DANIEL CAESAR with CHARLOTTE DAY WILSON at the Mod Club, Friday, April 15. Rating: NNNN


Over the past couple years, Toronto soul singer Daniel Caesar has quietly built a following with critically acclaimed EPs that have garnered attention in taste-making circles.

As such, his show at the Mod Club was a heavily anticipated and sold-out event. More or less a hometown debut, it was an introduction to what his future in music might sound like. In fact, he is so poised for success at this point that it’s not a stretch to think Caesar won’t have to play to a smaller crowd than he did on Friday night.

He took to the stage amidst white smoke and stood in front hanging decorations resembling stained glass with a shiny black Telecaster in hand. He and his four-piece band took off with a sparkling rendition of End Of The Road from his first EP, Praise Break. It felt like the beginning of something big – the way this show was supposed to feel, as evidenced by merch table shirts commemorating the date – and the follow-up song, a blown-out and impassioned version of Violet, confirmed that intuition.

Caesar has a voice that somehow sounds even more perfect in real life than on record, away from studio magic and multiple takes. It’s the kind of voice that should be insured dripping with tears one moment and professing true love the next. He possesses a beautiful weapon of communication. And when he wielded it right, the crowd, the lights and the clanking glasses seemed to wash away.

He was at his best on simmering throwback soul songs like Death & Taxes (from last year’s Pilgrim’s Paradise EP). Tommy Paxton-Beesley, aka River Tiber, joined him for their collab West, a sweet and spare R&B tune that highlighted both of their impressive vocal talents.

Late in the hour-plus set – seemingly out of nowhere – Caesar launched into a couple of arena-sized alt-rock tunes. The first ended in a lengthy explosion of mid-90s Radiohead guitar hooks that seemed weird at first until you realize Radiohead-esque chord progressions recur a fair bit in Caesar’s tunes. The second went from a gospel-tinged groove into a similar crescendo ending, but was a bit of a yawn. The song’s radio-rock blandness made it feel strangely out of place with the rest of the set.

At 21, Caesar is ripe for the music industry picking. He’s the kind of natural talent that the Decision Makers drool over – a situation that can push an artist to make choices that appease someone else’s agenda.

At what basically amounted to a coming-out party, it made sense to showcase Caesar’s potential, but the alt-rock songs – and even the band, who were occasionally wooden in their interaction with each other – had a commercial sound that felt far away from the more organic and subtle flourishes of the soul-oriented tunes.

When he returned for an encore to the audience chanting his name, he sat down at a piano at centre stage and demonstrated that he can sound just fine without accompaniment.

“I don’t know if she’s here,” Caesar said. “Christian, this song’s for you if you’re listening.” He then eased into a nuanced and emotional love song that reminded everyone why they’d fallen in love with his music in the first place: that stirring voice.

Rapper Sean Leon came out for a crowd-pleasing high-energy take on Paradise, but that simple ballad had already stolen the show.

Caesar’s opening act was another buzzy Toronto soul singer, Charlotte Day Wilson, whose performance was thrown off by minor sound issues.

First, her bass amp wasn’t turned on, and before she introduced her fourth tune – an old-school 60s soul song that was a departure from her usual 90s minimalist R&B – she couldn’t help but address it.

“Everything that could’ve gone wrong has gone wrong already, in terms of the gear,” she told the crowd. “So from here on out is smooth sailin’.”

It was the kind of issue that probably would have gone unnoticed if she had never pointed it out.

Wilson’s voice imparts a hard-won emotional depth that distracts from all else around it. She’s almost hypnotically laid back, reserving her voice for those really important notes that cause her top lip to curl as she gently pushes the intensity to the edge of her comfort zone.

There was hardly anything going on in terms of visual spectacle – her low-key soul is delightfully void of frills – but her voice is so deeply compelling that the show required no pageantry.

Still, pulling out a saxophone solo mid-set was a pretty damn good ace up her sleeve. Her last song, the slow burner Work, climaxed with a goosebumps-inducing moment as she powered through a sizzling key change, and you could sense an acknowledgment of her Real Dealness shiver through the audience.

music@nowtoronto.com | @MattGeeWilliams

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