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Concert reviews Music

The Scene: Death Grips, U2 and more

DEATH GRIPS at the Danforth Music Hall, Friday, July 3. Rating: NNN


It’s ironic that Death Grips have a reputation for mystery and unreliability, because what they do onstage couldn’t be more straightforward.

The self-proclaimed “conceptual art exhibition” from Sacramento spent the past two years cancelling gigs, breaking up and releasing a double album, half of which comprised glitchy, attention-deficient instrumentals that heavily sampled Björk’s vocals. The giddy “will they or won’t they” buzz in the lineup snaking around the sold-out Danforth Music Hall indicated that the trio’s breakup drama has only made their fans’ hearts grow fonder. 

Silhouetted by hellish red lights and surrounded by smoke, frontman MC Ride, who has the rakish figure of an experimental dancer, moved like one, flapping his elbows as if to grind the microphone into his mouth. Unfortunately, his vocals – which have such deliberate menace on songs like Hacker and Guillotine – were indecipherable and adrift.

Drummer Zach Hill occupies his own impressive space between technical prowess and chaos, but it was Andy Morin‘s beats and guitar-like stabs of sound that cut through the swampy din to carry the show – a 75-minute continuous volley of grinding noise and polyrhythmic discomfort that lurched from song to song.

Death Grips’ aggressive, chopped-up beats have much more variation and texture on record. Live, they’re all non-stop punk energy and theatre. 

Kevin Ritchie


BY DIVINE RIGHT at Harbourfront Centre, Wednesday, July 1. Rating: NNN 


If By Divine Right‘s 25th anniversary show at Harbourfront Centre – featuring nearly all of the two dozen musicians who have ever played in the project – was any indication, the best version of the band is the one with 11-plus members.

It took two hours to get there, but the all-star lineup – complete with three drummers, half a dozen guitarists/backup singers (including Leslie Feist, Broken Social Scene‘s Brendan Canning and Holy Fuck‘s Brian Borcherdt) and tambourine-smashing children – delivered the mightiest version of BDR’s 1999 classic 5 Bucks ever heard. 

That bombastic second-last song added an infusion of energy to the proceedings, which dragged here and there over the two hours and countless personnel changes, as seamless and exciting as they were. Band leader José Miguel Contreras, who never once left the stage, deserves massive credit for his stamina and engagement – not just at Harbourfront on Canada Day, but for keeping his project alive and inspired for a quarter of a century. 

Plus, the current lineup – featuring multi-instrumentalist Alysha Haugen and drummer Geordie Dynes – is killer.

Carla Gillis


BRIAN WILSON at the Danforth Music Hall, Saturday, July 4. Rating: NNNN


There were few better places to be on the fourth of July than the Brian Wilson concert, moved to the more intimate Danforth Music Hall from the Sony Centre. The Beach Boy’s songs evoke a sepia-toned 60s America, high on teenage feelings and sun-drenched beaches: they defined an era. He’s now in his 70s, but his songs, baptized in the fountain of youth, have a timelessness that has made them classics. Even his most recent sound teenaged.

The 11-piece band (featuring former Beach Boy Blondie Chaplin) didn’t quite achieve the “roof-blowing” Wilson promised with Wild Honey, but they didn’t need to: few of the tunes verge on rock ‘n’ roll. Instead, their magic comes from flawless harmonies and meticulous arrangements, like in Wouldn’t It Be Nice and In My Room. Wilson and band ended the main set with a big, blasting version of Good Vibrations. But just before that, he treated us to “far and away the best song I ever wrote” – the impeccable God Only Knows. If you closed your eyes and let yourself drift off, you might’ve felt a California sun beaming down on your face.  

Matt Williams


U2 at the Air Canada Centre, Tuesday, July 7. Rating: NNNN


At Tuesday’s U2 concert, my hard shell of cynicism eventually cracked and I had the following thought: these preening bastards who forced their latest album into my iTunes (still) put on a damn great show. 

While their cloying collective persona is loathsome, it’s difficult to find U2 insufferable when you’re in the same room with them. They hit the stage with Patti Smith’s People Have The Power blaring through the speakers. Bono wanted everyone else to sing the whoa-ohs in The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone) and Pride (In The Name Of Love) and With Or Without You. A random young woman from the audience who requested Angel Of Harlem and All I Want Is You was invited to play rhythm guitar on both. 

The Dublin rockers seem honestly interested in enlightening and empowering people. And though hardliners who refuse to be told what to think, do or listen to will scoff, aside from the giant Lite-Brite screen/cage the band often performed in, the current show is quite humble. It tells an easy, inclusive story about a band and their fiercest defenders: their fans.

Vish Khanna

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