JUNE 12-16, 2013, TORONTO, ON
Though we didn’t plan it this way, our trip to Detroit the weekend before we were to arrive in Toronto for the sprawling NXNE provided a stark contrast between the two cities. Detroit is one of the most bizarrely magical cities I’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting. From luxurious, wide boulevards designed to parade American’s finest automobile productions, to stately, ornate pre-war skyscrapers that stood as a testament to the wealth and power of some of the 20th century’s richest magnates, Detroit oozes conspicuous opulence and the material rewards of the Industrial Revolution gone right. More so than the immigrant shores of Ellis Island or the sunny paradise of Los Angeles, it’s easy to see how Detroit became a mecca in the 20th century for the American Dream: this was literally a city where dreams where manufactured, built and exported. Sprawling suburbs turned into exurbs as the city’s population swelled and it seemed like everyone — so the narrative goes — could own a parcel of land and have a secure job that would all but guarantee them middle class immortality.
Of course, Detroit today is a ghost of its former self — this is what makes it so compelling. Whether it was touring our gracious host, Zak Pashak’s, historic Boston-Edison district, where beautiful mansions that once belonged to America’s richest entrepreneurs now stand empty and open to willing bidders for cheap, or driving down once packed boulevards and not seeing another soul on the road, or bar hopping from dive bar to dive bar, stumbling down the empty, dark streets, it was shocking to see the desolate emptiness that now characterizes the proud city.
But not everything is so bleak: artists have adapted and taken to Detroit, lured by the promise of cheap rent and cheaper living, and turned the city into their playground. Abandoned buildings have been turned into graffitied palimpsests and living sculptures as squatters re-imagine their surroundings. The Heidelberg Project has reclaimed a semi-abandoned row of houses on an otherwise unremarkable street to make a public art project from material refuse, covering, for example, an entire house in creepy stuffed animals, or twisting rusted wreckage into symbols that remind us of the dangers of unchecked consumption. Best of all, from my privileged vantage as a tourist, I sensed a stalwart thread of hope in Detroit, as if there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that the they will return to their former glory, a city-wide confirmation of the American Dream, again. This hope breeds productivity and innovation; with no rules and nothing to lose, there’s a strong current of creativity that runs beneath the city.
The contrast between the dark, rainy skies in Detroit and Toronto’s sunny summer playground during NXNE could not have been more obvious. As we got off the train from Windsor and picked our way across downtown to our hotel, we were bombarded with public activity — everyone was running from one place to another, restaurant patios were crammed in the warm summer evening, music poured out of venues and clashed on the street and there was a palpable excitement in the air. NXNE continues to establish itself each summer as one of North America’s largest independent music and arts festivals, Canada’s answer to SXSW (thankfully, without the gross, preying commercialism of the latter), an impossible smorgasbord of bands across every genre, big and small, crammed into countless venues across Toronto, all in the span of a pulse-quickening and liver-hardening five days.
From there, the weekend passed by in a blur. Mornings were scarcely seen, mostly due to Toronto’s extended license hours, which allow you to drink until 4 am at select venues. For the first time, I had very few “must see” bands on my list. It was to be a weekend of exploration, of following the flow and discovering new bands. Otherwise, I would have never found myself on Thursday night at Comfort Zone, trying to make my way to the front of the stage to shoot Sean Nicholas Savage, Montreal’s Arbutus Records’ first signee. An intense fervour built as he prepared his set, which consisted of him stripping down, half nude, to dance to pre-programmed adult-rock tracks in front of a glitched-out projector.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t get it at all. As I shot in near darkness, two girls behind me danced as if this was their last dance on Earth, until one leaned over to the other and confessed, “I’m crying right now.”
Arbutus has been enjoying its time in the limelight, to be sure, in the wake of Grimes’ popularity, but it was tough to actually get into Sean Nicholas Savage as an outsider — and this was music made for outsiders, made for being weird and alone at 4 a.m. at an after-party. Perhaps it’s my reptilian rock and roll brain, or perhaps I was too cynically drunk to release myself to the music, but as I hung out by the bar watching the completely mesmerized crowd and this enthusiastic weirdo on stage, I couldn’t decipher why Savage is the recipient of so much hype. Days later, I would have a debate with national gadfly Paul Lawton over Twitter as to why people attend hyped shows, rather than taking a risk on unknown bands. He’d argued that it seems like people attend shows like Savage’s in order to trade attendance for cultural capital and, to an extent, that transaction surely occurs. But, it’s hard to get fully behind that sentiment as you watch people be totally absorbed by an artist, even if I didn’t understand those emotions — and that’s okay. People were there because they believed in him.
Once again, the highlights of the fest for me were to be found at the Bovine on Friday night. Ian Blurton’s new band, Public Animal, made their highly anticipated live debut in direct support of Sweden’s Imperial State Electric, a post-Hellacopters band featuring frontman Nicke Andersson. Blurton’s been relatively quiet since announcing the dissolution of C’mon, sticking to recording and producing records. His return with Public Animal was nothing short of explosive — gritty and bluesier than his work with C’mon, which tended to work the groove in a heavier fashion. The packed crowd at the Bovine clearly lapped up every last second of their local hero (he DJs the back room every weekend) and gave him a warm welcome, before sticking around for Imperial State Electric’s driving power pop. High on everything and so drunk it was coming out their pores, ISE played with nihilistic abandon, an exhausting and reckless set of high-voltage rock and roll that could have only existed at 3:30 a.m.
Like Detroit for manufacturing, Toronto, too, is a centre for industry in Canada. Depending on who you talk to, it’s also on its way to becoming an abandoned wasteland as labels crumble and PR companies feed off the weak as they try, in vain, to promote old models of distribution in order to maintain a semblance of a bottom line. However, NXNE proves to even the most hardened of cynics that it doesn’t really matter whether or not the superstructure up top collapses — in fact, it should collapse and let the underground flourish on its own volition. Creativity runs with unbridled enthusiasm when freed from a structure dependent on economic return. It’s in our hands, now.
Words and photos by Sebastian Buzzalino
