It’s a running joke among my friends that every concert I go to is the best one I’ve ever been to, but if I was expecting The Glorious Sons and Beaches show at the Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre to be the one to finally put an end to that joke, I hoped in vain. This show was good; this show was really good. This show was the kind of show you walk out of feeling exhausted and happy, ears ringing, pulse pounding, grinning like The Grinch and texting everyone you know to tell them how bad they should feel for missing it.
From the moment the clock hit 8 and the lights fell, the energy in the crowd was electric. When The Beaches took the stage—drummer Eliza Enman-McDaniel first, taking her place and beating out a pulsing rhythm while the rest of the band filed out in ethereal white and silver outfits—they immediately grabbed the crowd and dragged them through an hour of head-banging, arm-flailing, eardrum-eviscerating, and just really very good rock and roll. The band members spent the electric set strutting and leaping and spinning around the stage, laying waste to song after song, before finally—despite the crowd screaming for an encore—surrendering the stage to the main attraction.
The thing about The Glorious Sons is that they really have no right to be as good as they are. There are countless bands out there with much longer careers and many more albums to their name without even a quarter of the hits The Sons crammed into tonight’s very nearly disgustingly energetic set. I’ve seen a lot of shows in a lot of different venues, but I can honestly say that before tonight I had never seen a band take an arena show and make it feel like a party in the basement of my friend Jeff’s mom’s house—and I mean that in absolutely the best possible way.
Throughout a set that alternated between frenetic rock and soulful ballads—and culminated in an explosive encore rendition of “Gimme Shelter”— The Glorious Sons proved over and over and beyond a shadow of a doubt that rock is far from dead, and everything really is alright.