A Night at The Garrison.
With Sorb, Riki and Provoker.
All the photos in this newsletter were taken by Jacob Vandergeer, a photographer based out of Toronto. If you’re looking to see more of his work, be sure to follow him on Instagram and visit his website.
There is still a half-hour to go, before the show officially begins but the lights (in anticipation, no doubt) have already been dimmed.
It casts the still assembling - a vast majority, in both leather jackets and somewhat clashing yet soon to be discarded, weather-appropriate scarves - in shadows of dark, disorganized red.
If the modern, post-punk, “sticking-it-to-the-man” aesthetic could be boiled down into a single visual, it is this one.
À la, the emergency lights of the Batcave.
But not everyone, to be fair, has Bruce Wayne’s famously gaudy taste.
Instead, The Garrison, a small club on the outskirts of Toronto’s Little Italy neighbourhood, has gone for a decidedly more person-to-person approach - their walls, lined with enthusiasm, just as Sorb, the Toronto-based techno-duo, appears on stage.
The night’s opening act, they’re greeted with a somewhat polite curiosity, idle chit-chat, quickly weaponized into a jolt of energy - one that moves over heads and outstretched hands, as it pushes its way into the crowd.
A crowd, for which “dialled-in”, it will become apparent, is something of an understatement.
Over the past twenty minutes, those near the stage, have left their immediate physical safety to something of a dice roll. It is, after all, the immortal club tradition of small-space navigation - a mosh pit, in its most primal form.
If you didn’t know, you would never guess - the occasional cell phone, the only indicator that this mess of movement is, in fact, a medium-sized sea of concert-goers.
From a lower vantage point, they are a human tidal wave, anticipating an imminent celebration, a series of sandcastles along the shore.
Their screams then, speak (literal) volumes.
Riki has arrived.
The Los Angeles-area native, commands attention in a presence one-upped only by the imposing, multi-coloured silhouette it casts.
Glimpses, caught only through a haze of whiteish-blues. The stage, hers alone. And that wave, crashing up against a sound that feels both present and entirely abstract.
Case in point - as her song, Napoleon carries throughout the club, there is a creeping sense of time-travel induced mania that can’t be shaken: that unmistakable punk energy, fused with ‘80s-inspired neo-synth.
Unmoored and ethereal, yet, equally, utterly personal.
“Thank you Toronto”, she half-whispers, as her set concludes, the final few notes, lingering.
The impression given, in the moment, is that she has more to say, yet she chooses the response instead: her audience, carrying her off, to a thunderous applause.
The state of California as a whole and more specifically, the Bay Area, has long been known for being one of few true epicentres of the punk scene.
From the underground to the mainstream and back again.
It is evolution (and a far-too-broad label) that has and probably always will be, a point of some contention - just who can claim something so vast, so succinctly?
Well, they can’t.
The resulting influence though? It is inescapable.
Yet however you quantify it, from the music to the message, it is fully embodied by Provoker, the night’s headliner, as they take the stage.
The opening notes of It’s in My Head, as expected, bouncing off the walls.
Frontman Christian Crow Petty, who hasn’t even staked an on-stage claim, can’t help himself, as he eyes the still-gathered, impromptu mosh pit below, daring them to separate. They do and Petty, with a vengeance, leaps off the stage, launching into the song.
Or rather, he tries too.
The crowd, now surrounding him, more than happy to sing instead, if somewhat off-tune.
But he can’t help himself. He’s gotta sing it loud.
But yet, in time, he will return to stage, to highlight his bandmates (Jonathon Lopez and Wil Palacios).
In time, the mosh pitters, having been on their feet for nearly three hours, will quietly retreat to chairs set up by the merch table on the far wall (although they would, of course, never admit to it).
In time, after the euphoria of a much-requested encore dies down?
The lights come on, the doors open and there is a sudden urge, considering it is a weeknight, to flush out one’s system with an unhealthy amount of water.
There is the checking and re-checking of public transit schedules, of prices at the merch table, of “well, if you like this” music suggestions shared as the dull of nighttime traffic, gone for so long, returns once more.
There is a sense of gratefulness for the scarf that seemed so out-of-place at first, that is now essential. There is the hope of an eventual return.
A night at The Garrison - over.
But memorable all the same.