Overall Rating 4/5
On a rainy September night in Toronto, Sunroom took a stab at reinventing the ‘60s surfer sound in a wave of playful, intricate, fun-loving rock and roll.
The Axis Club sits nestled in the heart of Toronto; a small hall still known by many locals as the Mod Club. Opening its doors at 7 p.m to a small but bustling crowd of no more than 40 people, the space fills slowly, the glowing faces of popular musicians like David Bowie and The Beatles bearing down on those who enter.
The smell of marijuana lingers in the air. A group of people quickly stub out the joint they were passing around when the door opened and filter in. Many in the crowd, who feel inappropriately dressed for the occasion in black leather pants and mesh shirts, mingle around a merchandise table manned by a guy named Kaden.
We certainly aren’t in Kansas anymore. And by Kansas, I mean a typical club in Toronto on a Friday night.
Kaden stands in front of a wall of red and white shirts, all priced egregiously, with a camera hanging from his neck. His voice drawls a little when you talk to him, pulling with a familiar southern Californian accent. He is a friend of the band, all of whom hail from sunny San Diego.
Anyone who has seen Sun Room play before knows Kaden. He’s always somewhere filming something, but not right now. His current mission? Manually filling in the information from the back of some girl’s credit card into his iPad. It appears they have yet to figure out how to use the Square system in Canada. This is a reoccurring problem.
The people milling around the bar purchase drinks for more than they’d be willing to spend on half a bag of groceries. The overwhelmingly female crowd all seem to be in their 20s. People pass up and down a set of stairs that take you down to a bathroom that feels like it exists in a whole other world.
The security guard who mans the stairs stands with arms crossed in front of the flight that heads upwards toward the green room, and as the clock ticks closer to 8 p.m, he props the door shut for the opener to force their way on stage; and they do.
Six people from London form a band called Sports Team, headed by an eccentric guy named Alex who, after taking one last sip of his beer, hands it to a girl in the first row for safekeeping. While Alex takes up a good deal of the stage with flailing limbs and sweaty arm pumping, the interesting stuff is taking place behind him.
A former CNN sportswriter, Henry Young, lingers quietly near the drum set. For being the lead guitarist, Young is easy to lose in the opening chaos, but this changes as soon as he starts to play. Working naturally with the rest of the musicians, Young eats up guitar riffs as his fingers fly across strings expertly. He communicates telepathically with the rest of the band, watching them intently as if he has forgotten completely that the audience exists at all. It’s easy to tell that he’s in it for the music. He doesn’t seem to care about anyone other than the five other people on the stage.
Their set, a mixed bag of alternative rock and British Invasion counterculture, flies by faster than anyone expects. This isn’t usually the case for opening bands, whose sets always feel two songs too long. Sports Team exits the stage and promptly leaves the venue in jackets and hats, presumably to grab another pint at a bar down the street.
The half-an-hour that it takes to set up for Sun Room feels like an eternity. People are pleasantly drunk now and have forgotten the minutia of what it means to be a good concertgoer. Elbows fly as people stand their ground against pushers trying to make it to the front of the crowd. It’s one of those things you learn early on when you go to concerts like this: an elbow can be your greatest weapon.
The bouncer shuts the door a second time, the pre-show playlist quiets and the loudest roar of applause a 600-person crowd can muster follows. Sun Room sweeps the stage in beaten-up Converse, vintage Levi’s and collared shirts tucked under thrifted sweaters. Lulling the crowd with the deep opening baseline of “Just Yesterday,” Max Pinamonti kickstarts the show. Just like that, any angst that had fermented before the set melts into the summer heat Sun Room has brought with them straight from sunny California.
The speakers are cranked so loud that anyone who had a claim to perfect hearing before the show might want to get their ears checked again. Surfing seamlessly between classic tracks like “Crashed My Bike” and “Sunset Garage” as well as a host of unreleased songs from their upcoming album, lead singer Luke Asgian keeps the crowd moving relentlessly.
Unlike the lead singer of Sports Team, Asgian moves only when needed, hyper-fixated on the strings dancing beneath his fingertips. He smiles briefly at the crowd as they groove below him, but his concentration is evident, especially when they play the new material.
While all good fun, the energy dies when they play another unreleased track. People want to dance and sing. Instead, they just stand and listen. While their entire released discography wouldn’t have even been enough to fill an hour of playing, it is obvious that Sun Room did themselves a slight disservice when choosing their setlist.
Following a stint where bassist Pinamonti recited the alphabet backwards, the band said their good nights and took off, flying back up the stairs in a whirl of colourful jackets and blue denim. Friends share glances between one another as the previously transfixed audience erupts into typical after-show chaos.
The crowd departs as they came in, slowly and in a haze. People haphazardly spill out onto the street and pile into Ubers, t-shirts tucked under their arms and smiles on their faces.
While the night of September 28th was cold and damp, the world inside the Axis Club was entirely sunny – so much so that no one even seemed to notice the rain on the street.