As Living In Jungles rolls from a drum-and-bass feel into straight bob-your-head reggae vibe, the crowd gets moving. Eon’s bumpin’ his head, Sekou is keeping the beat, and Jay is slapping off-beats while snapping on his echo pedal with his right foot. As the song comes to its close, the boys switch into a cover of The Clash’s Guns of Brixton, a tribute to the punky white-boy reggae that influenced many. It was just another of those holy-crap-did-that-just-happen moments that come when seeing Bedouin Soundclash live.
What I’ve always found compelling about the Toronto-based trio is that they’ve taken a predominantly underground genre like ska and brought it to Canadian alternative rock and pop radio, but without watering down the conventions of the genre. The fat bass lines are there, the up-strummed guitar “skank” is intact and cross-stick one-drop drumming pushes the songs. Throw in a bit of atmospheric rock and you’ve got what makes Bedouin Soundclash great.
Sunshine-Coast-born and Victoria-based Mindil Beach Markets opened the show. Fresh off of an American tour and a side-stage set at Rifflandia, the local boys warmed up the early crowd (the show went from 7:00-9:45) with their fusion of pounding hard rock, reggae, and hip-hop. After a brief intermission, BSC took the stage.
The fedora-clad band kicked things off with Mountain Top, the lead single off of last year’s Light the Horizon, their fourth album overall and first released on their own label, Pirate’s Blend. The ska-rocker is one of their more up-beat songs. Combined with the spectacular light show of Club 9one9, it provided the crowd with a spike of energy that set the tone for the rest of gig. The set list covered an equal amount of songs from each of their last three releases, seamlessly shooting from song to song like an extended Greatest Hits compilation.
The most surprising part of the show had to have been when drummer Sekou Lemumba busted out a seemingly endless drum solo only three songs into the set. Original drummer Pat Pengelly left in 2009 to go to law school, leaving the band to recruit the versatile Lumumba. The dude can beat the hell out of those drums. The solo went from a break-beat feel into chaotic display of virtuosity that was met with excited screeches from the crowd. As he cooled down, bassist Eon Sinclair and frontman Jay Malinowski reclaimed their positions on the stage, and they slipped back into a tropical tune as if nothing happened.
Some other highlights included Until We Burn in the Sun, another ska/rock blend, 12:59 Lullaby, a spacey ballad that seemingly every girl in the crowd knew the words to, and When The Night Feels My Song, the soft-reggae sing-along hit that made them famous. They closed the early gig with Nothing To Say, a groover full of catchy woah-ohs that got everyone involved. After a drawn-out outro, Lumumba unscrewed his largest cymbal and tossed it in the air. As the metallic disc struck the front of the stage with a resounding crash, Jay popped a “thank you” into the mic and they left the stage.
I was out on to Douglas Street before it was even 10 pm wondering once again, holy crap, did that just happen?