Take Action! 09 concert review

As a single teenage girl, was there a better way to spend Valentine’s Day with five awesome bands on the Take Action Tour? The Valentine show took place on the fourth night of the tour in The Phoenix Concert Theatre in Toronto. Bands performing this year are Cute Is What We Aim For, Meg & Dia, Breathe Carolina, Every Avenue and Anarbor. Toronto, being headliner CIWWAF’s front man Shaant Hacikyan’s “home away from home”, makes everyone even more excited for the show. Thankfully, we didn’t have to wait for a long time because the doors opened at four and the show started before four thirty and ended at nine, leaving plenty of time for people to chill with the bands.

Opening the show was Arizona-based band Anarbor, who played their first Canadian show that night. Kicking off their set was “Love Instead” from their EP “The Natural Way”, stating “there’s only room for love” on Valentine’s Day. The band also played a few new songs for the fans and it is evident that the crowd loves these boys. From lead singer Slade to drummer Slade at the back, the band gave a really energetic performance for Toronto. Also worthy of mention is that Anarbor sounds better live than in studio.

The next band to play was Every Avenue, which I personally was looking forward on seeing and they didn’t disappoint at all! During the setup, the crew was putting up Glamour Kills sponsored Every Avenue backdrops and the crowd was getting on a high upon seeing that sign on stage which led everyone into chanting “Every Avenue”. The band performed favourites from their debut album such as “Think Of You Later”, “Days Of The old”, “Freak Out!” and “Trading Heartbeats”. The audience was amazing by singing along to every song. The fact that the venue has added platforms allowing musicians to come closer to the audience has been a huge plus to the show. From time to time, Josh the guitarist (the tallest dude from the band) would go up there and rock out. Lead singer Dave doesn’t stay in a place for very long either, he kept running around the stage giving out his best. During the last song of the set, Dave went into the audience and a girl was trying to reach him without falling into the crowd but sadly failed. Overall, it was such a lively set and I definitely look forward for the guys to come back on their headlining tour.

With a different sound than the rest of the bands on tour, the boys from Breathe Carolina took the stage in their sport jerseys. Kyle was in charge on screaming duties while David was singing. Because of their funky beats, the crowd got moving very quickly. Both of these boys were really bouncy and all over the stage. Other than songs from their album, the band also performed a cover of Miley Cyrus’s “See You Again” (which is on the new Punk Goes Pop 2 album) and the crowd went crazy and sang along.

On the surface, unlike other female fronted bands, sisters Meg & Dia Frampton don’t have crazy multicoloured hair, facial piercings or tattoos. And they definitely don’t need those to get the crowd. They probably didn’t notice the coincidence, but the first song of the set was “Roses”! Speaking of that, someone brought Dia a rose on stage and Meg was talking about how many Valentines she has (I think). The first three songs were relatively slow songs and they also performed two new songs from their new album which are “Black Wedding” and “What If”. The band also played “Halloween” that they dedicated to a close friend who passed away. After the slow songs came the louder ones like “Monster”. Dia was having so much fun dancing around and doing hair flips, while Meg is usually really concentrated on guitar and back-up vocals.

Finally, it’s the last act of the night and the last time Cute Is What We Aim For played in Toronto was in summer on their headlining tour, as well as opening for Simple Plan’s Canadian tour. Wearing a yellow Carlton Banks’ shirt, front man Shaant Hacikyan took the stage along with guitarist Jeff Czum and bassist Dave Melillo. The band played around a 75-minute set including  plenty of hits from the two albums the band has released. Once again, Shaant is proven to be a very entertaining performer; he kept the audience engaged with his moves and gestures. He also took time and talked between every other song or so; topics ranging from how Toronto is always his favourite city to play, politics (telling us to give it up for President Barack Obama then the crowd proceeds to an uproar) and “Hollywood” is the way he wishes America would be. And due to Shaant’s huge amount of talking, you could hear that his voice was a bit hoarse and cracky but it wasn’t as noticeable. During “Hollywood”, it became evident but Shaant didn’t let it affect his performance; he still gave out his best. The audience were being sweethearts by singing word-for-word to hits like “Practice Makes Perfect”, “Risque” and “Curse of Curves”. Before playing “Lyrical Lies” acoustically with Jeff , Shaant talked about how he started the band with Jeff five years ago and how far they have come. It was my second time seeing CIWWAF and it seems to me that they rearrange “Lyrical Lies” for every tour. It is one of the songs that you should definitely hear performed live. The last song they played –which loyal fans should have seen it coming– was “There’s A Class For This”. They invited Slade from Anarbor to perform it with them and ended the night with that. Overall, it was an awesome concert yet I wish CIWWAF’s set could have been one or two more songs longer. Nonetheless, it was definitely the BEST Valentine’s Day ever.