Arts & Entertainment, The Muse, Weeklies

Crystal Castles outshines The House of Blues

With a giant placard of a hand surrounded by the words “Who do you love?” hanging high above the stage at The House of Blues Saturday night, the audience made their answer very clear. They loved Crystal Castles.

It was a packed house. People on the second level were sitting on the floor just to get a better view of Toronto natives Alice Glass and Ethan Kath, while people on the first floor were struggling to determine whether the sweat on their skin was their own.

Glass and Kath gave the audience just what they wanted, starting the show as high tempo as possible. With an explosion of intense strobes, Glass quickly found her way to the audience. On multiple occasions she floated atop the glossy hundreds as Kath discreetly kept order behind his synth kit. To the dismay of the crewmember in charge of keeping track of Glass’s microphone, she fell onto the canopy of sweaty palms at least a dozen times.

Crystal Castles played an hour-long set that included new songs and old. The set began with “Empathy,” a new song from their upcoming album, (III), and Glass immediately commandeered center stage with the angst of a troubled teen as the cover art for their new album loomed from the shadows of the stage’s backdrop.

When Glass wasn’t crowd surfing she was taking swigs of Jack Daniel’s and spewing it into the audience, scraping the microphone against the stage and dancing upon the kit’s bass drum. The two put on a show that resembled that of one that should have been taking place at 2 a.m. at a summer music festival not at 8:30 p.m.

Glow sticks flew through the air and the security guards spent so much time scooping up crowd surfers that I was surprised there was anyone left by the end of the show. The light set up, six LED bars angled in towards the duo, gave a show similar to an old arcade game or pinball machine.

I was disappointed with the House of Blues, however. Expecting the show to go late into the night, I was shocked when the house lights came up at 9:30 p.m. and even more shocked to find out the venue was hosting another concert immediately following Crystal Castles. I felt cheated by the HOB that they would double book the venue when hosting a successful band with fame comparable to Justice and Animal Collective.

I could see the band’s own frustration. They walked offstage twice only to come back on within one minute, as if playing to the theatricality of an encore but not having the desire to perform one. The band began to play “Vanished,” their most famous song, then mashed it with “Untrust Us,” but never followed through on either song. I could not tell if this was creative misinterpretation on my part or the band’s way of saying “F*** you” to the venue.

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