GALLERY: THRICE
TORONTO, ON | JUNE 4, 2023 | BY FABIANA MOREIRA
Marking the 20th anniversary of their third record, “The Artist in the Ambulance”, THRICE set out on a tour celebrating this milestone, making a stop at Toronto’s Danforth Music Hall along the way. Most of the dates, including this particular one, sold out nearly immediately after tickets went on sale months ago, even having to upgrade the venue so that enough fans could be accommodated.
As the namesake for the tour goes, the band went all-in and performed the entire record front to back, with hardly any pauses in between for conversation. The crowd didn’t seem to mind this at all as they belted away along with each song, and many really knew the lyrics as if they had the album booklet in front of them to read off of. For myself included in attendance, this record was quite influential, and is often cited as essential for an introduction into post-hardcore. The band also still features the original lineup of members, as has been standard from their first inception.
Frontman Dustin Kensrue stepped away from the microphone a few times in order to let the crowd chime in, notably during the ending of “Stare at the Sun”, which felt pretty powerful to be part of. Once the band finished playing through the record, they quickly went into a second setlist featuring tracks from the rest of their discography, also touching on brand new material. For their encore, they opened with a cover of The Beatles’ “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”, done of course in their own style, finishing with “The Long Defeat”.
The band is currently making their way through the west, with most stops along the coast, and will also be bringing this anniversary tour all the way out to Australia in September. In addition, they are making a stop at the When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas this fall.
