A beautiful full moon night was a welcome one on November 4th when Thrice took their Horizons/West Fall Tour to Toronto’s Danforth Music Hall northeast from the downtown core. Promoting their album of the same name, this stop marks about halfway through North America and sees the first of two Canadian stops with the band taking the show to Montreal the next day. A clear counterpart to 2021’s Horizons/East, this also marks the band’s twelfth album in their ongoing 27 year run making this performance one fans could look forward to especially with the size of this prolific band’s discography.
First, the show kicked off with Tulsa’s own Downward, a 4-piece that immersed the early comers with a mid-west emo feel and gentle brand of shoegaze that set the bar for the type of sound and mood everyone could expect for the rest of the show. An excellent appetizer to a night that was sure to take Toronto on an emotional roller coaster before the night was done. Some great visual storytelling also came next from another 4-piece, Modern Color hailing from Los Angeles who had a grungier shoegaze emo sound a la Dinosaur Jr. and even featured vocal screams on tracks like Pale from drummer Vince Nguyen that could challenge the likes of Hawthorne Heights in terms of passion. By this point, it just felt like the night had a nice and gradual progression to it as each opener took the stage and now, it’s safe to say Toronto was ready to take the next step.
Thrice walked onto the stage as complete silhouettes after it was blasted with smoke and blue light. Rightfully so as the set started with a recording of Dusk that really added to the atmosphere and set the table with its ambient sounds for the strong yet stirring intro of Blackout – a calm before the storm that kicked the strobing of the pillars of light that surrounded the band off as soon as the first drop of the track hit. It wasn’t the most complex stage setup but the blinding lights were more than enough to entertain this Tuesday crowd and this music more than spoke for itself. Sparking off the set with the first track of the Horizons/West album felt right which made Gnash feel even more natural as a follow-up and made The Artist in the Ambulance as the third track of the set, one of the band’s most beloved work, hit like an uppercut for long time fans. A strong one-two punch to start a really interesting set.
With the band’s lifetime being longer than most, it made the 20+ song performance a rewarding one that seemed to hit all the right notes while putting a spotlight on the new album after only being out for about a month at that point. To expand on this, the set seemed to focus more on themes around the span of their work as a throughline versus any chronological order which makes it feel more curated with care for the fans and cohesive as a show. From empowering tracks energized with topics of resilience like Hurricane and Holding On, peppered with sounds from the band’s exploratory Alchemy Index and Vheissu-eras of work with deeper cuts like Crooked Shadows, as well post-hiatus work with big modern hits like Black Honey off their 2016 album To Be Everywhere Is to Be Nowhere, it was a fulfilling journey through the band’s evolution as a post-hardcore staple in people’s playlists for so long. Satisfyingly so, Thrice gave their farewells to Toronto and their set with the classic showstopper Deadbolt. The merch table in the venue lobby had a box that said “They’ll play Deadbolt if you tip me” so it’s not hard to see that though the range of the set proves that they aren’t defined by it, the band understand where they started.
To sum it up, the audience got to explore the emotional ups and downs of Thrice’s catalogue with heavy hitters mixed with slower sombre tunes that all had the band’s DNA all over it. A masterclass in proving they can be both the loudest and quietest band in the room at the flick of a switch. An absolute adventure overall for diehard fans and new listeners alike – both of which likely had a better weekday night than most in Toronto because of it all.