By Jack Betz

There was a slew of great shows this past weekend but with my rigorous finals schedule I couldn’t get to all the ones I wanted to see. Yet even with so much going on, the three gigs I found myself at this week were pretty sweet and included the quiet, ambient, band, Eluvium; local, punk-rocker, Keno Sims; and Canadian, electronic, artist, Caribou.

While Caribou was one of the most immersive and mind-blowing shows I’ve seen in a long time I was also treated to an excellent performance from local musician, Keno Sims, playing material from his latest EP “What if harm’s way was headed your way” at Cactus Records, on Saturday afternoon. For the record, that’s just about one of the most bad ass sounding titles a musician could possibly come up with for their debut EP and the raw, hard-edged, music lives up to the name. I can’t explain it exactly but on his latest EP, Sims sounds like a mix between TV on the Radio and Bad Brains which is not at all a bad sound. The live performance suffered a little bit since Sims was hoarse  that day (which he even admitted to us) but even despite that, the set was still very good.

I won’t even try to explain how excellent Caribou is live but will just say that the band performed mostly material from Caribou’s latest album, Swim, which has a bit more of an electronic/trance type feel to it than past offerings like Andorra, from 2024. One of the highlights of the show, besides all the great new material, was their performance of “Melody Day” off of Andorra: it was perfect. Billowing plumes of pot smoke enveloped the crowd as we all danced and swayed to the hypnotizing music of Daniel Snaith and gazed upon the shifting, kaleidoscopic patterns, being projected onto the backdrop behind the stage. It was a truly amazing time.