The hideaway

The first drop of rain hits the ground just before sunset. The sky’s overcast clouds are incessant; no one notices the light die. Smog covers the city. Suddenly it’s dark, though it feels like mid afternoon. Advertisements glow on pedestrian faces.

Several hundred people are standing in the centre of the madness. All are dripping wet. The sea of umbrellas is eclectic. Flex fleece hoods stick to the edges of young, pretty faces. Owen Pallett stands in front of his followers, bone dry. Eight musicians surround him, safe under the outdoor stage roof. Drums, guitar, saxophone, flute, keyboard, bass, trumpet, and violin fill the air of Dundas Square, courtesy of Pallett and the boys and girls in Toronto indie rock outfit Do Make Say Think. It’s 9:30 on a Thursday night and the temporarily formed collective is providing the soundtrack to the silent German cult classic, Tales of the Uncanny.

This is horror in its best setting: evening rain. Apocalyptic ads run above director Richard Oswald’s creepy black and white cuts. And ever so slightly beneath the music is the sound of another song, some disposable top 40-rock tune, playing at the Hard Rock Café on the corner. If God has any sense of irony, this is how the world will end.

Tonight’s show is a joint effort between Luminato and NXNE, but nothing exciting happens for another two hours. After the show, a small portion of the crowd’s indie insiders and Pallett’s personal friends walk thirty steps north of the square to the Imperial Pub. An all but forgotten dive bar, The Imperial has a back room performance space so small it would be hard pressed to host a Bar Mitzvah. This isn’t the type of place featured in the glossy Luminato brochure, and tonight’s event hasn’t been heavily promoted, to say the least.

The regulars look bewildered and confused by the grimy plaid clad twenty-somethings crowding the bar. The bartenders are racing around the room trying to keep up. By 11:30 it takes ten minutes to even order a drink. The backroom is at full capacity and a small crowd is lingering by the entrance, hoping to get in.

Finally, Pallett appears. He hugs the woman working at the door, then does his round of hellos. This is obviously a friends and family sort-of event. A quiet Brett Canning slips through the door and heads to the bar for a beer. When Pallett is finally introduced to the hungry crowd, it’s by his full name, not his famous moniker, Final Fantasy.

His hair is pushed back with an awkward ease and a black Van Halen shirt hugs his thin frame. He sits down at a white piano. Tonight, there will be no violin. For just thirty minutes, Pallett turns the Imperial into a piano bar. He mixes covers with Final Fantasy favourites, and takes requests from the audience.

The crowd shouts for Pokerface, Tori Amos, Girlfriend in a coma, and acoustic Spinal Tap. “Tori Amos?!” Pallett laughs. “I’ve never played that on piano,” he says, before admitting he can go over the entire catalogue in his head. “I was a teenage fag in the ninties,” he says. Justified, completely.

The set is short and the crowd is transfixed the entire time. Finally he announces his final song, saying “Oh man, I’ve never played this song like this,” before striking the opening notes to This Lamb Sells Condos, causing smiles to crack as the crowd beings to bob heads in unison with the familiar chords. Just a few blocks south of Church and Wellesley, the gentrification anthem rings all too true.

Like a safety blanket covering the crowd, a piano poem fills the tiny room:

There's a merchant in our midst and with a barrel fist

He's coloured every surface, he's slapped up a portrait

And yes, it is his own! He's gonna take your home!

Have you seen our visitor? Look! Over the treetops!

Newly conjured erections are making him a killing

And Richmond St. is illing, so the graduates are willing

To buy in to the pillage, now there is no hope for the village

And for just one minute, before walking back through the door into always-lit Luminato headquarters of Dundas Square, Toronto feels like the city he wants it to be, again.