This article is second in a series covering Exclaim! Magazine’s Class of 2026 concert lineup, which showcases some of the best emerging music Toronto has to offer. To buy tickets to an upcoming Class of 2026 show, click here.

To see Averyn Ngan’s photos of the night two lineup, view our photo gallery here!

Despite its long-standing place in Toronto’s music scene, my first time at the Garrison coincided with my first show of the year, where I was lucky enough to catch the second night introducing Exclaim!’s Class of 2026. Night two showcased Ontario-based groups White Rabbit, Evilin, Mad Iris, and cootie catcher. Each band distinguished themself through their unique spins on familiar genres, captivating a full house of local music fanatics. 

Hailing west from Milton, Ontario, White Rabbit set the night in motion with a soft introduction. The band’s sound, which my gut registered as “sweetheart shoegaze,” remained largely uniform across their setlist, punctuated by gradual shifts in intensity. Unlike their recorded material, lead vocalist Sabrina Perez delivered a clear tonal quality live, lilting through lyrics of nostalgia and exhaustion. Behind her, drummer Ben Miles joined on backing vocals, haunting Perez’s angelic tone with a phenomenal contrast that reframed the harmonies as though they were emerging from an abyss. As they churned through their discography, the band’s core melodies got thicker, taking on grungier guitar patterns and more openly frustrated lyrical turns. White Rabbit’s gradual shift from tenderness to grit left the room drenched in an emotional haze, preparing the crowd for a night of daring, genre-defying performances.

As the newly renamed Evilin arranged their stage, my mind lingered on the possible interpretations of the Kitchener-Waterloo-based group’s new moniker. At first glance, it read like a witty twist on the name Evelyn, with “evil” folded in as a thematic cue. But when they kicked off their set, all ambiguity dissipated as the evil from their name came out to play. Compared to the preceding act, Evilin’s take on shoegaze was tenser, gloomier, and faintly sinister. They established this mood early, leaning on a repeat pedal to stack layers of sound into an electrifyingly antagonistic motif. The members moved with fluid cohesion, exemplified in their third song when guitarists Micaela Loreto and Mitchell Hartung and bassist Jae Holdsworth unintentionally mirrored one another, drifting into a loose triangular formation before drummer Eric Repke. By the end of their set, Evilin had carved out a distinctly menacing atmosphere, positioning themselves as the night’s most visceral act.  

In a scruffy, mid-’90s haze, Mad Iris transformed the deceptively spacious hall into a venue reminiscent of a packed garage. However, that illusion may have been amplified by my rookie mistake of claiming some of the venue’s only seating along the right-side wall for the first half of the show. As the performers entranced the crowd, the spell over my partly exhausted state was cyclically broken by the influx of over-hydrated bodies barging into my knees en route to the restrooms, inconveniently located at the front of the hall directly beside the stage. Once I relocated to the back of the crowd, the remainder of my night panned out enjoyably under Mad Iris’s experimental spell. The band’s spacey punk sound operates through what they call “masterful sloppiness,” a mode of polished dissonance. Frontwomen Kaiya Rosie and Ela Hintasu functioned as counterweights, with Rosie drawing tension through meticulous whines before Hintasu swept in with a hushed alto line. Any remaining sense of control eventually collapsed as Hintasu plunged into the chaos, merging with Rosie in dual screams anchored by Josh Pryce’s taut drumwork and Patrick Muldoon’s effervescent guitar distortion. Closing out their set with Rosie hammering a cowbell, the group’s bite into noise rock enthralled the audience. Even amid the sonic storm, each member cut clearly through the chaos to make for an enthralling spectacle of precision and pandemonium.

Though they were the final act of the night, indietronica quartet cootie catcher came out with enough energy to close on their own terms. After spending nearly half a decade together, the group’s twee sensibility has become the engine behind their musical eclecticism. Their sound blends wacky electronics and playful instrumentals with vulnerable lyrics, charming listeners through refreshing emotional candor. Live, each song unfolded by isolating their synthetic components atop drummer Joshua Shemoun’s frenetic rhythms before converging through the shared vocal-instrumental interplay of guitarist Nolan Jakupovski, synth DJ Sophia Chavez, and keytarist Anita Fowl. An accidental fumble with the mix gear by Chavez only added to the band’s awkward charm. Across the set, cootie catcher preserved the childlike ease of friendship while reflecting the awkwardness of navigating early adulthood. The resulting soundscapes landed somewhere between a jazzy summer day and an Indiana Jones adventure game soundtracked by the B-52s’ “Rock Lobster.” Concluding with the twangy blips of their newest release, “Puzzle Pop,” the band distilled their signature mix of sincerity and whimsy into a sprightly finale, leaving the room aglow with the intimate magic found in shared delight.

Exclaim!’s night two progressed through a loose arc of historically nostalgic genres: White Rabbit eased the room in with tender shoegaze, the sweetness lingering before sinking into the sludge of Evilin’s crushing set. Mad Iris followed by scraping away any genre comfort with jagged vocals and competing instrumentals, until the tension was cut loose in a flash of wide-eyed wonder by cootie catcher. When experienced together, each band reworked retro influences within the respective chaos of their indie genres, giving the lineup cohesion while pointing towards a future for the city’s music scene grounded in authenticity and active creation.