ear, courtesy of Not Dead Yet.

Being at the ear show at East End United Church last Wednesday, September 23rd, was like being at Jesus’s Last Supper. Something new was being inaugurated. We were going there to give ear a sacrifice and that sacrifice was self-consciousness: time to forgive our evils through dance. Through mosh. Through the classic ear “tweak”. This time, the Last Supper was the First Supper. A cyber supper. No betrayal, only communion. Everyone was excited to see the future of indietronica and so instead of robes like the disciples, we wore hole-filled t-shirts and wigs of pink bobs. 

Ear were intentional with their venue choice in a way that I have never seen before. As has been highly observable over Instagram, their entire Rumspringa tour, in support of their recently released and shrewdly titled album Rumspringa (which is a coming-of-age ritual for Amish youth, where they get to do whatever they want before they decide if they want to commit themselves to the church), has been hosted in “unconventional venues.” They’ve only chosen places like churches, farms, and rooftops to play in as opposed to flashy, high-tech spaces. Though to me, a church basement like East End United feels highly conventional for the type of show and atmosphere that ear themselves want to have, just not for the show that is expected of them. I believe the church setting perfectly aligns with ear’s image of who they consider themselves to be. From the scene that they set last Wednesday, I think the band just wants to be kids, playing in places where a lot of young people have had their first musical experiences, doing whatever they want until they decide to commit themselves to the Amish church or not, figuratively of course. The setup was so familiar— protected gym floor to avoid scuffs, nondescript sports banners behind the little stage— and it reminded me of every school talent show I attended between the ages of six and fifteen. Yaelle Avtan and Jonah Paz’s manic-pixie haircuts and matching cut-up t-shirts (Paz’s read “Music Saves Lives”) took me back to the person I wanted to be when doing talent shows as a kid. When they emerged quietly and slightly clumsily— perhaps just youthfully— onto the stage, the venue choice suddenly made complete sense.

Starting out was their opener, wackoes. Wackoes was most definitely awkward, but endearingly so. Wackoes was a one-man act on stage with a laptop, moving around fervently to his beats. What I remember the most was him beginning a song by asking the crowd if “anybody remembered what it was like to kiss a girl and feel the taste of metal in their mouth.” Everyone appeared a bit confused by this. He got a couple laughs. I guess he was trying to do his own throwback to the throes of middle school. There was a sweet moment where he asked if it was anyone in the crowd’s birthday. Two people said yes, and he connected them together. But I think at least one of them was lying. Wackoes, whose music I would describe as lo-fi electronic indie that uses a lot of playful samples, quite similar to ear, had a couple of songs where the beat really built up throughout the track, exciting the audience, but for the most part it felt like the same looped, 8-bit video game-like sounds in the background that he would sing over. Even through these similar beats, his music production created a pretty full sound. However, the audience was totally unengaged. At one point, wackoes asked the crowd to mosh, and nobody did. It felt like we were back in gym class, but not in a sweet, reliving-the-memories way, more like in a confused-and-awkwardly-standing-around way. A very pubescent vibe for a moment or two, one might say. 

It was all okay, though, because after wackoes finished, the crowd started to get more comfortable. Everyone started chatting and grooving to the ‘90s New York hip-hop playing loudly in the background in between sets for half an hour until ear went on, who really got everyone in the mood to dance. During this interlude, most people lined up for ear merch. The line was ten times longer than the pizza lunch line back in second grade, but the shirts they were selling were handmade and beautiful. I noticed that they had lots of friends helping them out, doing merch, and hanging out. Everyone seemed really proud. I had forgotten how young they were.

When ear stepped onto the stage, with nothing but a laptop and themselves, they immediately felt like characters from your favourite 2000s cartoon. Everyone was enthralled. They faced some technical difficulties at the beginning, but somebody from the crowd came in clutch by handing them a USB-C cable. We all cheered for her, and Avtan said she’d get the girl a t-shirt to thank her after the show. They plugged in the new cable, and started their set with a flurry of songs from the new album. Ear rocked hysterically back and forth throughout the whole set, thrashing as if they were having a musical exorcism. They like to call their dance moves “tweaking,” or so I’ve heard. This “tweaking” was a really eye-catching and fun way to engage the audience with the music, given that they were not playing instruments onstage, or even messing with the beats at all. Though they were singing, the mic tracks seemed to be layered over the original recordings, and it was unclear if their mics were always on. It felt like they could have been playing Spotify tracks and singing on top of them, and we wouldn’t necessarily know. It would have been cool to see them try to build up their songs in a different way than on the recorded versions with a looper or sampler, but their goal of appearing as kids having fun on their personal Rumspringa playing their widely loved songs for other kids wasn’t impacted by these choices. 

ear pictured going full tweak mode.

Because of how much they thrashed around, ear’s set came across almost like a performance art piece instead of a concert. I know that the two members met in visual art school, and it feels like they couldn’t help but make ties to the history of video art and sound art through their performance. Their use of appropriated material in their songs feels like it’s in the same realm as visual-turned-sound artists who came before them, like the artists of the Scratch Video Collective, or Mauricio Kagel. I am inclined to believe that they are knowledgeable of the different worlds they are combining through their work. 

At the beginning of their set, I was worried that too many people had just come for the vibe, and that they were just going to awkwardly stand all night. Luckily, I was proven wrong! There were lots of phones, which was to be expected, but there was also lots of moshing. The moshing/phone-in-the-air combo was frankly impressive. Regardless, you could palpably feel everyone feeling each other’s joy in the music. There was a particularly special moment where Avtan called all the girls to the front so they could mosh and watch the performance without getting trampled.

Ear’s songs are incredibly complex sample-wise, which became especially apparent after hearing their sounds bounce from speaker to speaker throughout the church basement. Their lyrics seem to really stick with people; I saw a lot of star-struck alternative boys mouthing every word. A lot of the guys I knew at the show said Rumspringa was their favourite album of all time. Unrelatedly, a lot of guys I knew at the show were on a lot of psychedelics.

Ear had such a great sense of humour. At one point, Avtan pointed out that it was really, really hot, and said we could all just drip our sweat on each other to cool off. Everyone reacted as though this was a brilliant solution we had just not thought of yet.

About halfway through their set, Avtan and Paz left the stage and jumped into the audience to dance with everyone, inspired by wackoes who did this as well (“Charlie looked like he was having so much fun and we were jealous,” Avtan explained). When we were all dancing together, it really felt like ear had put a spell on us. Everybody was thrashing around trying to get as close to ear as possible, their faces plastered with some of the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen at an electronic show. Ear ended their scheduled set with “Real Life” off their debut album, before an encore of “Ne plus ultra.” 

They were so grateful after their set, thanking the audience about a hundred times. We were really feeling ourselves because of how much they seemed to love us, not to mention how much they seemed to love Canada. As they were walking offstage, to ear’s confusion and amusement, the whole audience started singing “O Canada.” We sang the entire anthem and then erupted in cheers. For what, I’m not sure—half for ear, half for ourselves, maybe an additional half for our beautiful city.

On this blessed evening last week, the East End United Church transformed Toronto into an Amish Country-Bushwick hybrid. Dare I say like a Gen-Z Lena Dunham’s wet dream version of Toronto. The vibe felt a little extra twee, a little extra rose-coloured, but I think everyone—maybe because we were in a church—came ready to sacrifice bad vibes for this First Indietronica Supper. At the very least, ear let us put those underground-tough-guy guards down and forced us all to have a good time. They knew what our generation was missing—some sort of fantasy-based playful musical attitude I can’t quite put my finger on— and delivered this magical hour of electronic music that made people want to dance, talk to each other, and perhaps smoke a bit too. Maybe ear’s shows are the truest Rumspringa experience of them all.

(Not sponsored by the Amish church.)