Band of Horses @ Toronto Island, June 19th

Band of Horses, The Alt-Country rock band based out of Seattle has been having a pretty busy year, with their new album, Infinite Arms, just dropped in stores in May. Not to mention that they supported Pearl Jam on their US tour a couple of months back. Now they're still touring all over, performing at a handful of festivals this summer, including the Reading and Leeds Festival in England, and the Summersonic Festival in Japan.

They just played the big Toronto Island Concert on Saturday, which also featured Broken Social Scene, and a recently reunited Pavement. Their slot was right before BSS, and they had a nice 10,000 people strong audience. They rolled through a 14 song set which contained just about a 3rd of each of their 3 albums. It was great seeing how much fun the band was having. Even their roadies were singing along. They looked just like 5 guys having the time of their lives, doing what they love to do. They faced the sun with smiling faces spreading their joy among the crowd.

The band's singer and core-songwriter Ben Bridwell spoke graciously to the crowd, introducing all of the band members, and even one of the roadies. For one of the songs he introduced the key player Ryan Monroe, and said "Ryan's gonna sing this sing he wrote for our new album. Take it away Ryan!" You can tell how big a difference it makes on the band from how strong and modest their leader is, just like Ben. Band of Horses is an amazing rock band, and this performance has gotten me stuck on them. If for some reason you haven't heard any of their songs yet (even if you don't think you have, you probably have), go check out their myspace, or search'm up on youtube.



Here's a video from the show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvBisUuWFVI&feature=related



and here's the set list:

http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/band-of-horses/2010/toronto-island-park-toronto-on-canada-13d415ad.html