X Ambassadors @ Danforth Music Hall - Toronto, ON, Canada - (SUPPORT: Your Smith)

Ithaca, NY-based band and one of the most consistent and popular bands within the last couple years, X Ambassadors, are warming up 2019 with their latest third, studio album entitled ORION. The band is pretty much well-known for such popular songs, such as Jungle, Renegades, and Unsteady, and are known for their battle-cry inspired, emotionally vibrant songs with empowering lyrics and rage-infused melodies and production. They have also collaborated with artists like Eminem, Imagine Dragons, Lil Wayne, Skylar Grey, and Wiz Khalifa. Their latest album only has one feature, which is one of their music contemporary, K. Flay, and it is one of their latest projects that has shown much improvement with music production and different instrumentals while maintaining the same sound and energy from past projects. Since they released ORION, they are doing an album release press tour, in which Toronto made the cut for the five-city based tour, which they played at the city’s Danforth Music Hall.

Before X Ambassadors performed, Minneapolis, MN-based indie-folk singer and lead frontwoman of the collective, Caroline Smith and the Good Night Sleeps, Your Smith (formerly went by Caroline Smith, before project) came to the stage and started off as a one-woman band, with her multitude of instruments and interesting musical styles. She performed some unreleased material for the crowd, and played some cult classics like ‘Wild, Wild Woman’, ‘Debbie’, ‘Ooh Wee’, and ‘The Spot’. One thing that I like about Your Smith is her unique musical style, in which she incorporates a variety of genres, such as bluegrass rock, indie pop, and alternative rock. As well, the singer brings softer vocals that equal her softer melodies and soft beat selections. Your Smith usually plays the guitar and keyboard with great technique and interesting delivery. As well, she also brought a couple of dance moves that seemed to keep the crowd calm. Although her sound wasn’t on a strong high for this show, Your Smith seemed to perform well on her own and the crowd didn’t mind as much on her musical style.

Once Your Smith finished her set, X Ambassadors finally came on stage with an extra two members, specifically for the tour. The lead frontman, Sam Harris, brought unique styles for the first two tracks, HEY CHILD and Jungle, and brought a sense of interesting vocals for his set. Harris can play a variety of instruments very well and tends to execute high energy and high crowd participation when performing. His strong vocals and unique stage movements made the crowd so excited for the show, from beginning to end. Sam even let the touring guitarist have a solo on Jungle. He played some nice tracks from his new album, like BOOM & QUICKSAND, and there is a strong essence of bluegrass, progressive rock, southern rock and much more. What I also enjoyed about their performance was that the bass and metal guitar are strong elements of what made the band’s set so great, as well as the great band synchronization when it comes to performing altogether, and the crowd seemed to enjoy it very much. Finally, the show was much more astonishing with the stage lighting and projector being vivid. With bringing great vision, the lighting made it great to see the band altogether and view their positive energy and emotions. Overall, this could definitely be one of my favourite shows that I’ve experienced for this year and it was something that I can truly capture with much positivity and vibrant energy. From what they performed, it definitely made me more of a fan of their craft and style.

For their encore, they played one track from ORION, which was I DON’T KNOW HOW TO PRAY, and a non-album classic single, which was Joyful. X Ambassadors will still continue on their album release tour dates until July 2nd, 2019 in Chicago, where they are going to perform at the city’s House of Blues. You can keep up with their schedule at https://www.xambassadors.com/tour

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