Coca-Collier
What is it about Jacob Collier that polarizes? Those irritated by the 29-year-old multi-instrumentalist appear to scorn his lack of restraint, his insistence on dumping hundreds of ingredients into every dish, while his disciples frame that same quality as a chance to experience the grand sweep of a prodigious imagination. That Collier will one day mellow seems a sure thing; I look forward to how his music might sound in a couple decades. But I don’t think he ought to rush the process of maturation. If he strips back his craft too soon, we might lose the best bits.
Collier’s April 22 concert at the not-quite-sold-out Coca-Cola Coliseum, night one of his new world tour, was a puzzling experience, one I’m still struggling to untangle. An undeniable thorn was the venue, a vast hockey arena with sweat-streaked grey walls — a grungy battleground fit for The Tragically Hip, not a dorky British YouTube phenom infatuated with outré harmonies. On Instagram, Collier called the gig his “first headline arena show ever,” which adds up: you can tell he’s still working out how to commandeer a crowd of this size. Lots of shouting “Toronto!” in the middle of songs and awaiting a response. (For contrast, the electric energy of his intimate 2019 show at The Opera House is available to experience online.)
The concert began with six tunes from Djesse Vol. 4, most of which Collier had never before performed live. The first two (“100,000 Voices” and “WELLLL”) crushed forward like tsunamis of sound. The following four, poppier selections (“She Put Sunshine,” “Little Blue,” “Wherever I Go,” and “Cinnamon Crush”) prioritizing melody, revealed balance issues that Collier’s team gradually fixed. It took until the seventh song, “Time Alone With You,” that funky Djesse Vol. 3 hit, for the show to fully lock in.
Collier's performance of “The Sun Is In Your Eyes” epitomized his proclivity for excess. The version of the song on streaming services presents Collier at his most bare. It’s a voice memo of the musician alone with a guitar: a serious departure for someone known to build Logic sessions with countless tracks. Being one of the setlist’s few slower selections, I expected Collier to reproduce the recording’s quiet vibe. And when he began, perched at the stage’s lip with his acoustic, it seemed he would. But as the song went on, it transformed into a cavalcade of riffs, performed fortissimo. You could almost see the melodic ideas levitating in front of Collier’s eyes, taunting him into splattering his canvas with extra notes.
Oddest of all was the encore. Lights flashed, backup singer Alita Moses asked if we were “ready to party,” and Kimbra, the opener, performed a large portion of her and Collier’s song “In My Bones” before being joined by the man himself. And then the luminescent set, a forest of glowing trees with a neon logo in the centre, strobed for what felt like ages. It was a glorious, maximalist, moment, but completely out of joint with the rest of the evening in terms of tone. And though to end there would have been strange, neither did I expect there to be four more songs, including two covers (“Somebody to Love” and “Moon River”). Excessive indeed.