Last week we shared a list of 5 must-see tours coming through North America this month, and including the Turnstile Love Connection Tour was a no-brainer. After attending the Toronto date on Tuesday, I can say without a doubt that the show exceeded all expectations despite the bar being set so high already.

For over a year now, there has been a significant amount of discussion in the hardcore world surrounding the level of success that Turnstile have achieved with their chameleonic 2021 record GLOW ON. They have hit hallmarks of mainstream success that the vast majority of punk acts can only ever dream of, with widespread critical acclaim, a spot at Coachella, and multiple talk show host TV show appearances.

This band comes from a world of underground music created and shared with a DIY ethos, most often heard in venues with no barricade and little separation between artists and fans in the scene. So many have questioned what the rise of Turnstile means for hardcore, and whether this could lead to big things for a genre where only a select few acts can actually support themselves playing this music for a living. It’s undeniable that hardcore festivals like Sound and Fury in LA and Outbreak Fest in the UK have been massive this year, with Turnstile themselves headlining one night of the latter. However, it might be a while before we can fully appreciate whether hardcore will receive any sustainable boom due to The Turnstile Effect. For anyone invested in the hardcore scene, there is much to discuss and consider with this band at this moment, but none of that was on our minds when they started to play at History in Toronto – it was all about the TLC.

In addition to seeing the headliners, attendees of this tour are treated to an eclectic lineup of supporting acts. While the first (fully sold out!) North American TLC tour earlier this year featured acts more directly related to Turnstile, like hardcore bands Ceremony and Ekulu and 2010s emo heroes Citizen, the openers for most of the dates for this fall TLC tour are Snail Mail and JPEGMAFIA (though anyone seeing November dates should check who their “special guest” will be in place of Peggy). Having just a casual familiarity with both artists prior to the show, I really enjoyed Snail Mail’s heartfelt indie rock and JPEGMAFIA’s chaotic experimental hip-hop, and a constituency of Peggy’s cult following definitely made it out to the show because a portion of the audience up front went wild during his set.

As I mentioned above, it was tough to be anything but present once Turnstile took the stage. It didn’t matter who in that audience was a lifelong hardcore kid, or a new Turnstile fan who has never heard another hardcore record in their life, or someone in between. It didn’t matter whether anyone ever said Turnstile was the last bastion of hardcore or the very thing that will destroy it (Re: the ever-present accusations of “selling out” when a punk band achieves any level of success). Once we were all singing along and dancing (and crowd surfing!) to “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)” right before the band came on, all that mattered was the experience we were about to have enjoying some of the most lively, bright, and fun hardcore punk ever written.  

Turnstile wasted absolutely no time by starting the set with “HOLIDAY”, one of GLOW ON’s biggest hits and a song that can generate so much hype in you when you listen to it by yourself in your room, let alone in a crowd of over 2000 people. The set was mostly made up of songs from that latest record, plus a handful of the bigger tracks from their previous full-length Time & Space, one song from the album before that, and one from their debut release Pressure To Succeed. Frontman Brendan Yates was captivating and dynamic through the whole show and the entire band was incredibly tight, and they had this crowd losing their minds from start to finish. It was pretty mesmerizing to witness the same physical and emotional energy that you’d expect out of the most loyal fans at a typical hardcore band’s intimate shows, except this time extended across an audience of that size. Seeing Turnstile live at this moment, when they are big enough to electrify a room that is double the capacity of the venue they played in the same city just 5 months ago, knowing they could be bound for so much more, is remarkable. Thank you to Turnstile for this bucket-list level experience and to Live Nation for hooking us up with our tickets!