Matt Andersen caps off sunny Supercrawl Sunday
Choir! Choir! Choir! and Junior Boys help close out 8th annual iteration of the festival
As Matt Andersen's soaring voice reverberated off the windows of James Street North, the eighth annual Supercrawl officially came to a close Sunday evening.
It was a decisive rebound year for the festival, which was marred by torrential rains all last year.
Though the skies did spit at the crowds on Saturday, for the most part the weather played along, with strong crowds downtown all weekend long.
Andersen's set was a strong contender for the best of the festival, with many in attendance marveling at the searing guitar solos he coaxed out of his mustard-coloured Gibson SG.
The New Brunswick native just got back from the U.S., and was more than happy to be in Canada once again.
"Vegas is great, but I am much more built for a Canadian summer," he said to a laugh from the crowd.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the street, local electronic heroes Junior Boys played to a delighted crowd of their own, having dropped their first new album in five years back in February.
Another high note came from Toronto's Choir! Choir! Choir!, who took to the main stage before Andersen's set.
The group started as a weekly drop in singing event in 2011, and has since exploded as a worldwide phenomenon thanks to their massive viral covers of the likes of Prince and David Bowie, wherein the audience is part of the song.
Daveed Goldman and Nobu Adilman led an onstage choir and the amassed audience through some of pop music's biggest songs, like Space Oddity by Bowie, America by Simon and Garfunkel, and Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah.
But it was a sing-along of The Tragically Hip's Ahead by a Century that got the crowd going the most:
.<a href="https://twitter.com/choirchoirchoir">@choirchoirchoir</a> playing some <a href="https://twitter.com/thehipdotcom">@thehipdotcom</a>, backed up by <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/hamont?src=hash">#hamont</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/supercrawl">@supercrawl</a>. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/supercrawl?src=hash">#supercrawl</a> <a href="https://t.co/Lgiq8Anb8Z">pic.twitter.com/Lgiq8Anb8Z</a>
—@AdamCarterCBC
The duo did their homework, too — making sure to bring up the Ticats and Hamilton's housing market.
"Who is paying the Toronto Star to write an article about Hamilton every five minutes?" Adilman joked.
"Seriously — I sleep bought a house. I woke up and I was in the middle of buying one."
Scroll through the live blog below for a recap of all the day's action, and follow CBC Hamilton on Facebook for live videos from stages and exhibitions.
On mobile and can't see the live blog? Check it out here.