It’s been a minute since Arkells last rolled through Chicago, likely because the band members have been busy hitting career milestones in their native Canada, from creating and hosting “The Rally,” Hamilton’s biggest outdoor show, to winning multiple Juno Awards, including a record six wins for “Group of the Year.” Yet the band, composed of lead vocalist Max Kerman, bassist Nick Dika, guitarist Mike DeAngelis, keyboardist Anthony Carone, and drummer Tim Oxford, has always had a soft spot for the Great Lakes, even naming its 2011 studio album “Michigan Left.”
Kerman proclaimed at the show that Chicago is one of his two favorite cities, the other being Barcelona. It was unclear whether or not this was a joke, as two fans from Toronto protested, “What?! What about Hamilton?” It soon became clear that the announcement was a setup to introduce “Imagine Barcelona,” a song from the band’s brand new release Between Us.
“I’ve only been to Barcelona once,” Kerman said, before adding that, as he was Googling tourist attractions and things to do in Barcelona, he realized that locals aren’t too crazy about the tourists. “So as a responsible songwriter, I had to address the subject,” he said. “All the locals in Barcelona / Telling all the tourists that you gotta head home,” Kerman crooned while playing the acoustic guitar. “But you and me are staying ’cause we got a little spot.”
Nearly half of the songs on the night’s setlist were new, but the evening felt larger than just a run-of-the-mill stop on an album release tour; it was more like a celebration. Before the band took the stage, Playbill-style pamphlets with the album’s artwork on the cover, playfully fictionalized band bios, and a “field report” card for fans to fill out were passed out. “Welcome to the Between Us Tour,” the first page read. “We wanted to play venues where we’d get that kinetic energy bouncing around—bodies packed together with no separation between the band and the stage. With a new record, we get to wipe the slate clean.”
This was successfully achieved at Bottom Lounge, where the barricade was a mere five feet from the stage. But whether Arkells is playing a club venue or headlining an arena, it has a way of making the audience feel like the unofficial sixth member of the band. Perhaps it’s the way Kerman speaks to the crowd as if addressing old friends or the whimsical details woven into the show. Other than the Playbill, Kerman also handed out prop Arkells $10 bills with the album artwork and lyrics from the band’s song “Money.” “I have money for everyone here tonight,” Kerman exclaimed as he pulled a stack from his shirt’s front pocket. These little details made the crowd feel like they were in on the fun.
At its core, the magic of the performance comes from the communal feel of Arkells’s songs. It’s music you want to sing with friends on summer drives with the windows down, or the songs you sing among the last people left at the end of a party. Yet the band also shines at the opposite end of that spectrum, where the energy pulls back into softer, more intimate songs. This was perhaps best demonstrated by “And Then Some,” which Kerman introduced by saying, “This song was never a single,” before adding that people often reach out to share that they used it as their wedding song. “Did anyone dance to this song at their wedding?” he asked. A few hands went up, and Kerman invited the couples to the front to dance to it again while the crowd shone their phone flashlights, casting a soft glow around the couples.
Another fan favorite in the set was the highly acclaimed single “Leather Jacket,” which is certified double platinum in Canada, selling over 2 million units. “You call me up from a payphone / I said, ‘Hang tight, I can drive you home’ / I pulled on up and with a southern accent / I offered you my dad’s leather jacket,” the crowd sang in unison. Kerman, seizing the moment, pointed his microphone into the crowd, letting the audience take over.
The importance of crowd connection surfaced many times throughout the performance. During “Quitting You,” Kerman asked the sound engineer to turn up the audience in his in-ear monitors—“I’ll take a little more of the crowd, I just want to hear them sing along.” Sometimes, this sentiment showed more directly in the way Kerman spoke about the magical ways music connects people.
“There’s so many unknowns out there. What I do know is that there are so many things out of our control, but there are some things in our control like tonight, each of you chose to come to a local bar, and you chose to drink some local beer, and you chose to tip your local bartender, you chose to pay for a ticket for a band from another country; those are all choices that you made tonight,” Kerman said. “We feel so lucky that we get to come to America and play an amazing club like this; thank you for sharing your spirit here tonight.”
He followed this up by sharing how much he enjoys the unexpected moments each city brings while on tour, like earlier in the day when fans who had flown in from Brazil for the show spotted him while he was out for a run downtown. “I was a bit of a giveaway,” he joked, “I was wearing Arkells merch.” Those fans could be heard cheering loudly from the back as he narrated the encounter.
One of the joys of experiencing this band live is that, even after 20 years, the band members still seem overjoyed to share the stage together. Carone and DeAngelis joined Kerman at the mic for a couple of songs, and the bandmates traded friendly banter when Kerman realized he had forgotten to put a capo on his guitar for one of the numbers: “I was like, ‘Why does this sound funny’.… This has never happened in the history of our band.” DeAngelis playfully responded, “I’m so glad it wasn’t me.”
The band came back out for a three-song encore that concluded with “You Can Get It,” a song that features k.flay on the record. With the end of a great night looming, Kerman shouted, “We play every show like it’s the last show ever!” That parting line captures exactly what sets Arkells apart. While the band admitted that playing a set with a large amount of new material was nerve-racking, it didn’t hold back. Instead, it delivered a performance that could’ve easily held up on a major festival stage, every moment driven by purpose. Beyond its high-level musicianship and infectious energy, the band truly made the crowd feel like that show, and that night, was all that mattered.
