FRENCH POLICE w/ SOCIAL ORDER
@ LEE’S PALACE, TORONTO
NOVEMBER 14, 2025
Nearing the end of their North American tour, French Police rolled into Toronto with Social Order in tow, and the crowd showed up with their dancing shoes on.
From the first few seconds, Social Order hit the stage the crowd was in and ready to move around. Musically, they leaned into duality throughout the set. On one hand, there was shimmering clarity — clean, ringing chords, open spaces between notes, a purity of tone. On the other, a creeping distortion, subtle fuzz creeping in around edges, as though the pristine world they’d built was threatening to crack. The interplay was compelling: precision met dissonance in a way that felt intentional, like they’d built their songs around that fracture.
At its tightest, the band felt ritualistic. Songs folded into themselves, motifs repeating and spiraling, and every return to the chorus felt inevitable but welcomed especially on tracks like “Miss You” where it infects you and muscle memory takes over.
Visually, the stage presence leaned understated. No pyrotechnics, no wild costume changes — just the band, their instruments, and a clever play of shadows from the stage lights. It felt honest.
French Police walked onto the stage last night looking like they’d stepped straight out of a noir fever dream: all black leather, sunglasses on despite the darkness, framed by cold-blue light that cut through the room like neon reflections off wet pavement. Before they even played a note, they’d set a mood.
From the opening track, the band leaned hard into their signature minimalism: tight drum-machine grooves, basslines that slithered underneath, and guitars that shimmered with an almost icy precision. Yet despite that restraint, the room didn’t stand still for a second. The crowd responded instinctively — a sea of bodies moving in sync, as though the band had wired their rhythms directly into everyone’s spine.
There was a rave-like energy threaded through the set, not in the sense of full-blown chaos, but in that hypnotic, euphoric undercurrent that kept building from song to song. Even with the sunglasses — which never came off — the band managed to project a strange kind of intimacy. They didn’t talk much, but they didn’t need to.
(Photography by Jacob Vandergeer)
French Police Photos
Social Order Photos
French Police Links
Social Order Links
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