From a Brampton tape to W.I.T.C.H. at Lee's Palace: three nights at Second Summer

A festival with one rule

Second Summer ran for the first time from 24 to 26 September, spread over 13 venues in Toronto's west end: the Horseshoe, Lee's Palace, the Mod Club, the Monarch Tavern, Sneaky Dee's, St. Anne's Parish on Gladstone Avenue and more. Over 110 artists played.

It was founded by Brendan McCarney of Paper Bag Records. Festival director Claire Rosenbaum told Toronto Life what they booked for: artists "whose live experience is visceral and memorable", even if they only had "a thousand followers on socials". PUP picked nine of the acts themselves.

Zach went to all three nights. Here's a rundown of just a few of the most memorable shows.

Thursday: the Monarch Tavern, then the Mod Club

Thursday started at the Monarch Tavern, where Flower City's Dambe set an energetic baseline and stretched creative boundaries with explosive, rhythmic fusion and gritty post-punk shifts. The Brampton band's only release so far is a four-track tape from last year.

Over at the Mod Club, Vancouver six-piece Concrete Vehicles unleashed a dense, feedback-laden wall of industrial noise rock upon the crowd.

Cam Kahin, one of PUP's picks, delivered a hard-hitting set fueled by thrashing guitars, heavy distortion, and an unrelenting stage presence that easily held its own against the night's heaviest acts.

Ekkstacy then deepened the bill's moody edge, and enveloped festivalgoers in hypnotic dark-wave angst and synth-pop catharsis.

Friday: cleopatrick at St. Anne's

Wavelength had a stage at St. Anne's Parish, and on Friday it belonged to cleopatrick. Luke Gruntz and Ian Fraser are from Cobourg and have known each other since they were four. They brought relentless horsepower with their signature fuzz-drenched riffs.

But when they dialed back the heavy rock for tracks like "Victoria Park" or "sanjake", the intensity of the room shifted from an explosive mosh pit to a suspended, intimate echo chamber, where the crowd swayed in collective stillness as the stripped-back vocals and understated guitar riffs echoed off the venue walls.

Saturday: W.I.T.C.H. at Lee's Palace

The closing night belonged to Zambian rock pioneers W.I.T.C.H., an acronym for We Intend to Cause Havoc. They came out of the Zamrock scene of the 1970s, and Emmanuel "Jagari" Chanda, now in his seventies, still sings in the band. They previously played the Horseshoe Tavern in 2022, though without lead singer Jagari.

They set the grounds ablaze by getting everyone dancing to intoxicating 1970s psychedelic Zamrock and Afro-funk rhythms.

Exclaim! called the pit for the final song the biggest of the weekend. For a festival that started for Zach with a four-track tape at the Monarch Tavern, that is a decent place to end.

Words and photographs: Zach Aureliano, in Toronto.

Correction, 7 October 2026: “According to Exclaim!, this was their first show in Toronto” has been changed to “They previously played the Horseshoe Tavern in 2022, though without lead singer Jagari”, and the headline no longer calls it W.I.T.C.H.’s first Toronto show. The band had played Toronto before, without Jagari Chanda.