Reviews: July Talk: Love Lives Here from Hot Docs 2023

Final Rating: 2/5

The Canadian indie rock band July Talk was affected by the global pandemic like everyone else was. And like many musicians, they had music ready to be released not long after the world shut down. After two highly successful albums, their third record, Pray For It, was scheduled to come out in July of 2020. Many artists struggled to figure out how to promote new music when all tours were canceled, in person events weren’t happening and unless you lived together you couldn’t even see your band mates.

July Talk saw an opportunity to do something unique. They decided to put on concerts at a Drive-In theater. This allowed them to perform live, and with people stationed in cars listening to the show via radio as they created their own bubbles.

Deciding to book the Stardust Drive-In, located in Sharon, Ontario (approximately 40 minutes north of Toronto), July Talk readied themselves to play two shows in August of 2020. What makes this documentary especially interesting to me, was the fact that I attended the first date of the two night stand and wrote about it.

First time director Brittany Farhat covers the behind the scenes planning and execution that took place to put the shows on. We see the band conceptualizing the stage set up, rehearsing and finally performing the shows with interviews giving insight into everything. This was all done in black and white photography to match the bands aesthetic for the album cycle.

The film also uses plenty of archival footage of the band to help tell their story for anyone that might be new to their music. We see early performances, as the band slowly graduates to larger and larger venues and stories mostly from co-front persons Leah Fay Goldstein and Peter Dreimanis as they craft their own mythology.

Between the interviews, old concert footage, executing the Drive-In concert and plenty of other insights into the bands beliefs, the film often feels like it is trying to cram in too much. We get an extended period of time where the band discusses their politics and manifesto resulting in wanting to give their back up vocalists more time in the spotlight. Contrast this with Dreimanis learning he has been diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes and how it will affect his life moving forward and even a Covid scare from one of the other members that threatens to derail the show and you wonder if the documentary could have been more focused.

The band was always famous for their live wire concerts where Goldstein and Dreimanis so aggressively get into their performances they look like they will at any given moment break out into a brawl with each other. Seeing the evolution of their live shows is fascinating to witness, but we don’t get enough footage of the headlining event, the drive-in show. The band rehearses songs and it transitions into the actual performance, but only a handful of tracks are actually shown being played to the audience in the film.

This movie allows hard core fans to see some backstage footage and the band’s process for working, but it doesn’t offer enough to casual listeners or people unfamiliar with their work to stand out as a truly great music documentary.

July Talk: Love Lives Here was seen during the 2023 Hot Docs film festival.