ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½

There were plenty of tennis jokes volleyed back and forth by the veteran Scarborough smart-pop sensations as the four-piece combo, along with Montreal rockers the Sam Roberts Band and Scotland’s KT Tunstall, christened ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½’s latest large music venue, the Bowl at Sobeys Stadium — home of the sport’s annual Canadian Open — with a stellar concert Thursday night.

Actually, “christened” may be a bit of a misnomer, considering the setting, at York University between Steeles and Keele Avenues, has occasionally hosted musical performances since 2005.

In fact, the last serious effort to turn the place, then known as the Rexall Centre, into a consistent stop for star talent happened in 2011 with the ill-fated BlackCreek Summer Music Festival.

Promises that the site would continue to host gigs the following year remain unfulfilled, although a few R&B acts and rappers such as Big Sean held centre court as recently as 2015.

However, now with a new partnership forged between the Feldman Agency and Tennis Canada, the hope is that the Bowl at Sobeys Stadium will continue to regularly function as a habitat for live music, with Shaggy (June 29), Big Shiny Saturday (featuring the Tea Party, Headstones, I Mother Earth, Treble Charger and Bif Naked, July 6) and Boomstock (Bachman-Turner Overdrive, UB40, Chilliwack, Sweet and the Box, Aug. 24) providing a preview.

If you’ve been to a tennis match at the newly named Sobeys Stadium, you know the layout: the seats surround the open-air court — or, in this case, the stage — and descend toward the floor.

The stage employed for Thursday’s show, though, had its drawbacks: if you were sitting in the wings adjacent to the court, the sightlines were impacted by speaker placement. Thankfully, video screens placed on both sides of the rostrum compensated for the visual deficiency up to a point. But from my vantage point of stage left in section 133, I had to rely on the camera person to get a glimpse of Sam Roberts Band keyboardist Eric Fares or Barenaked Ladies drummer Tyler Stewart.

On a positive note, the sound was great — especially important when trying to decipher some of the quick-fire rhymes that BNL singer-guitarist Ed Robertson spits during “One Week” — and the crowd, estimated at just over half the venue’s 9,000 capacity, enthusiastically received the music.

The concert began with Scotland’s guitar-slinging KT Tunstall and the best loop station this side of Ed Sheeran. Highlights of her solo set included the song that broke her into the mainstream — “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” — and another that sports one of the happiest melodies and arrangements in contemporary pop, “Suddenly I See.”

Sam Roberts and his band were a little more intense with their philosophical rock, with stronger numbers such as “Afterlife” — from his new album, “The Adventures of Ben Blank” — and “Bridge to Nowhere” from “Chemical City” making the most impact.

Roberts himself seemed to loosen up once he dropped the guitar and played frontman for the crowd-pleasing “Brother Down,” eliciting a call and response from the audience just before concluding his hour-long set.

As masters of joyful tunes and playful stage banter, Barenaked Ladies’ Ed Robertson, Jim Creegan, Tyler Stewart and Kevin Hearn have few peers.

For 35 years — 35 years! — and through 18 studio albums, BNL have added a much-needed sense of humour to the pop spectrum with their impeccably witty ditties and often spontaneous onstage repartee, so that no band show is ever repeated. In fact, part of the fun is watching them trying to crack each other up, with drummer Stewart usually getting in the best zingers.

After setting the pace with “Lovin’ Life,” BNL displayed their tight musicianship, vibrant harmonies and occasional hijinks for an entertaining nearly two-hour set.

For Robertson, it was a full-circle moment: he admitted no shortage of satisfaction in playing York University, the institution that he dropped out of the minute his band got a record deal and departed ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ to tour across Canada.

Though Robertson sang most of the leads, everyone else in the band got a shot. Multi-instrumentalist Hearn (mandolin, guitar, piano, keyboards) crooned the Steven Page parts (co-founder Page left the band in 2009) on tunes like “The Old Apartment.” Creegan chimed in for “Just Wait” from the latest album, “In Flight.” And Stewart shone on a cover of Def Leppard’s “Rock of Ages” during a weird medley that included “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” and featured Robertson taking a turn on drums.

While some of their newer compositions are good, they’re not as distinctive as past fare, so there was a bit of a lull about midway through the set. But the audience, who were on their feet for most of the show, responded well to the whistling melody of “Lookin’ Up” and the more familiar refrains of “The History of Everything” (aka “The Big Bang Theory” theme song) and “One Week.”

KT Tunstall returned to share verses of “Brian Wilson” with Robertson, and violinist Kendel Carson was added to a few numbers, providing a scintillating solo to “If I Had $1000000,” the one song everyone sang in full voice, and a hit that is so deeply embedded into the Canadian Songbook that its royalties will keep the band members and their descendants knee deep in Kraft Dinner for generations.

The double encore of “Grade 9” and their hit cover of Bruce Cockburn’s “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” kept the grins pasted on the faces of the band’s followers as they emptied the stadium post-show.

Sure, the attendance could have been better, but the return of concerts to Sobeys Stadium is a welcome one. 

One sour note: parking accommodations could be improved. There’s plenty of room, but the only payment option is to download an app in order to take care of the $20 fee. For a technical Luddite like me, who only resorts to apps when absolutely necessary, there needs to be a more practical alternative.

Correction – July 2, 2024

This article has been updated. A previous version incorrectly stated that Kevin Hearn joined Barenaked Ladies when co-founder Steven Page left the band in 2009.