Timekeeping is not one of our finest traits, we’ll give you
that, but tonight it also happens to serve as a useful barometer of one of Broken
Social Scene’s best. More important than illustrating our ineptitude, it solidly
underlines BSS’s enormous collective cache of character, dexterity and stamina.
We roll up roughly one hour after they take to the stage – and not for the first
time in our gig going history (sorry Miss, must try harder). But it is definitely
the first time, in such a scenario, that we still have the luxury of 80 whole
minutes of staggering indie abandon stacked up ahead of us. They’re not
the only band to play for over 2 hours of course – it was only very recently that
Sigur Ros massaged us towards an idyllic infinity over the same period – but these
are just a rag-tag bunch of kids with a shared penchant for scuffed guitars, Pavement,
Death Cab, dancing a bit, messy hair and unwashed jeans. Apart from one dude who’s
made the effort and thrown on a dapper suit and cocked pork pie hat. Not exactly
the stuff of myriad extended symphonies – curfews are enforced for a reason. But
Broken Social Scene are, to understate the situation slightly, different. Not
least because they’re not really a band. They’re all in bands, sure, but this
an alternative take, this is playtime, and it shows. Tonight’s line up of assorted
components from Canada’s music scene just pushes through into double figures.
They may as well be the same people who assembled the excitement-overspill of
their last two records, it doesn’t matter that they’re not exactly, or that they’ve
been shuffled. Band leader, the incredibly affable Kevin Drew, holds the unfolding
sonic kerfuffle together like a wobbly pivot. Instruments (violins, keyboards,
effects, 2 drum kits, up to 4 guitars, plenty of brass) plough into each other
with bombast, the ambience held at teetering capacity. The timid and barefooted
Lisa Lobsinger provides sweet, longing, passionate vocals where needed, an easily
adequate replacement for Leslie Feist’s seemingly irreplaceable contributions
to the current eponymous album. It’s as complete a picture as you could
hope for. But truth is you’ve probably never hoped for anything quite like this,
it feels that off the cuff. It’s an unreservedly informal event, which might seem
like a needlessly obvious thing to say. But even bands that play up to their accessibility
and disregard for convention as key to their appeal (you can name a few yourself,
you don’t need our help) are defined by a historically sourced pro forma understanding
of rock n roll – subject to as many constraints as the next. But this doesn’t
feel like that, at all. No barrier to speak of (save for the reassuringly
unmovable faces of security) exists between crowd and collective. And the relaxed,
enthusiastic banter on stage is far from one-size-fits-all banality – during one
band bathroom break they joke about ID cards and sharing a release date with Arctic
Monkeys; “you don’t sell 170,000 copies in a week in Canada if you’re Celine Dion!”
adding “how many did we sell? 170?”. As an incredibly touching ‘Lover’s Spit’
surges towards an epic close, Kevin and co-founder Brendan Canning leap the crash
barrier to spend 2 minutes hugging various members of the congregation. Our excited
screams are then conducted and woven into the seams of ecstatic finale ‘It’s All
Gonna Break’. It’s liberation and inclusion in a way that few other bands have
managed, or even tried. Songs are stretched, expanded and inflated beyond
their original borders without reserve, and suddenly 2 hours doesn’t seem such
a ludicrous aim. There are inevitable patches where the muddy mix drags their
output down to a throbbing mass – disappointingly, ace single ‘Ibi Dreams Of Pavement’
sounds like it’s dragging its leaden heels and in danger of stalling, but that
was the exception. ‘Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl’, ‘Bandwitch’ and ‘Swimmers’
especially sound free and untamed, carried upward and forward on an ever-ebbing
tide of rhythm and melodic encouragement. Back in the first paragraph of this
review we tried to feign our tardy arrival as a justifiable and necessary manoeuvre
allowing unique perspective on the quality of Broken Social Scene’s performance.
Just to let you know, that’s all bollocks, we’ll be pitching up on the pavement
outside from lunchtime next time around. Relevant sites:
http://www.noisefactoryrecords.com/bss.htm
James Berry for Crud Magazine 2006©
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|
| 01/06 Morning After Girls Interview
01/06 The Roger Sisters Interview
01/06 The Spinto Band Interview
01/06 The Longcut Interview
01/06 Union of Knives Interview
01/06 7/7 July Bombings London
01/06 Adem / Tunng - Live - West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds
01/06 Beach Boys - Pet Sounds - 40th Anniversary Deluxe CD / DVD
01/06 Broken Social Scene - London Astoria
01/06 Camden Crawl 2006
01/06 Editors - LIve - Brixton Academy
01/06 Elliott Kennedy - Song Meanings
01/06 Four Day Hombre Interview
01/06 Gram Parsons - Fallen Angel DVD
01/06 Hot Chip Live - LIve - Caberte Volatire - Edinburgh
01/06 Jackson Analogue, Digital, Newcastle
01/06 Latitude Festival, Henham Park, Beccles, Suffolk
01/06 Liam Frost - Live - Cockpit, Leeds
01/06 Little Man Tate, Cockpit, Leeds
01/06 Monty Python Remastered Collection
|  | 01/06 New Pornographers / Spoon - Live - London Koko
01/06 NME Shows 2006
01/06 Orange Lights - Carling Academy, Newcastle
01/06 Protokoll - Live - Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh
01/06 Shout Out Louds - Live - Leeds, Cockpit
01/06 Airlines, Flights, Terror Plot July 2006
01/06 The National - Brixton Academy, London
01/06 Wireless Festival 2006
January 2001
July - August 2001
September - October 2001
November - December 2001
January - March 2002
April - July 2002
August - December 2002
January - March 2003
May - August 2003
November 2003
January - March 2004
April - September 2004
October - December 2004
January - March 2005
April - December 2005
January - August 2006
September - December 2006
January - September 2007
October - December 2007
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