There are some bands who can do no wrong. Until recently, it
appeared that Toronto collective Broken Social Scene was one of
them.
The band started as a side project, releasing the ambient
“Feel Good Lost” in 2001 and became a musical force to
be reckoned with the masterful “You Forgot It In
People” in 2002. The album was universally lauded and brought
the group into prominence, raising expectations impossibly high for
this year’s “Broken Social Scene.”
Playing a two-night run at the Henry Fonda Theater, the band
played some of the new songs at its Nov. 8 performance but spent
most of the night in its comfort zone revisiting older
material.
If opening the set with three-straight “You Forgot It In
People” tunes wasn’t a dead giveaway, the rest of the
set list was an even split between new songs and old. Top tracks
from “Broken Social Scene” such as
“Swimmers” and “Windsurfing Nation” were
absent, and the band seemed the most energized on the “You
Forgot It In People” songs “KC Accidental” and
“Cause = Time.”
Some of the new songs approached the power of the old.
“Major Label Debut,” which the band played once as it
appears on the album and later on in a sped-up rock version, showed
off the group’s versatility, and “Ibi Dreams of
Pavement (A Better Day)” was as loud and intense as anything
else the band played Tuesday night.
The set began with eight members of Broken Social Scene on
stage, with more joining as the night went on. Performances by the
multitude of singers and musicians were uniformly strong, with
Andrew Whiteman of Apostle of Hustle contributing scathing guitar
solos over Brendan Canning’s rock-solid bass work.
Lead singer Kevin Drew demonstrated an impressive range, and the
group’s only weak link was new addition Lisa Lobsinger, who
took the spot usually occupied by Amy Milan of Stars or Emily
Haines of Metric. Lobsinger’s passionless performance of
“Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl” was no match
for Haines’ studio version, but luckily the band had another
female vocalist to call upon.
The highlight of the evening was Leslie Feist, who performs
under her last name and opened for Broken Social Scene as well as
joining them for the middle of their set. During her opening set,
she turned the quiet lounge-act songs of her 2005 album into
improvisatory rockers, singing melodic variations into a separate
microphone and looping them to use as her own backing vocals. Early
in her set, she covered a song by the froggy-voiced Ron Sexsmith,
inadvertently calling attention to the superiority of her skillful,
jazz-inflected singing.
Feist was at home in any style, whether she was playing the soft
bossa nova-tinged “Gatekeeper” or an electrified,
full-band version of her song “Mushaboom.” The singer,
who performs on several songs from Broken Social Scene’s
latest album, joined the band for “Shorelines (7/4),”
“Almost Crimes,” “Bandwitch,” and the
gorgeous duet finale, “Lover’s Spit,” adding
energy and tightness to each song.
Broken Social Scene continue to be a work-in-progress, with the
contributions of newer members like Feist balanced out by the
relative weakness of many “Broken Social Scene” tracks.
The concert was a reminder that the members of the band will likely
spend the rest of their career trying to match the masterpiece of
“You Forgot It In People,” but at least on Tuesday
night, they were aware of it.
More importantly, they had a good time playing together, and
that’s what makes their live performances ““ and the
band itself ““ still one of the most exciting that rock music
has to offer.