Artist: Broken Social Scene
Venue: Webster Hall, NYC, NY
Date: January 26, 2006
The first show of the new year: a good omen for the rest of it. Billed as “an evening with Broken Social Scene”, there were no openers. Not that one was really needed, considering that BSS consists of just about a million Canadian rockers of all stripes (featuring members of Metric, Do Make Say Think, and Feist). Indeed, as it was, their almost 2 hour long show still left many fan favorites unplayed (including my own “Shampoo Suicide”).
As befitting their size, they had two “stage leads”, who would alternate saying things between songs. One came off as somewhat of a dick, but it was cool cause they played and sang well. In particular, near the end of the show, we started feeling this straight 4-on-the-floor beat emanating from below us; it turns out there’s another club underneath the Webster, where they were having some shitty disco night. So of course the main dude starts cussing the shit out of that disco group and talking about how shitty it is that they allow stuff like that (i.e. two music groups performing at the same time). The other reminded me of Richard for some reason, although not really when he started talking.
The singers included Emily Haines (lead singer of Metric), and some other women (who I didn’t know). Of all of them, Emily was definitely one of the best, singing with lots of attitude. One of the only disappointments of the night was that Feist wasn’t there with them (I guess she was busy with her own tour, now that she’s hit it somewhat big). The other surprise (although in retrospect it doesn’t seem that surprising) was that all the instrumentalists seemed quite good at what they did, and very much into what they were doing. This applied in particular to the girl playing violin for most songs. Finally, it was surprising to see the two guys from Do Make Say Think, as they seemed to be a study in opposites (one dude who looked pretty muscled and aggressive, and the other a thin, soft-spoken looking guy, who apparently had just recently became a father). Although I can’t say I was a huge fan of their music, it was interesting to see them live, albeit in a different setting.
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