Broken Social Scene at the Vic - 10/9

I just noticed that the Bush out of office countdown is almost below the 100 day mark. What a beautiful sight...

Anyways, last night I headed over to the Vic Theater in the city to see the great Canadian band Broken Social Scene once again, despite just seeing them at Lollapalooza in August. I figured it would be a pretty safe bet, since I've never seen them in a place as small as the Vic to this point, it has only been the two Lolla shows so far.

As a brief history lesson, BSS is a Canadian collective, with a rotating membership of around 16 or 18 members. Their most famous member to this point is Feist, who has been going on to bigger things in the last two years. The main members are Kevin Drew (who writes the best songs for the band) and Brendan Canning, who have both released "solo" albums in the past year, with the rest of BSS performing as their bands on their respective cd's.

The band Land of Talk opened the show, and their lead singer stayed on with BSS to handle all of the female vocals in their songs. There wasn't much to say about Land of Talk's set, it was pretty forgettable and uninspiring, expect for a few moments when the band decided to rock a bit.

BSS came on at 8:30, and much like Sigur Ros a couple of weeks before, decided to say damn the curfew, and played on to 10:30. Their set was very similar to the one they performed at Lolla this year, but unfortunately songs like "7/4 Shoreline" and "Fire Eyed Boy" lacked the energy they had there. They performed all of their "hits" (well, to their fans anyways) like "Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl" and "Cause = Time," but all around the songs seemed to be lacking in energy and excitement.

One of the few interesting moments came near the end of the show, when during one of Kevin Drew's solo songs, there was some feedback circulating around the stage. The drummer and Drew got into a slightly heated arguement, before walking off the stage together while two of the side members did a goofy little song by themselves. All seemed to be resolved after a minute or two, and the band concluded the show with some of their best songs, like "Ibi Dreams of Pavement" and "It's All Gonna Break."

It wasn't a great show, it definitely was not the best I've ever seen BSS play, especially since their performance at Lolla 2006 was incredible. Maybe they're just getting the early tour kinks out (this was only the second show of this leg of the tour), but we'll see how they do again next time.

One amusing side note: Drew, a noted Obama supporter (despite being Canadian) joked mid-set that he heard Illinois was a pretty strong McCain state. Only about a quarter of the crowd booed, I'm not sure if the other remainder were just stunned, didn't know that he was joking, or actually support McCain, but it was pretty amusing anyways.