The Giant Panther

What better way to kick off a fall tour then to start in front of 200 college students, at a University you can't even pronounce, in a location you believe to be somewhere near Boston. That University was Brandeis, and the location was Waltham, MA. Broken Social Scene, the best indie band in Canada (or probably anywhere else in my opinion), pronounced it "Brandees", "Braandeece", and finally settled on "Brown Dice". They took full advantage of this opportunity to work the kinks out of their act. It almost had the vibe of a dress rehearsal.

As I've said before, any opportunity to see Broken Social Scene live should be seized at all costs. Their appearances in Boston are few and far between. I was feeling a little bit better after a weekend of sickness, and decided to venture out into the cold October air, by myself I might add. This may seem like no biggie for some, but this was the first time I've ever attended a show by myself. Further adding to my alienation, I realized I may be slightly older than I thought. I wasn't alone in this feeling, I got the same vibe from the band. This was best demonstrated by the dead silence after Brendan Canning made a Bob James reference, the composer of the Taxi theme song. I'm pretty sure most of the audience has never even seen the show Taxi.




I found out BSS was playing last night after reading Bradley's Almanac around 5 pm, and couldn't track down anybody to go with me. It wasn't listed on their website, and I'm not sure how he found out about it. But he did, and I thank him for that. I wanted to thank him in person at the show, but I never tracked him down. It turns out I was standing right behind him for the entire show, and got many wonderful pictures of his camera taking pictures, exhibit A:

On to the show itself. The lineup was at about half-capacity, at around 7 members. Amy Millan was there, fresh off either touring with her other band Stars, or tour support for her own album, Honey From the Tombs. Her voice is amazing, soft and breezy.

The show was ridden with technical difficulty. Feedback, mics not working, the occasional possessed synth, and the mix started off completely unbalanced. Probably due to the small room and poor acoustics, and an amp or two turned up a little too loud. There might have even been a forgotten chord or two, and a few verses omitted, but who's counting?





All technical blunders aside, it was still a BSS show, and still kicked ass as always. Brendan Canning's bass and Justin Peroff's kick drum never missed a beat together, and I continue to believe this is the driving force behind their music. Throw in 4 or 5 electric guitars, synth, the occasional horn, voice harmonizer tweaker box thingy, and it becomes quite an amazing spectacle. With all the instruments they throw in, you'd think it would be one big muddy mess, like mixing too many hues of paint together. They somehow manage to find space for everything, which is their greatest asset. Look at all my name dropping, I'm finally starting to piece together names to faces in this ensemble. Can anybody tell me who's the dude with the mustache?

The highlight of the night for me, besides Kevin Drew and company's hilarious banter was probably "Ibi Dreams of Pavement", or "Major Label Debut". Or when Kevin asked everybody how much they paid to get in, and then said "Five Dollars? Ok we're done." I have to tell you, he's a very well tempered guy, after the third or fourth mic being completely off, or monster feedback, I probably would have been pissed off. Broken Social Scene remains my favorite live act, and although last night's show couldn't possibly trump last years show with Leslie Feist at Avalon, it was still pretty damn good.

I wanted to start a conversation about everyone's favorite BSS side project as there are so many: Stars, Metric, Apostle of Hustle, Feist, Jason Collett, Amy Millan etc, I'm sure I'm missing many. Mine is Apostle of Hustle. But nobody comments on here anyway, so f it.

Keep a close eye on Bradley's Almanac over the next few days.

Here's their latest video, taken from clips on the road.