Broken Social Scene
Flashback: I’m leaning on the bar at Fibber’s, having one of those alcohol fuelled moments where you can only laugh at how absurd everything is.
"This one goes out to Rob, who we forgot to put on the guest list," announces Brendan Canning, one front man of Broken Social Scene, leaving me floating on a drunken breeze of self-congratulation at how ‘rock n’ roll’ I am. Of course, if I really was that ‘rock n’ roll’, I would have been cool enough not to mention that in this article.
I cast my mind back to 2 hours ago, embarrassedly banging on the front door of Fibbers in front of a bus queue hoping somebody would let me in. Then Tom Baker turned up. He was tall, curly-haired, scarf wearing, and introduced himself as Jason. It turned out he was in Broken Social Scene. He led me round to the back door and introduced me to Kevin Drew. Kevin was wasted but amiable.
"How did you hear about us?" he asked. I didn’t want to tell him how I’d really heard about them, which was the ‘recommended’ shelf at HMV, so I replied,
"You know… the grapevine." It seems that Broken Social Scene are not used to any kind of commercial success whatsoever. Made up out of several different Toronto bands, the collective is has 13 transient members, who are all "big fans of each other’s work", although only 6 would be playing that night. I stood on the stage chatting with them whilst they set up, every so often getting in the way of one of the grunting roadies. "We’ve been playing these songs for a number of years now," said Kevin, "we just want to enjoy what we do." I mentioned the often uncharitable nature of the British press and its tendency to make and break bands within a fortnight.
"Yeah, we want to avoid that," said Jason.
"We want to develop a fan-base gradually" Kevin cut in. They talked about commercial success like it was a bottle of beer somebody was trying to press on them, there in the palms of their hands. However, not everybody wants to get drunk every night. "We’ve been around a long time now, we just want to enjoy our music." I tried to imagine any other band in the world taking the same attitude. You could not accuse them of ‘selling out’.
The debate rages on over whether musicians should keep their politics in their pockets; a cynic might see Radiohead, masters of the ‘non-spin’ self-promotion, as jumping on an anti-war bandwagon. However, it seems that there would be no band more qualified to make a political statement than Broken Social Scene. After all, it’s not like they even want the publicity.
"They’re going to hang Blair" Jason said. And now, at the show, they are ironically dedicating the next song after mine to "George W. Blair". Jason had spat out the Prime Minister’s name like someone trying Marmite for the first time.
"I hear that there’s a lot of anti-Blair sentiment over here," he said. I agreed, but mentioned the majority of American’s perception of Bush. "They’re starting to come round now I think," he said. "America’s a strange country."
They took me to meet Brendan, who with the exception of Kevin seems to be the most creatively dominant member of the group. Brendan was sitting by the bar reading a free copy of Barfly with a coffee-house poise and self-assurance. "We’ve been to some real weird places; Stoke, Peterborough. I think that our tour manager was trying to break our spirits in the first week," he said. "We’ve been playing to crowds of 40 to 100 people," he informed me with a tone of solemn resignation. It seemed that the group were enjoying their English adventure, but looked back on a successful tour of North America with the fondness of old hippies on the summer of ‘69.
"We had a string section for that tour," Jason said, "And we would start the show with our solo projects; I would come on and do mine, and then Kevin and so on."
Now, at the gig, the collective play one of the standout tracks from their record, Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl, Leslie Feist undressing the lead vocal with maternal tenderness. All night Broken Social Scene have swapped between instruments, taking it in turns to sing and play lead and rhythm guitar, bass and keyboard, with Leslie, Brendan and Kevin sharing lead vocals. When Kevin is not singing lead, he provides expertly arranged backing vocals and the group’s use of electronic guitar and vocal effects is magnificently combined with the diverse assortment of genres, tempos and moods. Having said that, within Broken Social Scene’s sound tonight is a much more coherent core than on the record, You Forgot It In People, which switches frequently between smooth jazz, alternative indie, with small blasts of electronica. I asked Kevin if within such a large group there had been any squabbling over the record’s content; "We had no problems with that, we all got on very well, and just experimented in the studio," he told me.
It’s the end of the gig and I’m beginning to feel more of a connection to reality now, which is a good job, seeing as it might be difficult to find my way home in world that is merely a figment of my imagination. I’ve sobered up a bit as well. I decide that it’s probably a bad idea to stick around for the free beer that Brendan promised me and so I leave, carried out of the door on the pure breeze of that beautiful live show.
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