Broken Social Scene and Land Of Talk at Wisconsin Union Theater
A big, crazy band holds up in a big, classy room
Caylan Larson |
Broken Social Scene
In spirit, Broken Social Scene's music is a sweaty blur of collaboration. Perhaps the eight-member touring version of the band, which includes founders Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, and Liz Powell from opening band Land Of Talk, meant to stir it all into one messy celebration at the Union Theater on Saturday. Instead, this was a fine chance to pick out individual voices, bass lines, horns, and guitars (often three at once) as they spread out across a venue that was built for the sit-down jazz and classical crowd.
The blending and piling-on reached its climax when "Fucked-Up Kid" (from Drew's "solo" album, Spirit If...) melted and dissolved into the slow uplift of "Chameleon" (from Canning's solo album, Something For All Of Us), which in turn gave way to that song's inviting group chorus: "You can throw your arms out, you can be at ease." Since this is the "Something For All Of Us Tour," Canning's new stuff was mixed in, and effectively so. The album itself sounds a little murky at times, but live, the material proved better than this reviewer may have led you to believe. "Love Is New" in particular gets stronger onstage, a slinky bass line and extra percussion pumping its dub-disco rhythms to the front.
In fact, the evening felt sloppy only when the band wasn't hurling itself into one of its epics. Drew repeatedly urged the crowd to vote and idly asked a few people where they were from and what was on their T-shirts. And the crowd will likely try to forget about the cover of "Papa Don't Preach," a little joke that took up time without using any of the band's strengths. (At the encore's end, Drew announced, sounding very pleased with himself, that he'd stay on stage while the house lights went up and people left.) Other than those few stains on the performance, Drew worked for it, running around to play guitar, keyboard, and percussion parts, often handling a few duties in a single song. During "Ibi Dreams Of Pavement (A Better Day)," he wrangled a few hundred in the crowd into a group scream. It probably sounded like shit down front, but it spread through the rest of the place as an extra, welcomed layer for one of the band's most cathartic songs. Three cheers for Midwestern repression.
Andrew Whiteman stood out not only for his shimmering guitar leads, but also for the white pants, white shirt, and scraggly mustache combo that's probably all the rage among 60-somethings in Havana.
Land Of Talk's opening set was best heard from the back, where Powell's beautifully snaggletoothed guitar chords got a chance to ripple through the mix. Up front, the amps, drums, and stage monitors tended to drown out her voice, even as it echoed back from behind. Some might have chalked it up to nerves or laziness, but really it's just hard to balance out her often quiet, wavering vocals with the punk-y instrumentation of numbers like "Summer Special" and "All My Friends." Her singing came through, though, on "It's Okay," one of the slow, plaintive numbers that makes the band's new Some Are Lakes such a pleasing step forward.
Powell also got a chance to show off during the main set, scurrying around behind the drums and amps to play percussion parts and guitar. She's the only female member touring with BSS right now, so it was also her job to sing on "7/4 (Shoreline)." She nailed the chorus, which is possibly the sweetest, hookiest, most conflicted blast of pop the band's put out so far. Powell even brought a graceful touch to the one actively irritating thing in the BSS catalog, the admittedly hyper-catchy "Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl." The recorded version (on You Forgot It In People) features a gratingly pitch-shifted vocal, but Powell's voice brought softness and space to a strong melody that didn't need to be tampered with in the first place.
