Broken Social Scene @ Ontario House, Vancouver

On Friday night while I was at the Vancouver Olympic Centre watching Canada defeat Denmark in women’s curling (how random does life get during the Olympics?), Twitter informed me that Broken Social Scene would be performing a last minute, secret(ish) show at the Ontario Pavilion as part of the Winter Olympics. The band were in town for the Neil Young tribute so it made sense the band would want to play their own headlining show. Troops were gathered and the following day we made it down the False Creek to Ontario House to line up for the show.

With Stars, Feist, Emily Haines, and Jason Collett in town it seemed that it a perfect BSS storm was forming collaboration-wise…but it was not to be. However, Broken Social Scene still delivered a memorable show in front of 750 lucky fans. The band featured Bill Priddle, Metric’s Jimmy Shaw, and Reverie Sound Revue’s Lisa Lobsinger while Andrew Whiteman and the Do Make Say Think boys were MIA (DMST are currently in Japan).

I had hoped we’d get some new songs but we didn’t really. Kevin Drew informed us that they don’t really know the new ones yet so we instead we got a mix of older material, maybe a new song, aaaand Julie Doiron. But before that the band opened with a pair of songs off the last self-titled record (Superconnected and Shoreline) before a trio of songs off Kevin and Brendan Canning’s solo records. Love Is New, off Canning’s album, was even funkier and more fun live than it is on record. Sam Goldberg actually took over bass duties on this one (and a few others over the course of the night) and was stellar.

Since the band were in town for the Neil Young tribute show it made sense that a Neil Young cover would be trotted out and Out On The Weekend it was. This was the first song that featured Julie Doiron as Sam Goldberg sang lead with everyone else providing some wonderful, high pitched Neil-y backing vocals. Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl followed which was delivered beautifully by Lisa Lobsinger with some help from Julie Doiron.

One of the highlights of the gig was a song Kevin Drew introduced as “Sweetest Kill.” It was a slow, restrained song but Kevin’s vocal delivery was one of his best. I have an mp3 of the song dated from December 2007 (when it was called Untitled 2 which I have included below) so it remains to be seen if this song is a castoff from Kevin Drew’s solo record or if it will appear on the forthcoming Broken Social Scene album, Forgiveness Rock Record.

Julie Doiron then took centre stage to lead Broken Social Scene through a rocking version of her own Consolation Prize off last year’s I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day. I was pretty happy to see this as Consolation Prize was one of my favourite songs from 2009. The set then ended with a drawn out, ramshackle version of It’s All Gonna Break. After the horn-punctuated finale the band left the stage leaving only Kevin Drew behind. He then claimed he was going to make a song up and started playing a song which did not seem made up. Not sure if it’s a cover (it did sound sort of familiar to me) or a new song or if he was actually making it up (doubtful) but it was pretty great. It got even better as Justin Peroff joined him and then the duo were joined by Brendan Canning on bass. Seeing the band jam as a trio was really, really cool (and it would totally work for a tour). (I dubbed the song ‘Too Delicate’ and you can see a video below.)

Then the band really did leave the stage but the crowd wouldn’t let them go. After a couple minutes of screaming and applause Kevin Drew came out and explained they really couldn’t play anymore due to venue restrictions. But he did lead the crowd through an accapella, karaoke version of U2′s I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. It was a pretty special end to a great Broken Social Scene gig.

Cannot wait for the record and the real tour to begin.

Setlist:
Superconnected
7/4 (Shoreline)
Backed Out On The…
Churches Under The Stairs
Love Is New
Stars And Sons
Out On The Weekend*
Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl
Frightening Lives
Sweetest Kill**
Consolation Prize***
It’s All Gonna Break
“Too Delicate For These Games of Mine” (Kevin, Brendan, Justin only)
———
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For

* Neil Young cover
** Formerly known as Untitled 2
*** Julie Doiron with BSS

My photos from the gig are here. And apologies to anyone who got excited when I posted on Twitter that the band had soundchecked a bunch of new stuff. They might have rehearsed a couple new ones but I think it was Canning’s songs that I neglected to recognize through the walls of the venue.

Download
Broken Social Scene – Sweetest Kid (MTV Canada Live Dec. 2007)
Julie Doiron – Consolation Prize

Below I’ve embedded some video (sorry about the sound cutting out on “Too Delicate” and being nearly unlistenable for Julie Doiron’s song).

Out On The Weekend

Consolation Prize

“Too Delicate” (new/unknown? song)

I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For

Hope you’re enjoying the Winter Olympics wherever you are. Vancouver is nuts at the moment.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 21st, 2010 at 6:12 pm and is filed under Canada, Downloads, General, Photos, Reviews, Setlists, Shows, Vancouver, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.