Broken Social Scene at Palace Theatre, St Paul (08 Oct 2022)

BSS Setlist

KC Accidental Stars and Sons Almost Crimes Looks Just Like the Sun Pacific Theme Cause = Time 7/4 (Shoreline) Fire Eye’d Boy Stay Happy Fuzz I’m Still Your F** Sweetest Kill Hug of Thunder Lover’s Spit Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day) Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl Superconnected Halfway Home

Tour Dates

Toronto’s large ensemble Broken Social Scene is celebrating their 25th Anniversary of You Forgot It in People, stopping by the Palace Theatre in St Paul on October 8th.

Opening the show was local favorites Poliça, playing their “last show on the books, and the book is unwritten.” This was the band’s first time at the Palace Theatre (and it seemed like they love the venue).

 

The last time we saw the band, it was in promotion of their album Music for the Long Emergency (Totally Gross National Product / Transgressive Records), in Feb 2018, and they had a whole string section Stargaze, “With 2018 continuing the same almost daily chaos of the year before, the best art in more perilous times incites, calls to action, reflects the state of the world, and provides a glimmer of light in any darkness. With Music for the Long Emergency, Poliça and s t a r g a z e accomplish all of that, and manages to be mesmerizing live in concert as well.”

In contrast, at last night’s show, it was as a trio: Channy Leaneagh on synth and vocals, and two drummers, Drew Christopherson and Ben Ivascu. They were missing bassist Chris Bierden, who couldn’t make it to the show.

Songs on their set seemed to be mostly from the new album called Madness, including the title track.

Every musician in the Toronto area have been, at some point, a band member of Broken Social Scene. Their alumni includes everyone from Amy Millan (of Stars) to Emily Haines (of Metric) to Feist to Lisa Lobsinger (of Reverie Sound Revue) to Elizabeth Powell (of Land of Talk), etc.

Currently, the large lineup consists of:

With such a large cast, touring can be difficult, especially trying to coordinate with everyone involved, and you need a rather large stage to accommodate for everyone (and every instruments). Sometime it’s rare to see them on tour.

The last time they played in the area, it was in Sep 2017 (five years ago), which we said, “With an ever-rotating line-up boasting almost thirty members, the Toronto collective Broken Social Scene took to the stage with about a third of that, for their 110-minute headlining set, going way back to 2002’s ‘KC Accidental’ to begin, in support of the new Hug of Thunder, released in July on Mom+Pop. With vocalists Feist, Emily (Metric) Haines and Amy (Stars) Millan off doing their own projects, the female vocals opposite main vocalist Kevin Drew fell to new addition Ariel Engle (who’s also in AroarA and married to BSS’s Andrew Whiteman) with Drew commenting after ‘7/4’- “we’re already having a wonderful time, let’s do this together” eventually making his way into the crowd of the crowd and politely shaking hands (a very Canadian gesture) as he sang.”

The thing is with BSS, is that no other band is this visually fun to watch and listen to. Not everyone is on stage at once, sometime they are backstage taking a break, especially if the song doesn’t require their instrument. So practically every song, there’s something new. Always fun to see a random trumpet on stage, always fun to see singer Jill Harris skipping/dancing on stage to take lead vocals.

For this 2022 tour, BSS is celebrating the 25th Anniversary of their second album, You Forgot It in People. The record won Alternative Album of the Year Juno Award, and really established the band as having a lot of contributors (which on recorded included Priddle, Jessica Moss, Brodie West, Susannah Brady and Ohad Benchetrit).

Their live shows became the stuff of legends, as captured on the recently Live At the Phoenix Concert Theatre “bootleg” cassette (and digital), which showcased many songs from You Forgot It In People, like the 15 minute rendition of “It’s All Gonna Break”.

Update: This article was edited to add Jill Harris’ name as current lead vocalist. Thanks to John W, who writes: “Actually, Ariel Engle only played the first 3 dates of this tour and since then (including this show at The Palace) the vocalist has been Jill Harris who is new to the band. I saw last night’s show in Chicago and she was terrific.”