Broken Social Scene!

Last Sunday, I attended the Broken Social Scene concert (in conjunction with the Mosaic Festival) with my dear friend Therese. There are three main elements that made the concert beyond fucking brilliant. Firstly, it is the brilliant, brilliant music of Broken Social Scene. Secondly, Broken Social Scene are a bunch of very happy, funny people and it's the happy, funny kind that is contagious and not irritating. And lastly, the Esplanade Concert Hall had nice, cushy seats.

Therese and I arrived at the Esplanade 5 minutes and we bumped into TLFC midfield maestro Darryl Lee and his girlfriend Clara. But none of us brought cameras so I don't have visual proof for that. It didn't really matter anyway, because they don't allow image-capturing devices into the Esplanade Concert Hall.

Moments before Broken Social Scene took the stage, they made this announcement: "We regret to inform you that the following members of Broken Social Scene were not be able to make it for tonight's show: James Shaw, Evan Cranley, Amy Millan, Feist and Mas Selamat Bin Kasturi." Then the band stormed the stage to uproarious laughter from the crowd.

I would love to show you videos from the concert, but as I said earlier, the Esplanade authorities are quite anal about cameras in their precious concert hall. So I will fish out whatever Youtube has of the songs that they performed.

They opened with a very uplifting rendition of 7/4 (Shoreline). And due to the absence of Amy Millan and Feist, the female vocals were done by some random unknown who offered her vocal services. I sound bitchy la, but she was quite good.



After that they did a few songs, including Superconnected and Handjobs For The Holidays, that, unfortunately, do not have video content on YouTube.

There was a lull when they started playing random slow guitar riffs. Then they broke into Fire Eye'd Boy and the crowd went nuts.



Then they started playing their slow songs again. Lover's Spit, in particular, was really moving.



They brought the concert to a climax with a very very powerful performance of Ibi Dreams Of Pavement.



And when the crowd sang along to it, it was magic. "Well all the boys wait for a sign, you were therreeee, you were therrreee..."

As concerts go, it didn't beat Oasis because Oasis had far better music and Linkin Park due to sheer energy and entertainment value. But Broken Social Scene sits pretty at third place. Definitely