Broken Social Scene

For our wedding, a friend of ours got us gift certificates to The House of Blues. We kind of forgot about them until we found our that one of Jeff and my favorite bands, Broken Social Scene, were playing there. They don't come around here often (the last time was in 2003) so we were really fortunate to be able to see them.


Friday night after work, we went downtown to see them. After enduring the pretty lousy opening act (Menomena, wannabe hippies from Oregon) Broken Social Scene came out and sounded even better than I ever imagined. They have been around for about 10 years, so they have had a lot of time to refine their talent together. It is a very large band (as you can tell from the photo) with multiple guitarists, keyboards, drums, and an entire horn section. The cool thing about the band is that everyone will play different instruments and take turns singing. You could tell that they were having a lot of fun too.

As part of their encore, the guitarist/saxaphonist/keyboardist presented his "side project." I forgot the name, something like "The Happiness Project." It was pretty awesome! He interviewed his neighbors and recorded it. Because everyone's voice has a natural melody and tone, he then had another saxaphonist come out and play along with their voices in the exact tone. The interview that he presented was of his old irish neighbor. It is hard to translate how cool it was on paper...but it was really pretty incredible.

We had a really great time at the show, it was a nice start to the weekend. If you ever get a chance to listen to their music, I suggest it. Most people would really enjoy it. They rock, but it's also pretty mellow at the same time. Good stuff!